#56 – Thinking Like a Nobel Prize Winner: Into the Impossible with physicist Brian Keating

Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi

My guest in this episode--my first ever livestream--is my UCSD colleague, Professor Brian Keating. Brian is a Chancellor’s distinguished professor of physics at UC San Diego, co-director of the Arthur C Clarke Center for the imagination, host of the Into the impossible podcast, YouTuber with 30k subscribers, and writer of the scientific memoir “Losing the Nobel Prize.” Brian is joining me today to discuss his new book, Into the impossible, thinking like a Nobel prize winner. Lessons from Laureates to Stoke Curiosity, Spur Collaboration, and Ignite Imagination in your life and career. The book is a distillation of conversations with nine different Nobel prize winners in physics on his podcast, into the impossible. The book deals not with the technical details of their discovery, but rather with the collaborations involved, the importance of working in a team, curiosity and the process of discovery, and also personal insecurities.

Topics include:

Is this a science book or a self-help book?

Why should we care about Nobel Prize winners?

Do they really suffer from the Imposter Syndrome or know what it is?

Does high-level academic work allow service? That is, were any of these people ever Department Chair or Associate Dean?

Did any of them have a podcast? ;)

Is partisanship and rivalry helpful in advancing science?