Episode · The Shawn Ryan Show · 2026-06-25
Books mentioned on #316 Brian Keating - The First Object Ever Found From Another Solar System
Brian Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, and the principal investigator of the Simons Observatory.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
Sidereus nuncius
Sidereus nuncius by Galileo Galilei, translated as The Starry Messenger, is a groundbreaking 1610 astronomical treatise in which Galileo reported his revolutionary telescopic observations of the Moon, Jupiter's moons, and the stars.
Discussed“And then he raced to publish this. He published it in under 2 months, which is like a record. He published this book called the Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger”
Where to get it
-
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins's 'The God Delusion' is a prominent work of popular science and non-fiction that critically examines religion, the concept of a creator, and the irrationality of belief in God.
Discussed“Wrote the, you know, the God Delusion and and just incredible intellect, but incredible atheists.”
Where to get it
-
The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death is a profound psychological work exploring how human behavior is fundamentally driven by the fear of mortality and the ways people attempt to transcend it.
Discussed“There's a book by Ernest Becker. It's called The Denial of Death, and Ernest Becker claims that the human being has one major fear”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“spoiler alert, you know, my first book's called Losing the Nobel Prize. So, something went wrong. Something went really wrong.”
“That's the subject of the first book that I wrote, Losing the Nobel Prize. If we do get to that point where we can sort of have evidence for it”