Person
Every book Brian Keating recommended on podcasts
Across 7 podcasts. Every show Brian Keating appears on, in one place — not just one.
Brian Keating’s most recommended books
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Waves in an Impossible Sea by Matt Strassler
- 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
- Don't Burn This Book by Dave Rubin
- Johannes Gutenberg by Johannes Gutenberg
- Operations of the geometric and military compass, 1606 by Galileo Galilei
- Principles by Ray Dalio
- Sidereus nuncius by Galileo Galilei
- Sidereus Nuncius, Or The Sidereal Messenger by Galileo Galilei
- The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Brian Keating is an American cosmologist and a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. He works on observations of the cosmic microwave background, leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments, and conceived the first BICEP experiment. On various podcasts, Keating has discussed and recommended several books that reflect his deep interest in astronomy, physics, and the philosophy of science. He recommended Matt Strassler's Waves in an Impossible Sea while discussing the Higgs field and suggested that listeners read it. When discussing unwanted distractions and tails and flies, Keating highlighted George Orwell's Animal Farm, noting it was perhaps his favorite book. To illustrate historical developments in astronomical technology and military applications, he brought up Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuncius as well as Operations of the geometric and military compass. He referenced Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion while examining prominent atheist intellectuals, and mentioned Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death to explain humanity's fundamental fear of mortality and the psychological drive to create a legacy. Additionally, Keating discussed Walt Whitman's poem When I heard the learn'd astronomer to contrast poetry with scientific facts about the night sky, and mentioned a book by Lou Elizondo concerning UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena.
Books recommended by Brian Keating
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Animal Farm
Animal Farm by George Orwell is a classic allegorical novella that uses a farmyard setting to satirize the corruption of socialist ideals and the rise of totalitarianism following the Russian Revolution.
Recommended“i've asked him and then it comes from animal farm by probably my favorite book”
Where to get it
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Waves in an Impossible Sea
Waves in an Impossible Sea by Matt Strassler is a non-fiction book that explores the Higgs field and the fundamental nature of physics.
Recommended“a good friend of mine, Matt Straler, guys should have him on. He wrote a wonderful book about this called Waves in an Impossible Sea and it's all about the Higs field.”
Where to get it
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12 Rules for Life
Jordan B.
Discussed“So, in uh in in 12 Rules for Life, you talked about the value precision of speech. Well, the most important thing for cosmologist is precision cosmology.”
Where to get it
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Don't Burn This Book
Don't Burn This Book by Dave Rubin is a political and cultural work that argues for the importance of independent thought and classical liberalism in a polarized society.
Discussed“You know, "Don't Burn This Book." He said, "Books," Dave, "are magic."”
Where to get it
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Into the Impossible : Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner
Discussed“One of the things in his book which I read, he hasn't come on my podcast. I'd like to talk to him, but he talks about these these craft and and the properties of them and how when you're inside of them they're bigger than they are when you're outside of them...”
Where to get it
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Johannes Gutenberg
Discussed“until they had say the Gutenberg Bible was published so in the in the 1400s and 1500s the first movable fixed type we had a calibrated standard where you knew how big the type font was”
Where to get it
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Operations of the geometric and military compass, 1606
Discussed“so this this was a book he wrote It's called the military Compass”
Where to get it
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Principles
Principles by Ray Dalio is a practical guide to decision-making, life management, and systematic economics based on the author's decades of experience running Bridgewater Associates.
Discussed“in principles he says an expert is someone who's done something three times successfully like you can do one something correctly”
Where to get it
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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
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Sidereus Nuncius, Or The Sidereal Messenger
Discussed“I wonder if um if Jamie if you could find trying to find something wasn't great if you look up um Star Messenger Star Messenger Galileo sketch Jupiter”
Where to get it
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The Denial of Death
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychological and philosophical study arguing that human civilization is ultimately driven by an unconscious terror of mortality.
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
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The First Three Minutes
The First Three Minutes is a popular science book by physicist Steven Weinberg that details the current scientific understanding of the universe's formation during the first few moments after the Big Bang.
Discussed“because we are not capable in other words going backwards from the first three minutes as famous stephen weinberg titled his book we actually marks a point where ignorance takes over”
Where to get it
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The God Delusion
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is a prominent polemical work that argues against the existence of a creator deity and critiques the societal impacts of religion.
Discussed“Wrote the, you know, the God Delusion and and just incredible intellect, but incredible atheists.”
Where to get it
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The Torah
The Torah by David J.
Discussed“in Contra distinction to the Jewish you know Bible the Torah is like the book of life we call it so um so Judaism is operating under that where there were gods and the gods were within nature”
Where to get it
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When I heard the learn'd astronomer
Discussed“are you familiar with the poem by Walt Whitman yes it's called when I heard the Learned astronomer”
Where to get it
Books Brian Keating wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (23: passing, ad reads, own books)
“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”
“you know, my first book's called Losing the Nobel Prize. So, it wasn't wasn't this guy. And it wasn't any of us because it was retracted later on”
“your book that you losing the Nobel Prize, losing the Nobel Prize into the impossible, think like a Nobel Prize winner. And then in the fall, coming out on my birthday, September 9th, is”
“your book that you losing the Nobel Prize, losing the Nobel Prize into the impossible, think like a Nobel Prize winner. And then in the fall, coming out on my birthday, September 9th, is”
“focus like a Nobel Prize winner. It's a self-help guide for STEM nerds like me and Neil and and maybe like you.”
“so in fact you know spoiler alert my first book is called losing the Nobel Prize because we had a retracted discovery that we made at Harvard on on ”
“you didn't think you were going to go down and you're going to discover dust instead of the Big Bang which is what happened to me in my I describ my first book”
“And then eventually, I didn't get, you know, spoiler alert, my first book's called Losing the Nobel Prize, but there's only, you know, at most three people that can win a Nobel Prize every year.”
“Actually the forward to this my second book into the impossible is written by Barry Barish. He won the 2017 Nobel Prize.”
“until they had say the Gutenberg Bible was published”
“they had statues their their Bible was called The Book of the Dead”
“my book is called losing the nuball prize my first book”
“I mean my book is called losing the nuball prize my first book and spoiler alert you know I didn't win the nuball prize”
“Yeah, so this is a very very important chapter not only in my life, but it's it it will talked about in future years as an example of of how science actually gets done and it's a subject of my first book Losing the Nobel Prize.”
“Inflation says I didn't get to this before but when we made this detection in 2014 that's described in my book Losing the Nobel Prize we claimed we detected these waves of gravity.”
“But this the point is that you do have the tendency and this is in part what my first book Losing the Nobel Prize is about. It's about wanting to discover something that's not only viscerally connected to you and your career...”
“so in 2001 i came up with an experiment with colleagues at caltech which we call bicep like i said it's the subject of this book losing the nobel prize”
“you know just because you you you know and in my case in my books i i talk a lot about the nobel prize”
“yeah that book is in contradiction in the second book that's like a memoir”
“so even if i had which you know spoiler alert the book's called losing the nobel prize”
“he wrote the forward to this my book into the about he he won the nobel prize because a different guy died”
“and that can also happen to us as I described in my book so my book is called losing the Nobel Prize”