{"podcast":{"title":"Into the Impossible With Brian Keating","slug":"into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783","podcast_index_feed_id":324783,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ITI7213486251","website_url":"https://briankeating.com/podcast","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/82ed9870-601b-11eb-8196-478a251a046e/image/73e6d21c3fbe038e695dbefe71da6842.jpg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"Brian Keating","episode_count":607,"summary":"Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen — uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore reality’s deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all. If you’ve ever asked What’s out there? or What’s next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity. Learn to think like this. 🎙 Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783"},"episode":{"title":"The Engine That Built Life. Nick Lane - #541","slug":"the-engine-that-built-life-nick-lane-541","published_at":"2026-03-03T08:29:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783/the-engine-that-built-life-nick-lane-541","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/BBPI4438346851.mp3?updated=1772563533","audio_url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/BBPI4438346851.mp3?updated=1772563533","summary":"Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information running on chemistry but energy in motion—showing how a single ancient metabolic “transformer” predates genes, powers mitochondria, shapes aging and cancer, constrains alien life, and reveals why today’s AI excitement echoes a solution biology discovered billions of years ago. 00:00 — Defining life vs. death; membrane potential as the boundary between living and dead 00:50 — The title “Transformer” and parallels between AI transformers and biochemical transformation 03:22 — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and why defining life is intrinsically slippery 06:25 — Why the Krebs cycle sits at the center of metabolism 08:45 — The reverse Krebs cycle, CO₂ fixation, and links to cancer metabolism 11:35 — Mitochondrial membrane potential and the electrical field that powers life 15:00 — Reverse Krebs cycle vs. Calvin cycle and the evolution of carbon fixation 18:00 — Endosymbiosis: origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts 30:02 — Metabolism before genes; CO₂ + hydrogen and prebiotic chemistry 59:49 — Rapid-fire Q&A: RNA world critique and big open questions in origin-of-life research ------------------------------------------------------ ➡️ Follow Nick Lane 🌐 Website: https://www.nick-lane.net 📚 Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death: https://nick-lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-of-life-and-death/ Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 Get my books: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing intervie…","meta_description":"Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information ru…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4488,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783/episodes/the-engine-that-built-life-nick-lane-541/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/into-the-impossible-with-brian-keating-324783/the-engine-that-built-life-nick-lane-541.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}