{"podcast":{"title":"The Peter McCormack Show","slug":"the-peter-mccormack-show-525419","podcast_index_feed_id":525419,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f","website_url":"https://www.petermccormack.com/","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f/show-cover.jpg","author":"Peter McCormack","episode_count":1075,"summary":"The Peter McCormack Show - politics, macro, Bitcoin and AI, long-form interviews. Twice-weekly conversations about money, power, and the shifts reshaping the next decade. Peter McCormack interviews politicians, economists, investors, journalists, founders and Bitcoiners. Past guests include Liz Truss, Lyn Alden, Curtis Yarvin, Matt Goodwin, Mike Green, Balaji Srinivasan, Rupert Lowe, Firas Modad, Scott Horton, Jeff Booth, Connor Leahy, Andrea Miotti, Neema Parvini, Dr Tim Gregory and Simon Dixon. Recurring threads: the debt and inflation endgame, UK political collapse and what comes after, Reform and the populist wave, the Middle East and the American war machine, AI safety and the race for superintelligence, energy and net zero, Bitcoin adoption and policy, and the slow-motion decline of Western institutions. Long-form - most episodes run 60 to 120 minutes. New episodes 2 to 3 times per week. Video on YouTube and Spotify. Host: Peter McCormack, a retired rapper from Bedford, UK, trying to understand this crazy world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-31T06:19:00.527164+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419"},"episode":{"title":"#197 - Brian Keating - What Came Before the Big Bang & Does Time Exist?","slug":"197-brian-keating-what-came-before-the-big-bang-does-time-exist","published_at":"2026-07-30T17:11:36+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/197-brian-keating-what-came-before-the-big-bang-does-time-exist","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419","url":"https://shows.acast.com/the-peter-mccormack-show/episodes/197-brian-keating-what-came-before-the-big-bang-does-time-ex","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f/e/6a6b4dba8effb6fbbede3217/media.mp3","summary":"Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fundamental feature of reality and explains why understanding space, matter and energy does not mean we understand the universe itself. We discuss what may have existed before the Big Bang, why something cannot truly come from nothing and how Brian’s work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves produced during the universe’s earliest moments. Brian also explains the limits of scientific proof, what dark matter really means and why films such as Interstellar remain scientifically implausible despite their attention to detail. The conversation then turns from cosmic time to the human experience of it: mortality, family, meaning and attention. We discuss UFO disclosure, collapsing trust in institutions and whether artificial intelligence can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that allowed Einstein to transform physics. Brian argues that AI remains a tool built to serve humanity and that we must stop apologising for humanity’s greatness. The first 100 people in the U.K. to join Brian Keating’s Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message newsletter here BrianKeating.com/peter are entered to win a 4.3-billion-year-old fragment of the early solar system — older than Earth itself, delivered to your door. Winners must live in the U.K. only due to shipping restrictions. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 - Time Doesn’t Exist 00:00:52 - Looking Outward—and Inward 00:01:41 - Why Physics Cannot Explain Time 00:04:59 - What Happened Before the Big Bang? 00:07:46 - Why Interstellar Is Scientificall…","meta_description":"Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction?…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5962,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/episodes/197-brian-keating-what-came-before-the-big-bang-does-time-exist/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/197-brian-keating-what-came-before-the-big-bang-does-time-exist.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}