400,000 of you showed up for physics with no compromises, so I did something different for the milestone. No highlight reel. I took your hardest questions live and answered them, then got honest about the part of this job nobody asks about: the discipline behind running a serious science podcast.

We get into why clocks didn't tick differently in the early universe, what it actually means that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once, and whether JWST has any real shot at catching a Population III star before it's gone.

Then it gets contested. I make the case that language models may rediscover physics before they rediscover mathematics, walk through why enormous numbers do not get you to alien life, and look at the moment Avi Loeb quietly softened his ʻOumuamua position.

In this conversation:

Why the early universe didn't run on a different clock

The Big Bang as an everywhere-at-once event, not an explosion in space

JWST and the hunt for the first generation of stars

Whether an LLM could rediscover Einstein, and what that would mean for who controls discovery

Why I read every book my guests write, and why that habit is the channel

Get the transcript, bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

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Timestamps

00:00 Did time always tick the same?

02:05 Is every point the Big Bang's center?

07:22 Could consciousness be space-time?

09:03 Will Webb see the first stars?

10:20 Can an LLM rediscover Einstein?

13:30 Has Penrose's CCC been falsified?

16:48 Dark Forest theory: science or sci-fi?

21:30 Can inflation ever be falsified?

29:04 Physical limits of AI compute growth

32:58 Is this the last CMB experiment?

37:30 Why large numbers don't prove alien life

55:30 Loeb quietly walks back Oumuamua

01:13:10 The null hypothesis on UAP

01:28:50 String theory vs. intelligent design

01:31:10 God as a scientific hypothesis

01:45:10 Drowning in knowledge, starving for wisdom

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