In the opening segment of a podcast interview, the hosts introduce guest Brian Keating, a cosmologist. The conversation quickly turns humorous, with the co‑host joking about working on "hair and nails" and teasing a fictional "Tyler Wagner" who appears to be “drilling” them. The banter establishes a relaxed, informal tone for the show while briefly acknowledging Keating’s presence.
Today we have Brian Keating with us.
So welcome to the show, man. I'm a cosmologist, so I work on hair and nails. And it looks like you could use a little help with both, Tyler Wagner Wagner.
Oh, he's already drilling me.
Sorry, I can't. I can't help it.
I like it. Well, the nail thing.
You're young and handsome, man. Yeah. No, no worries. So I'm a cosmologist, so I study the origin of the universe, the evolution of the universe. I apply experimental techniques to measure things like distant galaxies, stars, planets, even asteroids and meteoroids and things like that. From the biggest scales in the universe to the smallest scales, I've been at UC San Diego as a professor for— this is my 18th year here. Most of my time I'm teaching in one way or another, either it's via my students, undergraduates, PhD students, Or I am teaching via my YouTube channel, Dr. Brian Keating, or try to do a lot of exposés on physics from the perspective of someone who's actually looking through telescopes, not someone who's waxing philosophical about wormholes and black holes and other holes. I don't know, but the whole notion of what is possible to learn without as much hype as typically gets applied. That's what I do on a daily basis.