--:-- Ryan Hanley: Science is what's called an infinite game. There is no winning. I can't win science. You specialize in one field and it's incredible competition. But as many of these people say, they basically are relay racers in this infinite chain, this race that goes back to prehistoric times when the first person came out of a cave and said, "What are those dots in the night? What are those things up there? Where do they come from? Where do I come from?" So you're in this race, in this relay race, and you get the baton for a very short amount of time. You run your leg, but your job is to pass it on. So be a hero to other people, be in awe of other people that came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable opponent. Mother Nature's undefeated.
--:-- Brian Keating: Well, dude, we started in the green room talking about how the last time we talked, I think was like '21, '20. It was four or five years ago. Both of us were in very different places. It could have even been earlier than that. I just looked at the episode; I didn't even look at the timestamp. It's so bad. Both of us were in different places, right? And we've both kind of grown and have these brands and outlets. Dude, you've just been doing so much fun stuff. It's been so much fun to have had a chance to get to know you just a little bit, you know, in the podcast, and now to see how far you've taken it, how much you professionalized it. You've turned it into a business as well as everything else you do. It's just so fun to be able to reconnect.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, likewise, man. I've been following you and you're blowing up like the Big Bang yourself. So it's a pleasure to be back on the show again. We shouldn't wait for just every presidential election cycle to be together.
--:-- Brian Keating: That's true. That's true.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, so I would not be doing myself justice if I didn't take this opportunity to ask you just a few of the nerdy questions that I have. My first interaction with your content was when you rewrote the Galileo book or reprinted that book. I heard you on the Aldisher show. This was very early in your kind of public persona. I just thought it was the coolest fucking thing. I'm like, here's this nerdy dude who's smart as hell, who's taking this knowledge, bringing it back into the world, making it interesting again, talking about it. You and James were chopping it up and I was enamored by it. I was this close to going to school for astronomy. This close.
--:-- Brian Keating: I did not know that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, so I went and looked at a bunch of schools that had astronomy programs. The last of which was Vassar College. The problem with Vassar was their baseball field didn't have an outfield fence. So I did not become an astronomer. You want to talk about how trite some of the reasons are in which we choose the careers that we choose?
--:-- Brian Keating: It's so funny that you say that because Edwin Hubble, who's the famous namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, is the man who 100 years ago proposed that the universe is expanding and discovered evidence for it. He was a great athlete too; he was a runner. He had this real devotion to his father, who was kind of domineering, like many of our fathers can be. He was like, "No, you're going to go to law school whether you like it or not." So he forced Edwin Hubble to go to law school in the UK, at Oxford. When he came back, he only came back with one noticeable difference: he developed a posh British accent. But he told his dad, "Father, I've decided not to do law." His father was outraged. He said, "Father, I'd rather be a second-rate astronomer than a first-rate lawyer." So apologies to all the lawyers. My brother's a lawyer, so I like to tease him with that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's okay. If you choose to be a lawyer, I think you're asking to be made fun of in some regards. So that's your life choice you made. But it is funny how we make these small, seemingly large decisions at the time that seem small. I became a math major, which I can do even less with.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, so I want to talk. I want to stay away from aliens and shit. As much as I find that interesting, that's not what I want to ask you about. I was listening to a show the other day, and I went back and tried to figure out who it was that said this. It was a verified scientist, not an armchair Twitter ex-scientist. He was on... maybe it was Huberman or something. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. But he threw out this flippant comment, like a contextual comment that wasn't relevant to what they were talking about. He just threw this in: "Dark matter might not even exist." And then he just kept going. In my mind, I went, "Wait, wait, wait." I don't know one way or the other, but I don't feel like you can just throw that out there and then move on. So maybe break down for the audience, because I find this idea of dark matter to be very intoxicating, as much as I only understand half of it. What is the theory, and is there anything new that has come out to this idea that maybe it doesn't actually exist?
--:-- Brian Keating: Oh yeah. That's a great question. Look, dark matter, along with dark energy, make up a tremendous amount of what we know about the universe. Yet we know almost nothing about these two substances. To give you an idea: if you thought of the universe, the energy in the universe, as being a pie chart, it would have different components. It would have matter, like you and I are made up of protons, neutrons, in my case croutons, baseballs, whatever. It has all this matter. Then it has different forms of radiation, which sounds scary but is just light or radio waves, Wi-Fi, et cetera. You'd write down how much energy is in the form of light, radiation, gamma rays, X-rays, whatever. Then you'd write down what's in the form of these other two components that we know to exist: dark matter and dark energy.
--:-- So there are four components on this pie chart: matter, radiation, dark matter, and dark energy. What does the pie chart look like? It would be about 70% dark energy. It would be about 29% dark matter. And then it would be 1% everything else. You and I are not even the foam on the latte, Ryan. We're like the cinnamon sprinkle dust. You go to Starbucks, we're nothing. Literally, we're 1%. And by the way, most of the matter in the universe, if you took that 1% and chunked it up into other things—how much is hydrogen, how much is helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, keep going up the periodic table—you'd get that 90% of that material in the form of matter is basically hydrogen. The rest would be almost nothing. So the 10% of the 1% of the ordinary planets, rock stuff that we have is stuff related to human beings. We're like one grain of cinnamon on the foam on top of the latte, sitting there steaming away.
--:-- Dark matter is the second most abundant source of energy mass in the universe. We've known about its existence for a hundred years. We've been able to infer its existence for almost a hundred years. Yet we've never ever detected it, and it may be impossible to detect it. So this person you were listening to probably makes the rounds on podcast channels. I know it's hard to tell the difference between a legitimate scientist, like I hope you're convinced I am, and someone who might be doing stuff for clicks or attention. I don't know that person. Maybe they are legitimate, maybe not. There's a lot of pseudoscience and nonsense on podcasts nowadays, so you have to consider the source.
--:-- But it is true that there could be no dark matter. Then you'd have to replace the effects that we know dark matter manifests as. You'd have to find another mechanism to reproduce those effects. Nobody says there aren't these properties in a galaxy like the Milky Way. There's this known problem: the stars in the Milky Way are rotating around the black hole in the center of the galaxy at an extremely high rate. It's as if you were swinging a ball on a string around your head. It's going so fast you couldn't account for it by the muscles of the person swinging it. You'd have to find some other explanation—maybe there's some wind that just so happens to be making a tornado, a dust devil, right around the person. In other words, you'd have to come up with some other explanation besides the most simple or seemingly obvious one that there's dark matter. Basically, how we know something is there is because objects are being impacted by a force. We see the effect, but we're not seeing what's causing the effect. That's where the idea of dark matter and dark energy comes from.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Gotcha.
--:-- Brian Keating: So in a sense, we know there's gravity, electricity, magnetism, radiation, light. We know about all these forces of nature. Forms of dark matter don't have to be exotic things we've never encountered before. For example, back in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was known that the planet Uranus—or as some people like to call it, Uranus, it's more fun that way—was moving in a very strange way. It was moving as if it was being pulled upon by some unknown source of gravitation. They knew about gravity. They knew what its orbit should be if the only other planets were Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They couldn't account for the motion. A scientist predicted that there was another planet beyond the orbit of Uranus, and we now know that as Neptune. It was effectively dark matter. It was pulling on it, having a gravitational force just like we see with the stars in the Milky Way. We wouldn't say Neptune is exotic matter. It was just not illuminated; it doesn't give off its own light.
--:-- Dark matter, we believe, if it's in the form of particles of an unknown composition, can't be in the form of protons and neutrons. Otherwise, it would interact with protons and neutrons, and we would see it by its heat and light. The fact that we don't see it really means it should be called invisible matter, but "dark matter" kind of stuck. It sounds more mysterious. Dark energy is even more mysterious. We know even less about it. But we have a tremendous amount of evidence for both of these terms. We have the situation that Donald Rumsfeld would call "known unknowns." We know what we don't know, but we don't know exactly what that unknown is composed of.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: OK, so now I want to take us slightly into tinfoil hat range. You're competing with Rogan and Diary of a CEO. This is how we bump our numbers. I'm competing with the Sasquatch Files, brother. I'm competing with UAP Chronicles. Please don't be afraid to branch out.
--:-- Brian Keating: If we want views, we have to go conspiracy theory. We've got to go Sasquatch, UFO, UAP, and all the moon landing stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to stay inside dark matter, though, because this is where the question was going. The two-slit experiment, where particles act as if they're being acted upon, but you have to look at the whole thing. You can explain that in better detail. I was watching a breakdown of that on the Y Files with AJ Gentile. I don't know if you've seen these.
--:-- Brian Keating: I've heard of it, but yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh my god, dude. He's blown up lately because he was just on Rogan and then on Sean Ryan's show. But before that, he's got this amazing YouTube channel. You'll appreciate this. I'm going to go contextual for a second before I ask you this question. AJ Gentile, Y Files guy—if you're listening and you're interested in this shit at all, you will love it. What he does is the first two-thirds to 75% of the show, he tells the conspiracy theory as if it's 100% true. Like it's written: God came down from the heavens and said there were aliens in North Montana, whatever. Then he takes the last 25% and basically debunks as much as he can. He says, "Here's what's real. Here's what's not. Here's what could be." It's really cool.
--:-- He was doing this thing on the double slit experiment, and he threw out this idea. He was talking about how there are people who hypothesize that could show multiple dimensions, and maybe matter from another dimension is impacting us. So taking this to our dark matter: is there a chance, is there a theory, or is it just way off base, that this idea that dark matter and dark energy could possibly be other dimensions impacting our universe, our solar system?
--:-- Brian Keating: Yeah, no, that's a very plausible scenario. There are several challenges with it, but it is certainly one that is perceived as a potential explanation. I should say the most likely explanation that scientists believe comes down to either changing the composition of matter in the universe to include this type of invisible matter, or to include matter that we already know exists. We already know we have detected dark matter; it's just a very incomplete form of it. They're called neutrinos. Neutrinos are every bit as real a form of dark matter as protons are ordinary luminous matter, non-dark matter, or visible matter. These are mysterious particles that have very, very light weights, very low masses, and they travel at very high velocities, close to the speed of light. They only interact with nuclear forces, so they don't interact with electrons or light. You can't see them, but we've detected them for 85 years now, known about their existence.
--:-- The problem is they don't make up all of that 25% of the dark matter slice of that pie we talked about. The amount they make up is only about a quarter of that amount at most. They're not sufficient to explain all the dark matter, but they give what's called an existence proof. For example, the fact that there were dinosaurs gives some tiny credibility to the Loch Ness Monster. I'm not saying it's high. Don't take me out. But UCSD distinguished professor says Loch Ness Monster is plausible. It's all over the New York Post now. It's the headline. Thank you. We're having the California Post here soon, too. So don't take it too seriously. But the fact that there were once dinosaurs and there are still crocodiles gives some credence. It's not 0.00% probability. It's very low, but it's not zero. The fact that there are neutrinos gives a lot of credibility that there could be an invisible massive form of matter that's invisible to telescopes but otherwise not invisible to gravitational effects.
--:-- So then you'd say, what are some other plausible explanations? There's something called Occam's Razor, which states a very simple fact that Sherlock Holmes would use: the simplest explanation is typically the correct one. In astrophysics, cosmology, and quantum physics, there's no such thing as a simple explanation. Everything is hard, fun, challenging, a puzzle, and a mystery. That's why I love it. But it still could be that there's another explanation other than neutrinos or supermassive neutrinos or self-interacting dark matter. It could be that we have to change the laws of gravity. In other words, there is no new matter, but gravity is wrong once you get to scales of a galaxy. We don't see dark matter effects in our solar system. As I said, the effect on Uranus was actually the fact of ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons—the planet Neptune. We don't see it on these scales. We don't even see it in the entirety of our local solar neighborhood. Only when you get to the scale of our Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies beyond can you detect that there is something strange going on with the rate of rotation of galaxies versus the amount of stars they seem to have.
--:-- So we have devised that there could be an alternative explanation where you'd have to modify the laws of gravity to explain the peculiar velocity effects of stars at the outskirts of massive galaxies like the Milky Way. That's another explanation. You might say that's pretty far-fetched, but that's exactly what happened in 1915 with this guy over here, my friend who is visiting me at all times. Where is this guy? Come on. He's around here somewhere. I just picked him up today. I've got Albert Einstein somewhere around here. Where is he hiding? Oh, he's buried under my phone and under my new book, Into the Impossible. [Picks up a figure] So here's Albert Einstein.
--:-- Albert Einstein said that we shouldn't think of gravity as this kind of force that pulls on things, invisible ropes pulling on things. We should think of it as the effect of mass that causes the actual fabric of space and time to warp like a bowling ball on a trampoline. In that way, he proposed that you actually have to change the laws of gravity to account for the peculiar properties of the planet Mercury in 1915. Mercury, like Neptune, had this weird behavior. It was orbiting in a strange way. The same guy, Le Verrier, a French astronomer who proposed the existence of Neptune—i.e., dark matter—to explain the peculiar properties of Uranus, proposed the same thing for Mercury. He proposed there was a new planet you couldn't see because it was closer to the sun than Mercury, called Vulcan. For many years, astronomers couldn't see it because it was so bright next to the sun, but they postulated that this guy was pretty smart, so he must be right. He said, "Look for a planet closer to the sun than Mercury." It was never found. Dark matter succeeded with the case of Uranus and failed in the case of Mercury. What was needed in Mercury's case was to change the laws of physics.
--:-- Today, my colleagues work on these problems, and I work on them too. How can you explain it? Is it a new particle? Is it new matter like Neptune? Or is it a new law of gravity like Einstein postulated? We're trying to find out which one is right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, last science nerd question. Then we're going to stay in... we don't have to go aliens, but I'm very interested in this. There's been a lot of talk, and it could be disinformation, around this gravitational propulsion system. Obviously, Rogan did a big thing on it. In 2017, the Tic Tac thing came out. There have been a lot of these quote-unquote whistleblowers that somehow still have security clearance. So we have to pass through a lot of filters of what could or could not be true. I'm assuming that to the extent you just described, the idea that we would have to change our understandings of gravity in order for this entire concept to be possible—would this potentially be the avenue to understanding that type of technology, if it's even possible? This idea of being able to bend gravity to move things and not have the g-force impact humans?
--:-- Brian Keating: Nothing should be claimed to be impossible. But what we're talking about in that case is called manipulation of space-time. We do know that there are vast disturbances in space and time caused by actual forms of matter and energy that we know about. These have been tested to exquisite precision. The challenge is that gravity is the weakest of all the forces. When I talked about dark matter, I didn't tell you that the worst scenario scientists could find themselves in is if dark matter only interacts gravitationally. If it's only detectable via the fact that if you have enough of it, it will change the orbit of stars, then you need a tremendous amount of it. There's no detection system we know about that could actually get enough in your laboratory. Think about it: you need something like the mass of the sun or the mass of Neptune to change the orbit of another planet. To have a detection, you would need something planetary size, and these planets are all six to ten times bigger than the Earth. You're talking about things beyond the realm of science fiction.
--:-- But let's say, for the sake of example, some hyper-intelligent alien civilization has a bigger planet so they can fit more stuff on it. Then you have this problem: the bigger planet has much higher gravity, making it even less likely that they have the capability to get off the Earth's surface. SpaceX's Starship uses like 90% of its energy, its fuel, just to launch, let alone traverse the galaxy, which we haven't been able to do. The farthest object mankind has ever sent is beyond the orbit of Pluto, but by light travel time, it's only one light day. If you shined a laser at it, it would take a day to get to that spacecraft called Voyager 1. It was launched when I was a baby, 50 years ago. You talk about this incomprehensible size of our universe and how paltry a distance we've only been able to explore.
--:-- Then you think about whether there could be aliens that have all these properties. I liken it sometimes to almost a religious fixation that yes, Jesus can do anything, or God can do anything, is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. When you start saying that the aliens can manipulate gravity, it's almost giving them godlike powers. If they don't have the ability to warp space-time themselves, they have to use the tools that nature or God gave them, which is just the same as we have. You'd have to have massive black holes, incredibly sized planets, the ability to transcend the speed of light. These are all things that are literally supernatural. Is it possible? Yes. I can't prove that it is impossible. That doesn't make it likely.
--:-- These people who postulate these things will say something is possible. Just like I said, you could imagine an alien who wanted to trick us and started to play around with the orbit of Mercury. It is humanly possible if you had some Death Star-like thing; you could actually make a planet the size of Mercury on the opposite side of the sun so it's always interacting. But is that likely? Or is it more likely that these people are having hallucinations, lying, or being psyopped by the U.S. government, who has admitted to doing it? No other nations really claim that they're doing this that are transparent and accountable to the extent you think the U.S. is. 90% of the sightings and claims come from the United States, and 90% of those come from near military bases or nuclear weapons or power sites. At some level, you have to ask Occam's Razor question: which is the simplest explanation? Then take it from there. The leap from what we see to what's claimed to be seen to what's known is an enormous chasm.
--:-- The last thing I'll say is that I'm often accused of being a gatekeeper or a wet blanket. But you have to realize that comes with the tampering of my hopes. I actually want it to be the case that there's life elsewhere in the solar system or the universe, or maybe there are other universes. I study some wacko stuff too. But the difference is I guard against my desire innately to confirm the hypothesis that I want to be true. These other people, their first inclination is to go to the most outlandish hypothesis and then claim cover-ups, conspiracy, and gatekeeping.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I want to transition into this. I think this is a perfect point because I love the way you finished that. I said before we went live that one of the things I've always been a fan of, even before you were ever on the show, is that there are very few people in your field who are able to play with the tinfoil hat ideas without admonishing or demeaning the person throwing the idea out there. You're still willing to play with it, but you always back it up with where we actually are today and what really is working and what would have to be true for this. I've always appreciated that.
--:-- What I'll do sometimes with your work—and guys, just so you know, I'll have links to everything Brian does, the books, highly recommended—I'll go watch one of these crazy shows because it's fun. It's like watching a sitcom. They'll be talking about this crazy shit, and then I'll go to your X feed and search to see if you've commented on that topic, just to know what reality is like as of this moment. Always, "Hey, anything's possible." Your show is Into the Impossible, so we're seeking truth. But I think it's good to have a measured approach because you can absolutely get lost in this shit. There is nothing worse than someone who does not understand that 98% of conspiracy theories are complete nonsense. It's fun to play with them, but if you're actually believing all these things, you're having a hard time.
--:-- You've been able to take these topics—we just talked about some stuff that I'm assuming the majority of our audience may not have heard 90% of before—and turn it into not just a brand but a business. You've been able to commercialize this in a way that is educational, inspiring, and brings all different types of thought in. You've had tit-for-tats with different scientific leaders. You have legit haters. You're in the game. What has that been like coming out of academia? Obviously, you've been in front of crowds, you've taught, so speaking in front of people isn't something you've never done before. But coming out to the public with these ideas, sharing them, and turning it into a brand and a business—what has that been like for you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, well, I mean, I have to say that my first point of contact with everything you're saying is out of a sense of simple decency and morality and obligations. I think, you know, once I heard a statement that it was great that we had the Statue of Liberty and the Bill of Rights in America, but we should have a Statue of Responsibility and the Bill of Responsibility. In other words, we focus so much on what we're entitled to, what we deserve, whether because we're smart or good looking or both in both of our cases. But if we had this ability as if it's given to us, preordained as an entitlement. And I've never felt that way. I feel like I'm so privileged to be a scientist.
--:-- Brian Keating: I work at a public university in the state of California, UC San Diego. I went to public schools my whole life. And so I believe that the public is my boss. I believe that you pay your taxes, hopefully everybody out there. And if you don't, I don't want to know about it right now, but we'll expect a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. But the fact that you guys pay your taxes and some of that, not much, especially in the state of California. I'm a public employee. It's not a huge amount, but we do get paid. And we get paid to do what we would do for free.
--:-- The dirty little secret of scientists, whenever they whine, I always say, well, why don't you get a real job? Jokingly. I mean, I do feel like I have a real job. I've taught 20 people to get PhDs. I've taught 3,000 undergraduate students. I've written 800 letters of recommendation to get jobs for my students. But the bottom line is that we are paid to do something most of us would do for free. And because of that, if somebody pays you to be an ice cream taster or to play professional baseball or whatever, you have an obligation to give back to the people that pay your salary. The fans, the organization, or in my case, the taxpayer.
--:-- So for me, I see the obligation to my boss. Imagine you worked at Dairy Queen, Ryan. And working at Dairy Queen and your boss comes in and says, "Well, what are you up to, Ryan?" And you're like, "Well, you can't understand what I'm doing here, boss. I'm so advanced. I'm so erudite. I'm just such a genius." And that's the attitude of most scientists. And I understand it because we want to work on stuff that's incredibly cutting edge, rather than, if you're an English professor, you don't want to teach the alphabet, you want to teach great literature. And so too with science, I don't want to teach one plus one equals two or one times one equals two, as Terrence Howard and I have been beefing about. Dynamite drop in there. Dynamite.
--:-- So I'd rather do cutting edge physics like I'm doing, but we do have an obligation to explain what we do in the simplest possible terms, but no simpler. We shouldn't dumb it down. I hate that term when people say, "Oh, you're great at dumbing it down." That means that you're dumb. No, you're not dumb. You're just an expert in some other field that I'm not an expert in. So am I dumb? No. I just haven't dedicated the time, effort, and skills that you have.
--:-- My basic point is I believe that the university and professors in general kind of have this arrogance, which you could say is partially deserved, but the best people, the people that I feel blessed to have as colleagues and as guests on my podcast and in this new book, are people that see it as an obligation to give back to the public. And that's what I love to do. And it's a challenge. When I ask people to do it, they'll either say one of two things. Like, "Oh, that's really easy. I could do what Neil deGrasse Tyson does. He's not even a real scientist." No, you couldn't. No, you couldn't. I've been on his podcast twice. He's been on mine two or three times. There's no way even I could do what he does. Now, I do other things that he doesn't do, and that's okay.
--:-- Or my colleagues will say that a real scientist doesn't do that. A real scientist doesn't dumb things down or popularize it and write books and do podcasts. But that's also nonsense because a real scientist has to be able to give back to the public who pay his or her salary, or else, guess what? You're not going to have a salary anymore and you're going to be unemployed doing what you love doing but not getting compensated for it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What has been the general feedback that you've gotten from your colleagues as you've gone into this space? Because I have to imagine, when you step out into the public eye, you're under even more scrutiny than you would be if you're just publishing peer-reviewed articles. Obviously there's a lot of scrutiny that goes in there too. But as you expand these thoughts into the world of X and Facebook and Instagram, and now every armchair astrophysicist who watched one YouTube video and now understands what dark matter is has an opinion on your take. How do you navigate that? How do you stay grounded in the work that you're doing when someone is calling something out or positioning an argument against you in which you just intrinsically know is either false or not based in real fact or they can't back it up? How do you stay committed to that mission despite that?
--:-- Brian Keating: Well, first of all, I try to assume that everybody is a human being, not just some avatar with a made up name. But I only have that kind of blissful naivete until they give me a reason not to respect them and believe what they're saying and believe that they're a good faith actor. Unfortunately, that happens way more times than I get positive commentary that we can engage. [Pauses] That we can engage and be respectful and treat each other as colleagues. So when that happens, I'll continue indefinitely.
--:-- However, if you disrespect me, just like if you disrespect me in my face, I can take care of myself. You would never say that to me in my face, be insulting like that, or we will have a problem. And I'm not a traditional academic in that sense. I don't back down from those things. I train and I do all sorts of things. But in my case, I'll treat you with the respect that you don't deserve at first, because you might just be this keyboard warrior out there. But only up until you kind of abuse that trust. And so a lot of times I regret it because I am relatively friendly.
--:-- On the other hand, sometimes I come to change my mind about certain topics that I've been very entrenched in. I'll give you an example. Recently, there have been cutbacks due to the Trump administration, sort of segregating grants that were earmarked to universities like Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, and others, that permitted the existence of these truly anti-Semitic protests and encampments, all in the name of Palestinian representation or grievances and boycotts. And some of them are very violent. We had a violent one here at UC San Diego that only lasted for four or five days. And Harvard and Columbia had months, or UCLA had a five week long encampment, I believe it was.
--:-- One of my colleagues, a math professor at UCLA, wrote this article and posted online. He's one of the smartest humans. He might be the smartest person on Earth, present company excluded. Terry Tao won the Fields Medal, which is like the Nobel Prize of math, even though it's actually harder to win in some ways. But he wrote this article that Trump—I'm an award-winning mathematician, and Trump canceled my funding. And so I went back and forth. I was like, well, he didn't mention the fact that Jews were not allowed to go in certain parts of his... Just imagine being at Rutgers or wherever, Vassar, where you didn't go. And you can't go there, Ryan, because they just don't like you. They don't like white people, let's say. This has happened literally, or they don't like Jews, or they don't like blacks, or gays or trans. They would be booted off campus in a millisecond if it was any other group.
--:-- And I felt like he's not paying attention. He didn't even mention the fact that the UCLA grant was not restricted by Trump punitively because they don't like this mathematician. They did it because UCLA permitted and encouraged in some sense this encampment to go on for weeks and it was very dangerous, hostile, and unpleasant and had no place in academia. I actually testified in Congress last summer about my experiences here and it was a violation of my civil rights and other people's civil rights.
--:-- Anyway, so when I had this debate with some people online like, "Well, are they really canceling his funding? Does he deserve it? How does this work because he was working at a place that was discriminatory and hostile?" So I actually did change my mind in some sense that like, could it be done differently? Could it be done in a more... and I'm very supportive of what Trump has done for the campus climate and culture and standing up against anti-Semitism and any kind of discrimination. So I was very supportive of that, but it caused me to kind of reevaluate, do I really have a true commitment to it? And also help educate him. I met with him on his campus last month, last week rather, and we had a great discussion. I don't think he was aware of how his Jewish colleagues felt. So it was a positive thing.
--:-- And so this is the kind of thing that can only happen thanks to the internet. But because the internet has every vice vector and valor known to humanity, sometimes it's not worth it. And sometimes I regret it and I'm trying to minimize the amount of regret time I spend on all these platforms. In general, I'm trying to reduce how much I spend rather than increase it. But it is addictive, as you know, and it is something that has to be constantly monitored.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So I have a couple thoughts there. I'm going to go backwards. My first thought is I'm constantly torn on screen time because I think there are times when your feed, your social media feed, is a direct reflection on what you give your attention to. So one of the first things I do with anyone that I'm coaching in whatever capacity it is, whether a sales professional or a leader, is I literally have them, if it's a Zoom call, open up their Instagram and scroll their Instagram feed for me in the video. And we get to see firsthand what you give your attention to.
--:-- Now, because I get how to coach baseball because my kid plays baseball and all kinds of baseball stuff. I get Buffalo Bills stuff and I get leadership and motivational shit and crazy.
--:-- Brian Keating: As for Grindr.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: As for Grindr. Yep. Grindr and Tinder and all the Inders that come with being a single. Well, I guess if I'm technically not single today. So sorry, ladies.
--:-- Brian Keating: Wow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's new. It's a new thing. But right now, I can't say that I'm single today, so those ads are getting wasted on me, Instagram. So I know you're listening, so you can stop showing them.
--:-- But my point is, if I take five minutes and I sit down and I get a new drill to do with my kids at baseball practice, I get two cool motivational things getting hyped up and feeling good, and I get a new conspiracy theory on aliens that like to harvest eyelashes in North Jersey, is that really time wasted? I don't know. Again, if I do that for two hours, maybe, but if I come out of it feeling positive with a new drill and some cool small talk conversation around aliens, I think that's time well spent. So I think we have to be very careful with that because I think there's a balance. And I don't like when people are just, and I know this isn't what you're saying, but I hear this advice a lot, just less. I don't think just less. It's more like what you're actually focusing on.
--:-- Brian Keating: Okay.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I want to go into the other issue for a second. Not the details. I completely agree with your opinion. 100%. And taking out, we need to remove in this particular conversation, your feelings on what is physically happening in Israel and Gaza today with what you were discussing, which is what was in reality happening on our college campuses, et cetera. And taking that stand. You have this public platform. You have a voice now where people listen to what you're saying and look to you, myself included, for how does he feel about this particular topic? It may not always be this one, but a topic. If I hear you talk about it, I trust that you have earned the right in my mind that when you say something, I believe you've thought about it.
--:-- Okay, so I want to talk about the changing your mind piece because this is something that I feel like is one of the most missed skills of our thought leaders in general as a very broad stroke term. It's this: once I say a thing, I am locked into this as my identity and I cannot change it. And I see this in the archaeology community right now. If you follow anything that's going on, Graham Hancock is like, kick the fucking hornet's nest. And now you have these people, and again, this is a trite example, but you have these entrenched sides who refuse to even acknowledge that there could possibly be any other option than the option that we've been taught. And honestly, when you take in the data, when you actually do the research, which this ancient civilization is actually probably what I'm the most interested in in terms of potential tinfoil hatchet. But I'm like, you can't deny that we don't know everything. You just can't. You're seeing things, everything's getting old.
--:-- So these people, many of them refuse to change their stance or even acknowledge that there could be another option. So I'm interested in how you approach changing your mind. How, when you are sharing with your audience, "Hey, I had this take for a while. I have now done X amount of research, come across X resources, talked to whoever. And I am now considering that I could have been wrong on this and this could be." How do you approach that in a way that feels like you can get that message across and convey it and have people trust and respect that versus what I think happens sometimes is you just get pounced on for, "Oh, you're a flip-flopper" or "Why didn't you know that from the beginning?" Because I think that's what everyone's worried about. They're so worried about losing that credibility if they change their mind. So being that you're willing to do that, I'm very interested in how you do that and maybe when you've seen that be successful for you and maybe some of the things that you would sidestep if you were telling someone else how to do it.
--:-- Brian Keating: Yeah, so there's a lot there. I would say the most kind of archetypal or stereotypical in a good way reaction of a scientist is surprise. It's not eureka. You know, "I found what I wanted to find." It's like, "Wow, that's weird. That wasn't supposed to be there." Scientists are very good at detecting flaws. I have a saying that flaws lead to new laws. The fact that the orbit of Uranus did not match what was predicted by the laws of Newtonian gravity led to the discovery of a whole new planet. So it was a flaw in our understanding or in the data that led to a new law. Similarly, the flaws in Mercury's orbit led to the revolution of general relativity.
--:-- So I'd like to look for a few things. I'd like to look for what's called epistemic humility. Like, am I saying I know the answers? I've interviewed 22 Nobel Prizes, field medalists, just the top people. And only a couple of them are really arrogant. We'll describe why that is later and why that's necessary at some level, but can be dangerous in too large an amount. But then I've interviewed other people that are just normal scientists or thought leaders. And guess what? Some of them are arrogant, and some of them are very humble. But the people I resonate most with are the people that are humble. If you have somebody who's just got one message and never changes and cannot ever tolerate even dissent and tries to shut it down, then I don't have so much respect for you. Whereas if you're willing, ironically, to say "I'm wrong" or "I know I could be wrong" or admit the possibility about something, especially when it's not even in your field of expertise, then I have more respect for you. Even though naively a child might say, "Why do you respect someone who admits they don't know something?" That's a childlike way of looking at wisdom.
--:-- I'll give you an example. Sam Harris. So I had Sam Harris on. And by the way, Ryan, you're an incredibly accomplished podcaster. When you're on a podcast, forget about me. I'm not looking for compliments. But when you're on a podcast live, like we're talking live right now, it's actually happening. How do you know if you're doing a good job or a bad job? Do you have any cues? I'm curious as a podcaster myself. I have some cues, but how do you know that you're doing a good job? Or if you or the guest is not bringing the heat.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I don't have a... My best, I watch your energy. So I'm watching your body language at all times. So the audience knows, and if you're watching in the YouTube video, I don't look directly into the camera. And the reason I don't look directly into the camera is I'm not the one that I want you to focus on. I want the audience to focus on you, the guest. And so what I do is I look at you and your body language the entire time. And I can tell based on the way your shoulders move, your facial expressions, your head, are you energized? Are you engaged? Are you thinking through? Are you excited for the next fucking question I'm going to ask? Or are you just like, "All right, just let's get through this. Here's my book. Here's what it is. Blah, blah, blah. I've been asked this question 10,000 times. I really don't want to answer it again."
--:-- And I've tried to set my show up in a way to disrupt that. Like I don't have you do the 20 cent tour on your history to start the show. Because my thought is if someone really wants to know, I'm bringing you on because I believe that you're an expert. And if you listen to my show, hopefully you trust me that this guy or gal has value to you as an audience member. And that's why they're here. I don't need to have you waste the first 10 minutes of the show telling me everything you did in your past. That's how I try to get people off and get them going.
--:-- So that's what I do. I purposefully don't look into the camera. I watch you, your body language, and then I adjust my tone, my cadence, and what I do to how I see you responding. I also am a terrible question asker, as you can tell, because I have these huge diatribes in between questions in which everyone who listens to the show, whether positively or negatively, gives me shit about. So that's just the way it is.
--:-- Brian Keating: Well, that's because you like me or you're probably micro dosing autism at some level or ADD.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, let me give you my real time feedback, because I think it's good.
--:-- Brian Keating: First of all, I like your tips and I won't use the one about not looking simply because I spend a lot of money on a teleprompter that allows me to see from Elgato, not sponsored, but I can see you and I can also see the chat. It's really good for Zoom calls, coaching calls. So I would recommend you get these, 200 bucks on Amazon. They're great. Elgato Prompter Pro and you just plug it in. I've got to get my camera, my camera is a nice camera behind there. So I can look at you. I can read stuff like right now, I put some notes, like I want to talk about the acronym FOCUS. So I got that there. So I can look at you and people, humans are mammals and mammals are both predators and prey. So we're kind of always looking at our eyes. Our eyes are unique in that most species don't have the white part that we have, but mammals do. So the white part is a really strong cue of where your attention is devoted. So humans don't trust people as much when they're not looking at each other. Another instantiation of that is the joke: how do you know a scientist is outgoing? He looks at your shoes when he talks to you.
--:-- But the way that I do it is when I am talking to a guest, let's say I'm talking to a big shot like Sam Harris. Setting up Sam Harris involved like two producers, his assistant, whatever, and they said, "Well, he's got one hour." So he's got one hour on this day, and so we did the podcast, and then two hours go by, three hours go by. At that point, I know he's deeply engaged. And it's going to be a good interview for him. Because nobody would say, like, if I have an out, I said, "Ryan, I got to go in 32 minutes." And then 32 minutes comes up and I'm like, "Well, I actually didn't have to go." I'm admitting that I wasn't honest about it, which is ironic for Sam because he has a book about lying and how you should never do it. But he has many flaws as we can get into some other time.
--:-- So we had this great conversation. The other way is when you hear somebody say, "Oh, I've never thought of that before" and they're actually kind of stumped a little bit. Like, "I've never been asked about the business side of my podcast." That's just not something that comes up mostly because I'm an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and so forth. So I'm not asked about my YouTube empire. I'm not at that level of greatness. But those are cues that I use to kind of lean into the fact that I'm doing a good job in real time.
--:-- And it's obvious sometimes when people aren't really good, but sometimes it's hard to tell. If I'm looking down, I might just be like you, Ryan, or I might be really introverted or body dysmorphic or something. I might just not be... So that's why I would caution you against judging the body language rather than other real time feedback. Cause we all think we're great rock on tours and question askers. So anyway, those are my humble tips.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I think that's great. And actually I will tell you, I am in the process. I'm going to look into this. I'm in the process of getting the setup so I can look through. I don't have it. That's why I do the "don't look at them" thing today. Cause what I found is if I use the camera right above the screen, it looks weird. So I am actually in the process of getting what you described. Cause I agree with that.
--:-- But I think I love your point about listening to the feedback. And that idea of like, I'm always trying to find... It's one of the reasons I don't do a ton of prep. I do enough prep to understand what the person is trying to go. But basically, how I describe it to people is like, I'm starting here and I want to end here. And what happens in here? I have no fucking clue what happens in the middle. And the reason is because what if I'm pre-planned and I'm just question, question, question, question? Okay. But what if I ask you a question and man, I just see the fire in your eye. You're like that, for whatever reason, that topic's got you jacked up today. You just read a report or one of your students just came up and asked you this question that kind of stumped you a little. Now you're pissed. You're trying to figure it out. You're talking to me, but some portion of your brain is, and that's what you really want to talk about. Well, shit, I want to hear about that. I don't care what we came here to talk about. I want to know what you're fired up about.
--:-- So I'm always trying to figure out what is this particular person fired up about today? What are they interested in? And one of the reasons I wanted to know about the... And I've also done this enough times. I'm at like a thousand interviews, not on this particular podcast. That's a story for another day. I have a former podcast story that would make you sick. I was 11th in the world at one point in podcasting in 2014. I have a screenshot. Ed Milet's two ahead of me, Gary V's two behind me, and I'm number 11 in the entire world, not just US. I was doing the show, doing very well. Thank you to everyone that listens. I love you so much. Thank you. Come back. Subscribe. Tell your friends. Subscribe to Brian's show.
--:-- But at this point in 2014, 53 downloads a month was number 11 in the world. And then I got a job that paid me more than I had ever made in my life, more than four times what my parents had ever made in a single year combined. And I took that job. And three months in, they told me I had to shut the podcast down. And I did, like an idiot.
--:-- But my point in saying all that is where I wanted to go was I wanted to know the nerdy shit. But then I wanted to transition into your business because I was interested. But ultimately, I wanted to get to your book. And to me, the easiest transition from the nerdy physics shit to the book was through your business of coming out. Because where I really wanted to go with questions about the book, my leading question to your current book was you wrote *Losing the Nobel Prize*, right? All about losing the Nobel Prize. I can't imagine that there has been another human who's lost the Nobel Prize who then decided, "I'm going to go tell the world that I lost the Nobel." I mean, I just think one, it speaks to your character. I think it's just incredibly interesting that you would take that on. There's a lot of ways that you could go with that. And you decided to say, "Hey, here's what we did. Amazing. Here's what we would have done. Here's where I think maybe we could have gotten more." It's awesome. It's phenomenal. And now you've turned that into a brand inside of your larger brand.
--:-- And now we're talking about FOCUS and this idea that has captivated me about your book and where I want to finish our time together today is in particular the section around the physics of focus. Because for me, being diagnosed ADHD, I got another diagnosis that was hyperactive bipolar. Basically, the doctor said there are portions of your brain spinning at 10,000 rotations a second, and there are portions of your brain spinning at 10 rotations a second, and take some Adderall and you'll feel better. So it was essentially what they said. I have toyed with the Adderall. I don't particularly like it. I've had to find other ways, because I think you lose your creativity. As much as, just so you know guys, it works really, really well. Especially if you snort it. No, I don't recommend that. But I have found I've lost, when I tried to use that as a tool, I lost my creativity, which I didn't like. So I would love for you to dive in. Why focus? Like, why focus as a topic in general? What is it about that? And let's, what are the physics of focus?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Like, how does this work? How do we—because to me, and this is the last contextual thing I'll say, but my brain is firing on all cylinders right now. I have this saying that I tell people all the time: what you focus on is who you become. It's a derivative of way smarter people who have said very similar things. But I firmly believe that. I believe that focus is the key to all success in everything—in our relationships, in how we parent, in how we interact with friends, in the work we do. Focus. The ability to turn it on when necessary and extend it as far as you can.
--:-- So I hadn't even considered that there could be physics of focus. I don't know if we're talking actual particles in some regard. But dive into this for me because I think it's going pretty well. This is a question I have not been asked.
--:-- Brian Keating: Yeah. Even by eminent podcasters like James Altucher yesterday.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: By the way, I cut out of getting my tattoo done to come over to do this. So guys, if you're not on the YouTube channel, I have cellophane on my arm. From 8:30 to noon, I was getting a tattoo done. Then I came over to do the podcast, and I'm going to drive back over and get the second half done after the show. And it says "No Regrets."
--:-- Brian Keating: That's amazing, Ryan. Thank you. I've had people hang up on other people. I've had Nobel Prize winners cancel other appointments to be on a podcast with me. I've never had someone interrupt a tattoo to do a podcast. Thank you, my brother.
--:-- Okay, so listen. Focus to me is an acronym. It stands for the following. It's like MAGA. Why is MAGA so resonant? Why does it mean so much good and bad? There's no such thing as bad publicity. I don't know your audience—are they right or left? I don't really care. The point is MAGA is a brilliant marketing gimmick. It stands for Make America Great Again. It combines an action word—make, do something, don't just be idle—with America, a concept that stirs emotions of patriotism. Great. Again, a throwback, but looking forward. It's inevitable.
--:-- I followed that kind of logic in terms of marketing. Focus to me is an acronym: Follow One Course Until Successful. Follow—you need to have perspective that you are not the only thing on God's green earth. You are one of many. You're going to take one path. ADHD people—and I know many of them in science, some of the most successful people I know—their problem is shiny object syndrome. They follow many courses. Some are very successful. I have no doubt you could have gotten the tattoo right now, your artist inking you up, and you could be getting some bizarre fetishistic thrill. You're doing two of your favorite things: talking to me and getting a tat. One, not many. Not multitask. I know you can multitask, but we all think we're better at it than we actually are, as all the research proves.
--:-- Course is a pathway, a trajectory. If you set out to go to the moon and you didn't have any idea which way to go, people say, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll be among the stars." That's horrible advice. The stars are vast, cold, deadly, and rapaciously violent. You don't want to be in the stars. You'll be dead in a few minutes. You need a course that gets you to the moon so you can be nice and safe there. A course is a set of zero-dimensional points that lead along a pathway. You like to explore different things—that's great—but you have to choose at least one thing. We're not going to talk about how I am as a dad or what my wife thinks about the anniversary card I got her. You're going to focus on one course until—inevitably, it's going to happen, Ryan—you achieve success.
--:-- Success is the goal, but you have to be ruthlessly, voraciously protective of your one Nobel research, which is your time and your attention. The laureates I talk about—what is the Nobel Prize? It's the highest level of accolade in the world. These people are way beyond intelligent. They enter a new atmosphere, a new realm. Some are like Olympic athletes. Some are brilliant in many fields, from the Nobel Peace Prize to economics to physics and chemistry. These people have incredible depth. They succeeded despite their breadth because of their depth. In almost every case, they made an intentional choice to cut out distractions and go deep on one thing.
--:-- I like the magnifying glass. We both did it. Don't deny that you did it. You took a magnifying glass out there in Jersey, shined it on some ants, and wanted to see what happened. Let's say they didn't die—they lived. Or an army man. Did you ever do that with your army man?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I did it with all kinds of stuff.
--:-- Brian Keating: Well, let's not get into the federal crimes you committed as a kid. But the ADD, ADHD—there are people in here I undoubtedly know are on the spectrum. They're very deep on it in some cases. But they all had these tools. The tools are the superstructure, what James Clear would call the atomic habits. Literally, they're atomic scientists. They're building up from small things because you're going to fall to the level of your habits. You're going to relax to that.
--:-- So what do they do? They do time boxing. Nir Eyal wrote one of the blurbs, in addition to Ali Abdaal, Cal Newport, and Sahil Bloom. I got all these blurbs from productivity experts. This is a productivity book, whether you're a scientist, a lawyer, or a car salesman. I don't care what you are, because these tools will be useful, especially to people with ADHD. They give you a framework that the greatest minds in human history—people that far exceed the Oscars, the Olympics, or the World Series—have used to do the almost impossible. They lean into their schedules, their boxing of their time, and even things you wouldn't think would allow you to concentrate your attention, like working with other people. Some people that takes energy and drains them; others, extroverts, like it. But you need some amount of collaborative nature because no one gets a Nobel Prize alone. No one person wins the World Series. Yes, you can win an Olympic gold or an Oscar, but those aren't really the kind of legacy for the ages. I don't know half the people who won a single gold medal in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. I can't remember a single one. But I know every single Nobel Prize winner in this field.
--:-- Don't chase the shiny objects. You can't start a fire. You can't melt the army man or that fire ant coming after you. You can't do it unless you use the magnifying glass pointed in exactly the right way to choose your lane. This is something James Altucher disagreed with me about. We went back and forth. I think he convinced me a little bit that sometimes you do want to go into a different lane, but focus on what you're trying to do because you don't have enough time to master your own discipline, let alone be a master of every single discipline.
--:-- The last thing is that the book is a guidebook to reclaim your attention so that you can do the greatest good for the people around you, your family, and accumulate the influence, power, and responsibility that you have and that you're capable of.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I love that. I want to hit you with one thought as we close our time together. I've been a big advocate for people with ADHD and neurodiversity in general ever since I got diagnosed, because for so long it was used against me. "You're too much. You move too fast. You make decisions too quick." I've always said that harnessed properly—and I love the focus framework—harnessed properly, this is a superpower. People would say, "Describe that to me," and I didn't always have a great way to describe it. I would say things like, one of the things about people with hyperactivity as a neurodiversity is they don't see chaos. Chaos doesn't bother them. When the world is most chaotic, they can often be the most calm and composed. It's a very weird thing, and I didn't have a good way of describing it until I saw the movie *Dune 2*.
--:-- I had forgotten this part in the book. Paul Atreides takes the poison, and he's sitting there having this vision, speaking to his mother. He says, "Our enemies are all around us. There are infinite paths where we fail, but there's one path that I can see that takes us to the promised land." To me, those who harness the ability to focus see and follow the one path. When you have a million paths, when you're going in all these different directions, you don't know which one ends in failure or destruction. But when you can stay focused, stay consistent, and believe in the "until" part—the commitment to until—you can see that path through destruction to the other side.
--:-- I said, "That's the good version." The bad version is I'm thinking about aliens, superpowers, dark matter, math, what question I'm going to ask next, what I want for lunch. That's the other side of it. But the ability to turn that on—and this is why I'm so excited about your book and why I want to get it in the hands of as many of my audience members as I possibly can. Guys, I'll have links. Scroll down whether you're listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube, listening wherever you are. I'll have links to all of Brian's stuff. If you can turn this power on, regardless of your neurodiversity or not, it is an unlock to basically anything you want in your life.
--:-- Brian Keating: That's right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It doesn't mean you can have everything, but anything. If you can unlock this—and this is what I tell people—you can't do this by accident. It takes an intentional framework, whether it's the focus framework you're teaching or some other framework someone has. You need that structure, or you will not be able to get there.
--:-- Brian Keating: That's right. All these people—we have a tendency to hero worship as human beings. It's a natural tribal thing that probably goes back to caveman origins. I talked to a group of high school kids a week or two ago, and I said, "People worship different things in different fields." A podcaster might worship Joe Rogan or Ryan Hanley. They might worship a sports hero like Manny Machado here in San Diego. But the fact is that these people are ordinary people at heart. No one is a Nobel Prize-winning, World Series champion who also has a thriving Pinterest and Etsy influencer status. You have to choose. It's inevitable you're going to choose, but you should choose. It shouldn't be the universe choosing for you, or worse, randomly, just like how you got into things.
--:-- In science, it's unlike business. If Apple doesn't sell you an iPhone, you're probably going to get one from Samsung or an Android phone. That's a zero-sum game. But science is what's called an infinite game. There is no winning. I can't win science. Even if you win the Nobel Prize, nobody cares on Jupiter if there are people there. You didn't win it because you just specialized in one field. It's incredible competition. But as many of these people say, they are relay racers in this infinite chain—a race that goes back to prehistoric times when the first person came out of a cave and said, "What are those dots in the night? Where do they come from? Where do I come from?"
--:-- You're in this relay race. You get the baton for a very short amount of time—after college and graduate school, in my case, up until retirement, a decade or so for me. You run your leg, but your job is to pass it on. So be a hero to other people. Be in awe of people who came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable opponent. Mother Nature is undefeated. We're never going to know everything. That can be applied in any field, as long as you don't go out of your lane and try to do everything to all people at all times.
--:-- In the book, I also talk about how you can't be immune to your own needs. I give tips on drinking alcohol, coffee, sleep—all these practical things you never hear about when you're a student. You never learn about it. When you went to college, you had no idea what professors do. What's their job? Who pays them? What do they do in their off time? I want to demystify it for anyone in college or going to college who is interested in science. We're at the threshold of this incredible new era of discoveries—AI, quantum computing, all the rest. Take advantage of it, but do your best to concentrate on what you uniquely can bring to the table.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, love you. Huge fan. Appreciate the hell out of you and your time. I know you're a busy guy. It means a lot to me. Guys, like I said, I'll have links to everything Brian's doing, including the book. I highly recommend the book. Go down the chain. Hit Amazon. Most likely it'll be like "People who bought this one also bought volume one." Buy them all. Get all the way down the chain.
--:-- Brian Keating: Yeah, go right down. You need to get one of those box sets like they have for *Game of Thrones* where you get all the Keating books in one.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Or the other Ryan—Ryan Holiday, the other Ryan H that I know. Well, man, hey, I wish you nothing but the best. I look forward to next time we get to chat. This is great. Thanks, brother. Congrats on your success too, my friend. Appreciate you.
