The mechanism of collapsing stars falls short of explaining the existence of supermassive black holes—giants that weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. Astrophysicist Priya Natarajan proposes an alternative: these colossal black holes may form directly from the collapse of swirling galactic dust and gas. She joins Brian Greene to explore this process and discuss the latest observational evidence supporting it. This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Participant: Priya Natarajan Moderator: Brian Greene 00:00 - Introduction 02:39 - History of the concept of black holes 06:30 - Formula of the event horizon 07:43 - Visualization of a black hole 08:40 - Chandrasekhar's contribution of black hole knowledge 10:06 - Einstein and the limits of our understanding of black holes 11:50 - Oppenheimer and Snyder's work theorizing how a black hole would form 13:32 - Penrose's work on gravitational collapse and the space-time ...