Latest Physicspodcast Podcast Episodes
Climate 201: Climate Doomism (II)
Physical Attraction - March 09, 2022 08:47 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn the last episode, we briefly introduced "climate change doomers" and some of their misleading claims. In this episode, I talk about despair, and why we cannot give in to it.
Climate 201: Climate Doomism (I)
Physical Attraction - February 21, 2022 17:45 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsWe're going there. In this episode, I discuss why civilization is not going to imminently collapse due to climate change, explain why doomism is a new form of denialism, and debunk some of its most misleading claims.
UNLOCKED: Book Club: Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants
Physical Attraction - February 08, 2022 07:17 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsA new episode released from behind the Patreon paywall. This episode, we'll review and discuss some of the issues raised by Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants, a book that details the history of the advertising industry.
Climate 201 NETS XI: Direct Air Capture, p2 and NETS conclusion
Physical Attraction - January 24, 2022 22:25 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we will continue our analysis of Direct Air Capture and conclude the series on negative emissions - crucial component of decarbonisation, or a techno-utopian distraction from the real problems we face? [Don't expect an actual answer]
Climate 201 NETS X: Direct Air Capture, part 1
Physical Attraction - January 10, 2022 22:53 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsDirect Air Capture - machines that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Could this be the solution to a scaleable negative emissions industry? We'll discuss the pros and cons of the technology in this episode.
BONUS: Black Mirror IRL pilot - Be Right Back
Physical Attraction - December 28, 2021 01:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsHi all! This is a slightly special bonus episode. Some years ago I had plans for another series "Black Mirror IRL", which was going to be a series of episodes looking into the technologies mentioned and featured in the Netflix Series Black Mirror. Is anyone working on these technologies in ...
Climate 201: NETS VII: Ecosystem Restoration and Mangroves
Physical Attraction - December 19, 2021 00:34 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsWhat are "nature-based solutions" to climate change? Can we restore the ecosystems that we've destroyed? And how can restoring mangroves help us to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere?
Climate 201, NETS IX: Ocean Iron Fertilization
Physical Attraction - November 29, 2021 14:50 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratings"Give me a tanker full of iron, and I'll give you a new Ice Age." It might sound like something Hank Scorpio would say, but this episode will deal with the very real idea of stimulating plankton blooms to remove CO2 from the atmosphere - ocean iron fertilization.
Climate 201: NETS VIII: Enhanced Weathering
Physical Attraction - November 16, 2021 09:16 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsHow could grinding up rocks and sprinkling the dust over vast areas help to combat climate change? In this episode, we deal with "enhanced weathering" as a potential source of negative emissions.
Climate201 NETS VI: Planting Trees and Afforestation
Physical Attraction - November 01, 2021 21:39 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsMention carbon capture, and the refrain you'll often hear is "why invent a machine that captures CO2? We already have one - it's called a tree." But is large-scale afforestation as a negative emissions solution so simple? We dig into its potential in this episode of our series on negative emissi...
Climate 201: NETS V: Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage
Physical Attraction - October 18, 2021 18:43 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsN/B: Owing to a ridiculously hectic schedule until the end of the year, episodes will continue to be released on a fortnightly basis until further notice - thanks for understanding. We hear an awful lot about carbon capture, utilisation, and storage as a technology that could help to mitigat...
Climate 201: Negative Emissions IV: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)
Physical Attraction - October 04, 2021 21:18 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we get into some of the specific technologies that might be called upon to deliver negative emissions at scale. Specifically, we're looking at the advantages, disadvantages, and concerns surrounding BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage.)
Climate 201, Negative Emissions III: Technological Promises, or Prevarications
Physical Attraction - September 21, 2021 12:37 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we discuss whether the promises that some new technology - like negative emissions - will come along and "solve climate change" for us are genuine, or if they have instead shaped climate policy into prevarication and procrastination.
Climate 201: Negative Emissions (II): We'll Always Have Paris?
Physical Attraction - September 13, 2021 12:22 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIncreasing levels of negative emissions are envisioned by models in climate-change scenarios that are compatible with the Paris Agreements. In this episode, we talk about some of the geopolitical implications for trying to deliver this, and the alternative futures that we can envision. Do "thinl...
Climate 201: Negative Emissions I: The Last Thing We Should Be Talking About?
Physical Attraction - September 06, 2021 17:20 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsNegative emissions technologies (NETs), also called carbon dioxide removal (CDR), are seen by many as an increasingly essential part of climate change mitigation. Many of the scenarios that the IPCC suggests for meeting the Paris Agreement goals suggest that we will suck billions of tonnes of CO...
Book Club: Jason Hickel's The Divide, Part II
Physical Attraction - August 30, 2021 20:37 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsThe book club returns, with a two-part review and overview of anthropologist Jason Hickel's book "The Divide", about global inequality, its historical origins, and possible solutions in the future.
Book Club: Jason Hickel's The Divide, Part I: The Origins of Global Inequality
Physical Attraction - August 24, 2021 07:54 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsThe book club returns, with a two-part review and overview of anthropologist Jason Hickel's book "The Divide", about global inequality, its historical origins, and possible solutions in the future.
Cosmology, VII: Cosmological Contradictions
Physical Attraction - August 16, 2021 21:02 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we discuss the ongoing battle throughout the 1930s and 1940s between those who believed in a steady-state Universe, and those who thought it was expanding - and how it took more observations to overcome these cosmological contradictions.
TT: Climate, CCS Struggles as Adaptation Stalls
Physical Attraction - August 07, 2021 10:25 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsTo close out this series of news episodes, we discuss the depressing failure of carbon capture and storage projects in Australia, as well as the far-too-slow approach to climate change adaptation across the world.
Thermonuclear Takes: Amazon Carbon Stocks and Global Green Recovery Progress Update
Physical Attraction - August 03, 2021 08:05 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode of Thermonuclear Takes, we tackle a couple of recent climate-related news stories - the "tipping point" carbon flux measurements from the Amazon rainforest, and the IEA's progress report on a global green recovery.
Thermonuclear Takes: The Little Robot That Couldn't
Physical Attraction - July 30, 2021 17:59 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsUpdates on the Softbank Vision Fund and the sad fate of Pepper the robot.
Thermonuclear Takes: Muon Madness Melting Models... Maybe?
Physical Attraction - July 26, 2021 22:04 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this news episode, I discuss recent anomalies around the muon - B-particles decaying into muons, and the muon's anomalous magnetic moment - and whether they herald the glorious dawn of a new era of physics, or are just a mistake.
Thermonuclear Takes: Show updates, cosmology feedback, particle physics
Physical Attraction - July 23, 2021 19:33 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this news-y episode, I will give you some updates on how the show is progressing, share some listener emails on our cosmology series, and set up next episode's discussion of some recent results in high-energy physics.
Cosmology VI: Cosmic Eggs and the Edge of the Universe
Physical Attraction - July 20, 2021 15:16 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we cover the different kinds of universal horizon, whether the Universe has an edge, and talk about how theoretical physicists pondered how it all might've began.
Cosmology, Episode V: Einstein's Mistake
Physical Attraction - July 13, 2021 17:38 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsAt the dawn of theoretical cosmology, Einstein introduced the so-called "Cosmological Constant" into his equations to explain how the Universe could be static and unchanging in time. He would later say that it was his greatest mistake.
Cosmology IV: Einstein's Cosmos
Physical Attraction - July 06, 2021 07:32 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn this episode, we look at how Einstein's theory of general relativity gave rise to a theoretical framework for examining cosmology - the evolution of space, time, and the Universe in general - as a whole.
Cosmology III: Hubble's Law
Physical Attraction - June 29, 2021 05:43 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsIn 1929, Edwin Hubble published his findings. The redshifts from distant galaxies were proportional to their distance away from us. Theoretical cosmologists would pounce on them as evidence that the Universe must be expanding.
Cosmology II: Starting From Nothing
Physical Attraction - June 21, 2021 21:55 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsEverything we have been able to infer about the Universe began in total ignorance. Many early theories about how the Universe was structured were wildly incorrect - but astronomers were building up the toolkits that would later allow us to understand.
Cosmology, Episode I: In The Beginning
Physical Attraction - June 15, 2021 07:59 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsWhen you're trying to narrate the history of the entire Universe, where do you begin? I decided to start in a radio studio in London in March 1949, when the term "Big Bang" was first coined, in the first on our series on cosmology.
Climate 201: Discourses of Climate Delay II
Physical Attraction - June 07, 2021 21:59 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 75 ratingsArguments surrounding climate change have become subtler. Outright denial is gradually shifting to rhetoric that supports delaying urgent action. In this review of a paper by Steinberger, Lamb et al, I run down the new "discourses of climate delay".
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