PRESS PLAY
Physical Attraction is the show that explores topics in science, technology, and the future - from a physicist's perspective. From the birth of stars to the end of the world, from interviews with experts to meticulously-researched deep dives, we'll explore the topics that shape our world.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Physical Attraction makes climate models and technology claims easier to judge by tracing the assumptions, tradeoffs and numbers beneath them.
Physical Attraction follows climate questions into the models, technologies and economic assumptions that shape real decisions. The host moves between focused interviews and analytical solo episodes, treating emissions as something to measure and explain rather than a backdrop…
Refrigerants outrank electric cars in one climate tally; your favorite fix may need a recount.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded climate-ranking discussion that uses refrigerants and electric cars to test how assumptions shape impact.
Project Drawdown's climate logic gets a clear, practical workout as refrigerant gases and electric cars are placed on the same scale. The episode first grounds the stakes in refrigerants: better management and alternatives could avoid around 100 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by…
Steve Keen uses complexity, physics, and financial crises to challenge neoclassical economics.
Physical Attraction gives Professor Steve Keen's critique of neoclassical economics a focused, intellectually serious frame. He links the discipline's handling of climate change to a wider case for complexity, using the gap between a single H2O molecule and water, ice, or steam…
A grounded ranking of climate solutions, with wind and solar measured against the costs and infrastructure behind their promise.
Climate 201 frames climate action as a question of scale, cost, and avoided emissions. Physical Attraction is clearest when it compares onshore wind turbines and large-scale solar photovoltaics, using Drawdown's estimates to show how much CO2 equivalent wind could avoid and how…
A clear, technocratic guide to the forces behind CO2 emissions, from the UK's decline to the harder global pattern.
Climate 201 frames the rise in CO2 emissions as an accounting problem rather than a slogan. It moves from early human activity to the much larger 2017 total, then sets that change against population growth and GDP.
A grounded look at how tech workers and companies can press for climate action amid real organizational friction.
Climate Conversations puts the tech sector's climate promises under useful pressure, with Paul Johnston drawing on cloud-computing experience and more than five years as a director of a community energy company in Milton Keynes.
A sharp, concrete critique of climate economics.
The episode treats Steve Keen as a long running critic of neoclassical economics and uses that lens to press on climate change modeling. It works best when it stays concrete: smooth damage functions, the claim that most of the economy is untouched, Florida versus North Dakota,…
Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser build single reported stories around one scientific question.
Flora Lichtman interviews scientists, from gut-health researchers to Queen's Brian May.
Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.
Long interviews with neuroscientists and philosophers on consciousness, decision-making, and whether AI is anything like a brain.
Bob McDonald anchors weekly multi-segment interviews on new research, from cricket courtship to moon missions.
APA's Kim Mills interviews psychology researchers on tipping, crying, and extremism.
This episode explores the discovery and significance of graphene and 2D materials, starting from their isolation in 2004 by Professors Geim and Novoselov using simple methods like sticky tape.
This episode features an interview with economist Rodrigo Aguilera about his book The Glass Half Empty, which critiques the myth of progress in the 21st century.
Professor Steve Keen critiques neoclassical economics' handling of climate change, exposing flawed assumptions in models by Nordhaus and others.
The episode compares refrigeration policy to climate leverage and says 0.4°C matters for Paris.
"The theory is in a shambles," Steve Keen says after William Sharpe's assumption of "complete agreement on asset returns."
A New York Declaration goal of 350 million hectares met only 27 million by 2020.
The Kaya identity breaks CO2 into carbon intensity, energy intensity, GDP per person, and population.
Paul Johnston says the cloud’s CO2 emissions are “in the same ballpark as aviation,” and most tech workers can’t see the link.