Physical Attraction

In which I post cringe (unrelated prose and poetry) and lose subscriber to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of this show going on the air.

In this episode, we discuss the progress that has been made towards directly detecting Dark Matter in the form of WIMPs, and the recent anomalies observed at the Xenon1T experiment. Enjoy!

In this slightly news-y episode, we pick up on last week's episode and talk about progress that governments have made in enacting green economic stimulus to follow the coronavirus, as well as the negative redistributive and climate impacts of quantiative easing.

I explore the possible impact that the COVID-19 pandemic will have on our efforts to deal with climate change.

Hey! This is a preview of something new that we're trying out - the Physical Attraction Book Club. We'll be discussing books at a semi-regular intervals on the Patreon, which you can find here: https://www.patreon.com/physicalattraction This is a preview to tease you all into being tantalised enough to subscribe. If you do subscribe (for $3 per bonus episode) then not only will you support the show and independent podcasters more generally, but you will also get access to the rest of this episode and the rest of the bonus episodes that are unlocked. The book is The Attention Merchants, by Tim Wu - a comprehensive history of how advertising has shaped our world and our culture, from the 1800s to 2018.

The first of two episodes on climate change and the coronavirus - parallels, similarities, and differences - in which we consider some of the similarities between "climate skeptics" and "COVID skeptics". Also, listener mail.

Well, the manifestation of a global catastrophic risk means that it's time for us to bring back the very first guest on this show, from back in 2017. Phil Torres is a scholar of existential risks - you can find him on Twitter @xriskology and his website at xriskology.com, and we are delighted to ask him back to the show to discuss the field of existential risks in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. In the second part of our interview, we discuss the field of existential risks more generally, Phil's recent work, and ramble about the concerns surrounding the utilitarian foundation of the philosophy.

Episode first aired in Feb 2018 which deals with cognitive biases surrounding how we conceive of the end-times. Sadly relevant today. Why are we so fascinated with the end of the world? How do we think about it? How do cognitive biases impact how we conceive of it? How can we account for existential risks to humanity? What is millenial thinking, and why do we fall into it?

Well, the manifestation of a global catastrophic risk means that it's time for us to bring back the very first guest on this show, from back in 2017. Phil Torres is a scholar of existential risks - you can find him on Twitter @xriskology and his website at xriskology.com, and we are delighted to ask him back to the show to discuss the field of existential risks in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

This week, we have a guest on the show - Kit Yates, who is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath, and who's written an excellent book "The Maths of Life and Death" on various applications of maths in biology, from epidemics to exponential growth. He's been interviewed extensively in the media lately to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, and we talked about that and the rest of his work, as well as the book, in this interview. Remember you can find Kit's work at kityates.com and you can find us as physicspodcast.com, contact form, twitter, patreon, tell others, rate and review, etc.