Physical Attraction

We explore what is meant by a "carbon budget", how and why we can determine how much CO2 is left to emit before we cross a given temperature threshold, as well as disputes in how to define these budgets and use them politically... and why the world isn't going to end in twelve years.

In this episode, we explore the tantalising - but maybe impossible - dream of blanketing the world's deserts in solar panels to supply all of our energy needs.

In this Climate 201 episode, we introduce the different greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, analyse how their different lifetimes and ability to absorb radiation and warm the planet work, and discuss different ways of comparing their effects.

To close our series on Softbank's Vision Fund, I interviewed tech journalist and scholar Edward Ongweso Jr. of "This Machine Kills" podcast about Softbank, the corrosive nature of VC on the tech sector and our society, and the Vision that Masoyoshi Son really dreams of... along with whether it will all fall apart, and how we can build a society that uses technological innovations in a less destructive way.

Over the course of this series, we've described how Softbank's $100bn Vision Fund promised to invest in the future and failed to deliver. In this episode, we ask: why should we care? We discuss the wider landscape of technology and innovation, and question why it can't deliver the things we really need.

In this episode of our series on Softbank's Vision Fund, we talk about how their investment in fintech company Greensill Capital is potentially part of a series of investments that might create conditions for a new financial crisis, much like that seen in 2008-9.

In this episode, we talk about why the stock market is increasingly divorced from economic reality, and the fact that COVID-19 is proving to be a great accelerator rather than a great leveller - accelerating the trends towards income and wealth inequality that we have seen over the last 30-40 years, as well as internationally. We also discuss where the show is going in the future, and respond to listener emails.

We go further into Softbank's investments, including the $2bn-valued company that promised to develop an army of robots to cook and deliver pizzas and ended up just creating a round pizza box.

In this episode, we discuss the leaked FinCEN files - which illustrate trillions of dollars in suspicious financial flows - as well as Nikola, the wannabe Tesla whose "hydrogen truck" was actually just rolling down a gentle slope.

Very excited to say we have a special guest on the show today. Tom Collina has had a long and storied career in nuclear disarmament for many years, in the Director of Policy at the Plougshares Fund, a non-profit foundation dedicated to trying to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons. With former Secretary of Defence Bill Perry, he has just written a book called "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman To Trump", which is about the past, present, and future of nuclear weapons. This is an area long-term listeners will remember from our TEOTWAWKI series, and the interviews with Martin Pfeiffer and Stephen Schwartz.

If you're interested in this, there are plenty of things you can do. Ploughshares has their own podcast on nuclear issues, Press The Button, which Tom co-hosts, as does Bill Perry, "At The Brink", which both discuss incidents from nuclear history and nuclear policy in more detail. You can of course obtain the book The Button - there's also a great audiobook which I can personally attest is well-done. There's so much fascinating nuclear history and details of policy in there which we didn't have time to get to in this interview, so it's well worth your while to pick that book up. You can follow Tom Collina @TomCollina on Twitter, and you can get involved with the Ploughshares Foundation as well.

There are plenty of ways to stay engaged with these issues, but ultimately I think it is a question of demanding the simple changes that need to take place to make us all safer. We don't need ICBMs, we don't need first strike authority, and we don't need launch on warning: the world would be vastly better off without these things, and you could still easily have a nuclear deterrent that would be capable of retaliation.

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