Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Physical Attraction


New? Head to the episode guide or drop us a line with the contact form.

We are a physics podcast. But not just that - interviews with scientists, scholars, authors and reflections on the history and future of science and technology are all in the wheelhouse. Over the years, for over 200 episodes, we've had shows on the astrophysics of stars, a comprehensive history of nuclear fusion, thermodynamics, particle physics, climate change, economics, philosophy, the psychology of conspiracy theories, and even the lives of Louisiana Senator Huey Long, or scientists under Stalin in the Soviet Union. 

We are an independent show: everything you hear is created by one person out of passion and love. My aim in producing this show is never to talk down to people, but instead to discuss fascinating and vital subjects with scientific rigour, compassion, and an eye for narrative: to educate, inform, and entertain. I hope that you, the listener, will find something you like here. 

You can read about us here, which includes a comprehensive episode guide for new listeners covering all of the shows that we've done, as well as links to transcripts of many of the episodes.  

You can contact us here - everything goes through to my email and I try to answer each one. Your comments and questions help me to improve the show and also motivate me to carry on, so I highly appreciate reading anything you feel like sending. 

If you like what we do and want to help us keep doing it, you can donate here. I am extremely grateful for those of you who have done so. 

You can also subscribe to the Physical Attraction: Extra! Feed over at Patreon: www.patreon.com/PhysicalAttraction - where for a small fee per bonus episode, you can help to support the show, and get some juicy bonus content too. The Patreon includes unique bonus episodes that stand alone, or alongside our existing series. But you will also get episodes as soon as I finish producing them, which is often months in advance: so, if you can't wait for your fix, that's where to go. 

We had a sister podcast, Autocracy Now, which deals with the lives of famous historical dictators. You can find some of their episodes on our feed, or the show itself at www.autocracynow.libsyn.com 

Feb 7, 2019

You can get too caught up in praising the beauty of science and conflating that with praising the individual. I think we should recognise and appreciate brilliance, but stop short of hero-worship. It’s reductive. It diminishes people. It removes important parts of who they were. It can, in its worst excesses, be downright dangerous.

Nevertheless, that’s not a problem I have today, even though I’m going to tell this story partly biographically. Because Edward Teller, for all his brilliance in physics, is not the kind of person you’d want to worship as a hero. Yet it’s Teller, for good or ill, rightly or wrongly, who is most associated with the first successful large-scale harnessing of the power of fusion by human beings: the hydrogen bomb.

If you’ve ever seen the film Dr Strangelove, or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb”, you’ll know something of the popular perception of Teller. If you haven’t, you should immediately find a copy and watch it. From the moment that Teller was brought onto the Manhattan project, he was pushing for it to expand – not just to create a bomb that would harness the power of nuclear fission, but a fusion bomb. A hydrogen bomb, that would – according to theoretical calculations – be thousands of times more powerful. It would begin a long career in physics and the military that would see Teller consistently and endlessly advocate for more and more powerful weapons – total nuclear supremacy over the Soviet Union. It was an obsessive quest that led some of his oldest friends and colleagues to turn on him, in the end. The physicist Isidore Rabi later said: “He is a danger to all that is important. I do really feel it would have been a better world without Teller.”

 

 


Physical Attraction is the podcast about physics, science, and technology. You can find further details about the show at www.physicspodcast.com - where you'll find the contact form, for any comments, questions, or concerns you may have. [I'm very good at responding to stuff that isn't spam.] 

You can also donate to the show via www.paypal.me/physicspodcast and you can subscribe to our Patreon via www.patreon.com/PhysicalAttraction . Both will give you the opportunity to purchase our past bonus episodes for a nominal donation! 

The best way you can support the show, though, is to tell as many people about it as you possibly can. 

You can engage with us on social media - Twitter @physicspod and Facebook, Physical Attraction. 

Until next time, take care.