Hot. It’s just hot.
Europe is burning up right now. So are parts of the UK. We are looking at extreme weather warnings again. The question isn’t whether the sun is shining. It’s what we do about it when the thermometer breaks.
We can sweat it out. Or we can try to break the system itself.
Solar geoengineering. The name sounds cold for something this hot. It involves deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s energy budget. Usually by spraying aerosols into the stratosphere. A shade for the planet. It sounds crazy. It sounds tempting.
We are battling extreme weather, and extreme tactics might be the only thing that stops the spiral.
Mark Maslin, a Professor of Earth System Science at UCL, joins Tom Whipple to dig into this. He isn’t just waving hands at the clouds. He looks at the Earth system. He asks if we can tweak the knobs. Should we. Who gets to turn them. The risks are massive. The stakes are higher. We are playing god with a very volatile machine.
It’s not just about the weather though. Humans are complicated.
Lizzie Gibney is on the show too. She talks about the “Salah effect.” Mo Salah. The footballer. He’s Egyptian. He plays in London. People watch him. They cheer. Studies suggest exposure to celebrities from stigmatized groups can boost tolerance. It works. Somehow. You root for a guy who looks nothing like you. Suddenly he’s yours. Is that progress. Maybe.
Then she flips the script completely. Time.
We measure it with clocks. Atoms do the work. But Gibney points to new research. The nucleus itself contains energy that could be used to tell time. Deep physics. Quantum vibes. It ties back to the big questions. How do we know anything is true.
Laughter. Not human laughter. Ape laughter.
Great apes make specific sounds. Hacks. Hoots. Research suggests these noises might have paved the way for complex human language. We didn’t just start speaking one day. We started laughing first. The mechanics are there. The vocal tract is ready. We just needed to stop taking everything so seriously.
It’s a funny thought. We’re discussing how to cool the planet while also figuring out that our ability to chat stems from monkey humor.
