Zahaan Bharmal: How Physics Can Explain Almost Everything

Danielle Newnham Podcast

Today’s guest is Zahaan Bharmal – Senior Director of Strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Google where he has spent the last 16 years. He is also author of The Art of Physics: 8 elegant ideas to make sense of almost everything.

In this conversation, Zahaan and I discuss his younger years, how he struggled at school and had big questions about the world and how The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams completely changed his life and allowed him to fall in love with the subject of Physics, in the hope of finding some of those answers.

We also discuss Zahaan’s career from working as a speech writer for luminaries such as Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela to his current role at Google working with those at the frontier of AI including Sir Demis Hassabis of Deep Mind.

But the main topic of conversation today is how physics can help us answer very human questions. Drawing on fields of physics such as quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity theory, we look at how physics can help us make sense of an unpredictable world – and, why many of the world’s most successful leaders from Napolean to Charlie Munger all believe a greater understanding of physics can help us save humanity.

So please enjoy my conversation with Zahaan Bharmal.

Zahaan Bharmal has a degree in physics from the University of Oxford. After working on policy issues for the UK government and at the World Bank, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Stanford University where he earned a master's in business administration. Since 2008, he has worked for Google, currently as senior director of strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has written about space and science for the Guardian and is the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal.