The Atomic Exchange Podcast

In Episode 72 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , Dr. Goran Calic and Jennifer Ward examine France's response to a record-breaking heatwave and its surprising consequences. When French regulators derated three nuclear plants to protect river temperatures, the decision triggered a tenfold increase in natural gas generation and sent electricity prices up 40 percent. Using real-time grid data, they...

In Episode 71 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , Dr. Goran Calic and Jennifer Ward explore two management studies on sustainability and environmental policy. They discuss the pollution haven effect, where firms outsource production to countries with weak environmental standards to cut costs, and why companies delay going truly sustainable by relying on cheap "compensating actions" instead....

In Episode 70 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , Dr. Goran Calic welcomes Henry Conter, a medical oncologist and founder of Kesis & Sisters, to discuss why large language models fail in healthcare. They explore the critical difference between probabilistic AI systems and the deterministic, verifiable tools that medicine actually needs. Henry shares real examples of AI giving dangerously wrong me...

In Episode 69 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Jennifer Ward are joined by communications consultant Dr. Jackson Ainsworth to explore what is actually driving the current nuclear renaissance. Rather than focusing solely on technological breakthroughs or reactor designs, they analyze the shift through a sociological lens, examining how the way we communicate about nucle...

In Episode 68 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , host Dr. Goran Calic is joined by Jennifer Ward to demystify exactly how much energy it takes to make and do the things we take for granted every day. Rather than discussing abstract sustainability goals, they calculate the surprising physical footprint of our modern lives and reveal why there is the equivalent of 250 milliliters of diesel hiding insi...

In Episode 67 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , host Dr. Goran Calic is joined by Jennifer Ward to break down the surprising new partnership between Anthropic and SpaceX. Rather than looking at the deal as a standard tech headline, they take a strategic management lens: analyzing why xAI’s massive Colossus data center was running at just 11% utilization and what that reveals about the diverging bus...

In Episode 66 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous announce a bittersweet transition: Michael will be stepping away from the podcast to attend Columbia Law School. They take a trip down memory lane, reflecting on their favorite episodes from the first "Good Signs, Bad Signs" breakdown to the heartfelt conversation with Mo Syed and the Venezuelan c...

In Episode 65 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous are joined by Jenn Ward, one of the newest members of the team, to discuss a side of nuclear expansion that often gets overlooked: housing. Using Bruce Power and the broader Canadian nuclear buildout as a starting point, they explore why large energy projects are not just engineering challenges, but labour,...

In Episode 64 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous discuss artificial intelligence, what it actually does, and why that matters. Drawing on the idea that AI is best understood not as magic or true intelligence but as a prediction machine, they explore how falling prediction costs change the value of judgment, action, and business decision-making. They also...

In Episode 63 of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous are joined by Daniel Arbour, President and CEO of Oshawa Power, former CEO and Global Head of Shell Mobile Fuelling, and founder of Mountainview Strategy, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it actually means to lead in the energy sector today. Together, they discuss Daniel’s journey from oil and gas in...

In the 62nd installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous unpack the recent strikes on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant and the panic they caused. They explain why a nuclear power plant cannot explode like a nuclear bomb, what the real risks of a direct strike actually are, and why public fear around nuclear often goes far beyond the physics. They also...

In the 61st installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous are joined by Jennifer Ward, a master’s student in engineering physics at McMaster University, to discuss her path into nuclear and why so many young people still overlook the industry. They explore why energy, and nuclear in particular, can feel uninteresting or distant to younger audiences, how...

In the 60th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous are joined by Colby Arsenault, a master’s student in nuclear engineering at McMaster University, for the latest entry in their student spotlight series. They discuss how Colby found his way into nuclear, why portrayals like Chernobyl can sometimes spark curiosity rather than fear, and what his rea...

In the 59th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous are joined by Willow Paraskevas, a McMaster Engineering Physics student, McMaster reactor tour guide, and outreach lead with NAYGN McMaster, for the first episode of a special student spotlight series highlighting emerging voices in nuclear. They discuss why fear, misinformation, and poor communic...

In the 58th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous follow up on last week’s Iran discussion and revisit their opposing oil-price predictions. They ask whether Iran’s new leader really changes anything, why Brent crude stayed above $100, and how Iran may still be able to disrupt oil markets without defeating the U.S. Navy directly. The conversation...

In the 57th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous build on last week’s Iran discussion by looking at the country’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. They walk through who he is, why his appointment likely signals continuity rather than change, and what that could mean for Iran’s posture in the war. The conversation then shifts back to energy,...

In the 56th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous look at the Iran crisis through an energy lens, focusing less on headlines and more on oil flows. They walk through how disruptions tied to Iran and Venezuela could tighten China’s crude supply, what that means for prices and refineries, and why energy shocks cascade into the broader economy. They...

In the 55th installment of the Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous do a practical walkthrough of the energy landscape. They compare nuclear, natural gas, coal, oil, solar, wind, and hydro in plain terms, focusing on what each source is genuinely good at and where the trade-offs get ignored. The conversation also digs into the less-discussed side of “energy” beyon...

In the 54th installment of the Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous unpack reports that the Trump administration is moving to repeal the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” the legal backbone for major federal greenhouse-gas rules. They then pivot to SpaceX’s FCC filing for “orbital data centers” and the bigger question behind all the hype: is AI-in-space technical...

In the 53rd installment of the Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous break down Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They unpack his claim that the rules-based order is breaking down, why “going along to get along” no longer works, and what value-based realism should mean in practice for Canada. They also discuss why the speech...

In the 52nd installment of  The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous break down a  Nature Communications  paper asking a simple question: can wind and solar reliably power an entire country year-round? They walk through what the study finds when you add storage, overbuild, and bigger grid connections, then explain why key real-world constraints like transmission a...

In the 51st installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous break down Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book More and More and More and its core claim: societies do not “transition” neatly from one fuel to another, they stack new energy sources on top of old ones. They explain why common transition narratives can be misleading, why “clean” shifts often just move th...

In the 50th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous step away from nuclear for a milestone conversation with Dr. Mohit Bhandari, Chair of Surgery at McMaster University. They talk about why mentorship matters (especially for young men), how strong careers are actually built over decades, and why persistence beats talent more often than people think...

In the 49th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous welcome back Professor Andy Wu of Harvard Business School to break down the reported U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro and what it could mean for Venezuela’s future. Rather than reading it as a pure geopolitical matter, they take an interesting management lens: analyzing how PDVSA was misrun, why out...

In the 48th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast , co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous dig into Ford’s decision to end the all-electric F-150 Lightning and shift toward extended-range and hybrid models, what the sales gap reveals about demand forecasting, and why incentives and policy shifts do not fully explain the miss. The conversation then moves to the European Commission’s prop...