Hey there, it's Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today on the podcast, why knobs and push buttons are making a comeback on your car's dashboard.

Buttons can seem kind of maddeningly simple. Anyone can push them. They're very sort of democratic.

But on the other hand, I think there is a tremendous

amount of complexity to buttons that we often don't think about.

I've been shopping for a new car, no longer wishing to own my current EV, so I've been test

driving others. You know what I've noticed?

The maddening glass touchscreen, which still annoys me after seven years of driving, is giving

way in some newer EVs to buttons. Yes, actual knobs that turn buttons that click. It is back to the future. Now, I don't expect to see my old

push-button car radio return, but this is close enough. So why are some car companies turning

back from the touchscreen? Does it have anything to do somehow with our brains, liking to

connect to that kind of physical movement, the touch, the feel?

Well, here to talk about it are a couple of folks who think about these things.

James Forbes is a professor of practice in the Department of Automotive Engineering at Clemson

University and was formerly who I spent many decades with Ford Motor Company.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. Rachel Plotnick is an associate professor in the media school at Indiana University in

Bloomington and author of Power Button, a history of pleasure, panic, and the politics of pushing.

Welcome to Science Friday, Rachel. Thank you. Glad to be here.

You're welcome. James, am I right in feeling that there's a trend back towards buttons,

or is it just in the cars I'm happening to look at? Well, there's been increasing buzz in the media

about it. I think that there's this inherent tension that when you load a vehicle up with tons and tons of features,

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