We've Gotta Talk About the Bomb

Historian of science, Professor Alex Wellerstein joins me to talk about the sword haunting the ploughshare of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

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Chapters:

00:00:00 - The Manhattan Project: A Secret Industry | The Birth of the Atomic Bomb
00:02:16 - Why Study Nuclear Weapons? A Historian's Perspective | Alex Wellerstein's Path to Nuclear History
00:04:32 - Nuclear Fear Across Generations | From the Berlin Wall to 9/11
00:08:21 - First Discoveries of Fission: Bomb or Reactor? | Early Thoughts on Nuclear Technology
00:13:19 - The Manhattan Project: A Crash Course in Nuclear Industry | Building an Atomic Bomb in Two Years
00:22:31 - The Infrastructure of the Manhattan Project: From Dinner Table to Industrial Scale | Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Los Alamos
00:32:36 - Was the Manhattan Project Bigger than the Space Race? | Speed, Secrecy, and the Legacy of a Crash Program
00:35:50 - Why Were the Atomic Bombs Dropped? | Exploring the Motives and Justifications
00:43:04 - How Many Bombs Did the US Have in 1945? | Production Rates and the Threat of More Bombs
00:50:52 - US Atomic Hegemony and the Prevention of World War III | Early Cold War Nuclear Diplomacy
00:59:35 - Fear of the Bomb: Radiation and the Psychological Impact | From Hiroshima to Godzilla
01:06:04 - Understanding Nuclear Fallout: Airbursts, Groundbursts, and the Threat of Radiation | Local and Global Fallout Explained

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