Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts you thought you knew.
Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pick up the story of nuclear war in the 1950s with the arrival of the H-bomb, and travel from the deadly face-off the Cuban Missile Crisis to the theory of nuclear winter and the place of nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world.
Kennedy and Khrushchev contemplate the abyss, Ronald Reagan frets about Armageddon, and Dr Strangelove brings the twisted psychology of nuclear deterrence to the screen. Plus the dark allure of the Cobalt Bomb, the Doomsday Machine that never existed.
It’s a story of threats, war games and hair-raising close shaves. Did the strategists get it right in the end or were we just very lucky?
Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
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“In the US there was a recognition over and over by presidents stating…we know that if we fire, we get fired back on.” – Ian Dunt
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“(the Cuban Missile Crisis) brought the world to the abyss of destruction and the end of mankind.” – Robert Kennedy
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“Distrust almost destroyed the world” – Dorian Lynskey
Reading List:
Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist
Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century
Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War
William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard
William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons
Ronald Reagan – An American Life
Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon
H.G. Wells – The World Set Free
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
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