My Nuclear Life: Recent Episodes
Shelly Lesher
On July 16, 1945, in a New Mexico desert, the Trinity Test ushered in the Nuclear Age. No other piece of technology has penetrated the American consciousness like the nuclear bomb and found a place in everything from culture to medicine. This podcast explores how nuclear science has impacted and changed our world in both beneficial and destructive ways. We explore the intersection of nuclear science and society using interviews from historians, policymakers, experts in their fields, and first-hand accounts to weave a picture of your nuclear life. mynuclearlife.com
Project Paperclip; or how the US gave citizenship to Nazi scientists so we could build rockets to get to the moon and defeat the Soviets. This episode will explore this project with Brian Crim, PhD, Professor for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College.
Who are the JASONS? What do they do and can Shelly ever fulfill her dream of becoming one? Find out on this episode with Ann Finkbeiner.
What is going on with all the missing scientists? Should we be worried? Should Shelly be worried? Is there a Mayor McCheese secret plot? Join Nathan & Lee from the Uncover Up as they check in on Shelly to make sure she is ok.
In this joint episode with The Uncover Up Nathan Radke and Shelly Lesher try to shock each other with the different ways humans have tried or will try to destroy us all. Watch the episode on Youtube at YouTube
Nathan Radke (The Uncover Up) and Shelly Lesher discuss the B-36.You can email us or support us on Patreon
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On the 40th Anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, we rerelease this episode with a new introduction to include Ron McNair articles from his home, N.C. A&T Physics.
See what happens when Shelly talks to smarty-pants Jim Gates, says she is not going to talk about String Theory and immediately asks questions about String Theory. Hear about String Theory’s Doppelganger, the history of black holes, fulfilling a dream of riding the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and how it all comes back to nuclear physics.
How likely is it that the US will restart nuclear testing? How much time would it take? You might be surprised by the answers. Join Shelly as she discusses this and other topics with Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. And we find out - things can get much worse.
Lee Kuhln and Nathan Radke join Shelly to talk about the No. 1 Netflix movie - House of Dynamite and answer the question, "Is the movie Dyn-o-mite"?
How close were the Germans to building an atomic bomb? What went wrong? Listen to the conversation with historian Mark Walker to find out more.
How can you find the age of Plutonium? Why is it important? What are the applications? Find out the answer to these questions and more on this episode of My Nuclear Life when Cody Folden joins Shelly Lesher to discuss his paper in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry.
My Nuclear Life and The Uncover Up visit the Diefenbunker: Canada's Cold War Museum. Join Shelly, Nathan, and Lee as they journey 75 feet underground to compare how the Canadian Government planned to prepare for their survival versus the Civil Defense measured intended for their citizens.
Get ready for the summer movie by joining Oppenheimer biographer Kai Bird (author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer) as he discusses Oppie's life and science.
With all the talk of nuclear weapons in Europe, learn about the US nuclear weapon triad with Dr. Steve Fetter. Recorded live during a nuclear physics conference, Drs. Fetter and Lesher discuss the US Nuclear Posture Review, the US Nuclear Triad, Nuclear Modernization, and the history of ICBMS.
In this episode, we take you inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with Dominik Orfanus founder of ChernobylX and lead tour guide, Lara Graldina. What is it like inside the "Zone"? Who lives there? What can you do to help? This and more on Episode 38. Note: This episode does not discuss the disaster itself. To hear about that event, listen to Episode 16 - The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster with Adam Higginbotham.
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The St. Louis Baby Tooth Study has been reimagined. Using the original teeth collected from the children of the 1950s and 1960s Marc Weisskopf and his colleagues at Harvard are seeking to find new answers from old teeth. Shout out to Taz & Mookie Weisskopf who make their presence known on the recording. Note: For background on the Baby Tooth Study listen to Episode 36 first.
Artwork from href=https://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/atomic-anxiety-and-the-tooth-fairy-citizen-science-in-the-midcentury-midwest>Atomic Anxiety and the Tooth Fairy
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Nina Gilden Seavey discusses how the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey helped persuade U.S. President Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which ended above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the US, UK, and the Soviet Union. In the process, citizen science was born and children sported cool buttons on their lapels.
He was and served as the 39th President of the USA. But before his career in politics, Jimmy Carter was a Navy Nuke under Gen. Rickover. What did he do in the Navy? How did this time in the Nuclear Navy shape his policies? What would happen if someone who thought like a scientist gained access to the highest seat in the land? Find out in this episode when Shelly speaks to Jimmy Carter’s biographer, Jonathan Alter.
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Underground nuclear bunkers, the birth of FEMA, secret government plans for the end of the world, and more in this episode. Garrett Graff discusses his book Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die.
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This episode explores how we, as humans, grapple with the end of the world through nuclear literature including fiction, nonfiction, poems, etc. How do we grapple with the "end" if it is caused by humans and how do we explain nuclear events to children? Visit our webpage for a list of books discussed in this episode.
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The history of fusion as a source of energy is discussed along with past and current projects. Is a fusion power plant still decades away?
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What is a war game? How did they shape our understanding of the Cold War? Did the mathematicians or social scientists win the war of the COW game? Learn about issues surrounding wargaming at RAND and elsewhere as Shelly & John dive deep into the question, "Can wargaming teach ethics?"
Find John Emery's paper here: Moral Choices without Moral Language
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Special episode on reducing nuclear threat with Prof. Matthias Grosse Perdekamp. Recorded when Russia was invading Ukraine.
Today's episode features the musical duo Charming Disaster. They discuss the process of writing their new album based on the life of Marie Curie and the element she discovered, stories that did not make it into their songs, and ways that this album should sound familiar to fans but is also a departure from their usual writing style. Also, Elia & Jeff dispel Shelly's notion of "Goth Rock".
Preorder their new album:Our Lady of Radium
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What role does nuclear science play in understanding art and culture? Michael Wiescher from The University of Notre Dame explains.
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Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhnle from The UnCover Up podcast discuss Dr. Strangelove with Shelly and introduce an interesting conspiracy theory. Lee poses a question on if Nikita Khrushchev should receive story credit for the plot of the movie and backs it up with some interesting history of who could launch a nuclear attack. Wait - did Stanley Kubrick accidentally get it right?
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Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhnle from The UnCover Up podcast discuss Failsafe (1964) with Shelly and compare it to Dr. Strangelove. Find out what character made Lee want to quit watching Failsafe, who the gang thinks would have a better chance at surviving a nuclear exchange: file clerks or prisoners, and what Shelly wants etched on her tombstone.
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Nathan and Lee from the UnCover Up podcast join today’s conversation in discussing their favorite nuclear movies spanning over the decades, involving wars, nuclear disasters, and so much more! Amongst the 100’s of movies, they’ll be touching on just a sampling—this is a conversation you won’t want to miss! Movie links can be found on our website.
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In this episode Pete Burgess discusses the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian spy who defected to the UK. Why is polonium-210 a good poison? How do you make it? Why wasn’t the public scared it could happen to them? All of those questions and more are answered in this exciting episode.
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In this episode, host Shelly Lesher is joined by Neal Bascomb, author of The Winter Fortress, which tells the story of the plan to sabotage Hitler’s atomic bomb. Listen as Neal tells about the several different missions set out to destroy the Nazi atomic bomb program and how they affected the course of the World War II.
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Our release schedule has changed to the last Tuesday of the month. This episode also introduces information about entering to win some great prizes at mynuclearlife.com drawing on 16 Dec 2021.
Go inside a US missile silo with Col. (Ret.) Charles G. Simpson as he discusses his time as a US Air Force Missileer which started weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis and ends shortly before the end of the Cold War.
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This episode features Don Howard, a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame with an interest in the ethics of emerging technologies. Shelly & Don explore the ethical considerations behind the Manhattan Project and building the H-bomb, and discuss question such as: Should scientists use their expertise to be involved in politics? What is the moral obligation to one’s work? How are scientists involved in human rights work? and more. Don also shares his moving experiences as a child during the Cold War.
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In this episode Shelly speaks with Thomas Haigh, a historian of computing, about the ENIAC and its influence on nuclear physics. Learn how the ENIAC was more of an experimental apparatus than a computer, the role of women in early computing, why we know so much about the secret h-bomb calculations, what Wikipedia gets wrong, and the confusion surrounding the MANIAC. All of this and more in this super-sized episode.
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In this episode Shelly is joined by Dr. Vincent Intondi, history professor at Montgomery College in Maryland. He is invited on the podcast today to discuss his recent authorship of his eye opening book entitled African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement. Shelly shares that while reading this book, she was uncomfortable with material, and had to process material from perspectives that she had never considered before. This interview proves to be a true eye-opener for listeners including connections between nuclear weapons and racism, the role of African Americans in nuclear disarmament, and how young people can contribute to new and pressing issues.
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In this episode, Shelly is joined by 2/3rds of The Uncover Up Conspiracy Podcast, Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhlne. They discuss the Pentagon UFO report, their joint Cold War obsession, what we can learn from conspiracy theory, and various nuclear conspiracy theories.
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In this episode Shelly speaks to Tiffany Nichols, doctoral candidate at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, graduate student affiliate at the Black Hole Initiative and a National Science Foundation grantee. Her research focuses on how place, surrounding environment, and laboratory are embedded in the outputs signals of The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, also known as LIGO.
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In this episode Shelly is joined by Adam Higginbotham, author of New York Times best selling book Midnight in Chernobyl. Listen as Shelly and Adam talk about his book and about the biggest nuclear disaster in the world. Adam takes the time to share his own research in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the many events that led up to the accident.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, Shelly speaks with Todd Tucker, author of several books including Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral changed the Course of Nuclear History published in 2009. Today, the story of SL-1 holds wide appeal yet remains relatively unknown. If you have heard of the explosion you might know of the person impaled by a control rod, a murder suicide plot due to a love triangle or a prank gone wrong. All of this and more is discussed in this episode about the US's deadliest reactor accident.
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In this episode, Shelly Lesher and Dreux Richard author of the book, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, explore the post-Fukushima nuclear regulatory system of Japan and how to determine the safety of restarting nuclear reactors threatened by earthquake faults.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher speaks with Tim and Joanna Smolko, authors of Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music. They discuss atomic music across the decades including how music influenced The Women’s March for Peace, how Soviet’s made records out of x-ray films, and how David Hasselhoff became a Cold War icon.
Listen along with the Spotify Playlist or at YouTube.
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In this episode, Lexie Weghorn and Shelly Lesher discuss nuclear waste disposal with Elizabeth Muller, CEO of Deep Isolation. Topics include nuclear energy’s “waste problem”, how nuclear waste is currently stored, and options for our future.
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In this episode, Shelly continues her conversation with Robert Franklin, Archivist & Oral Historian at the Hanford History Project. They discuss how Hanford's B-Reactor became a Manhattan Project National Historical Site, local vs. national interpretation of history, the local high school mascot, and civil rights.
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In this episode, Shelly and Robert Franklin, Archivist & Oral Historian of the Hanford History Project dive into the history of the Hanford Laboratory and B-Reactor located in Washington State. They discuss why this site is the lesser known of the Manhattan project laboratories and what you can see if you visit today.
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In this new segment of My Nuclear Life find out what happens at Volk Field one snowy night in 1962.
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In this episode Shelly Lesher and Lucy Jane Santos, author of the book Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium discuss the beauty industry, salons, and radium in consumer products.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher interviews Martin Pfeiffer, a Ph.D. student of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He is best known for his twitter account, @NuclearAnthro. Topics discussed include Sandia National Laboratory Newsletters, the intersection of queer theory and nuclear weapons, The Freedom of Information Act in relation to obtaining material from the Department of Energy, and lots and lots of laughs.
Marty's webpage: Pfeiffer Nuclear Weapons and National Security Archive
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Part 3 of our conversation with Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The conversation picks up the historical narrative of the WWII development and deployment of the atomic bomb right where it left off: with the US engaged in the conflict and scientists gathered in Los Alamos, NM to build the bomb. As the story moves toward its conclusion, listeners hear about the process of building the bomb and the end of the war.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, Shelly Lesher continues her conversation with Richard Rhodes, author of award winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Their previous conversation left off with the time in history where the atomic bomb was only a theoretical plan in the scientific community. This episode picks back up with Richard introducing a man who managed the atomic bomb project named General Groves. Also discussed are Fermi and the first chain reaction, the risks scientists took to end the war, building the factories to produce bomb material, and preparing to create the bomb itself.
Part 2 of 3.
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Today on My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes. This conversation has been broken up into three parts. This Part 1 discussion includes topics like the beginning of nuclear science as a field until the Manhattan Project was approved.
You will hear parts of a speech in this episode given by Otto Hahn at the University of California, Berkeley and excerpt from Otto Frisch in 1967 from his talk called Fission: How it All Began.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher interviews Aimee Slaughter. They discuss early radium therapy its journey from sideshow attraction to a staple in US hospitals before WWII. This marks the first-time physicists and chemists worked with physicians in hospitals and clinics to brings a treatment to the public with the hopes to cure cancer. The podcast addresses the different ways radium therapy has helped shape the modern technology in our hospitals today.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher interviews Richard Nephew. Richard was the lead sanctions expert on the US negotiating team for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - also known as the Iran nuclear deal. He is now a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Shelly and Richard discuss the JCPOA, sanctions, and what we might expect from President-elect Biden’s administration.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher interviews Dan O’Neil. Dan is author of The Firecracker Boys. In this book, he speaks about Project Chariot, a U.S. atomic energy project in Alaska, and how this project was prevented.
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In this episode of My Nuclear Life, host Shelly Lesher interviews Dr. Leslie Dewan. Leslie earned her PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and is a cofounder of Transatomic Power, one of the first startup companies attempting to bring a Generation IV reactor to market. Leslie’s understanding of nuclear energy has allowed her new company, Criticality Capital, to invest money in the sectors that need it most. Shelly and Leslie discuss how we can improve in the way we harness nuclear energy, and what Leslie sees as the path forward.
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