logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2021
40m 5s

Episode 1: Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling w...

Jeffrey Sachs
About this episode

Welcome to the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs!

In this first episode, world-renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin about his book Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world.

Professors Sachs and Sherwin discuss the choices of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over the course of the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s positions during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the often-overlooked role of US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson—and luck—in preventing a nuclear world war.

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.

Footnotes:

Up next
Jul 8
Season 4, Episode 11: James Romm, Plato and the Tyrant
Send us a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Professor James Romm, classicist and historian at Bard College, for a captivating discussion on one of the most dramatic and fascinating political experiments of the ancient world: Plato’s involvement with power politics in Syracuse ... Show More
45m 1s
May 2025
Season 4, Episode 9: Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
Send us a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and futurist Ray Kurzweil for a compelling conversation on the accelerating pace of technological change and its profound implications for the future of humanity. In his new book, The Singularity Is Nearer, Kurzweil revisits and updates ... Show More
49m 11s
Apr 2025
Season 4, Episode 8: Prof. Lauren Benton, They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Send us a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and American historian Lauren Benton for a discussion on the hidden histories of empires and the lasting impact of imperial violence. In her book, They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence Benton uncovers how European powers buil ... Show More
46m 17s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2024
Bill Martin: “Truman looked at him and said: ‘Traitor’”
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions everywhere from Seattle to Seoul. While its interest rate are set by an expert committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s core philos ... Show More
48m 26s
Aug 25
The creation of the International Criminal Court
In 1998, at a conference organised by the United Nations, a blueprint was devised for what would be the world's first permanent International Criminal Court.Judge Phillipe Kirsch chaired the Rome conference that led to the formation of the court. He tells Gill Kearsley about the ... Show More
10m 23s
Aug 2024
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our interview about his recent book, The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age (Cornell UP, 2022).The current Dean of the Scho ... Show More
1h 6m
Jan 2024
Uncommon Knowledge Archive: Oppenheimer’s Edward Teller and Sid Drell on ICBM Defense Systems | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
With the recent announcement that Oppenheimer, the film directed by Christopher Nolan, had garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, it seemed timely to pull from the archives this rarely seen episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson from 1996 (the third episode ever shot), ... Show More
28m 8s
Jan 2025
Nukes
In an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you a look up and down the US nuclear chain of command to find out who gets to authorize their use and who can stand in the way of Armageddon. President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and - ... Show More
52m 27s
Dec 2023
Qu'est-ce que la doctrine Truman ?
Le 5 mars 1946, dans son célèbre discours de Fulton, l'ancien Premier ministre Winston Churchill constate qu'un "rideau de fer" coupe désormais l'Europe en deux parties.Il sépare désormais les pays de l'Europe occidentale, restés fidèles aux valeurs démocratiques, de l'URSS et de ... Show More
2 m
Aug 10
72. Destroying the Nazi Nuclear Program: Bombing Norway (Ep 1)
What was the most dangerous mission of World War II? How did a small team of Norwegian skiers stop the Nazis from building a nuclear bomb? And, what exactly is heavy water, and why was it so important to the Nazis? Operation Gunnerside was a high-stakes, real-life mission to sabo ... Show More
45m 10s
Sep 2
Part One: How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS
Robert sits down with Prop to discuss the early life of Heinrich Himmler, the man who built the SS into Hitler's engine of genocide. (6 part series) LIVE SHOW ALERT: We are doing a new Behind the Bastards Live show! In the Alberta Rose Theatre, Portland, September 25th at 8pm! Al ... Show More
1h 10m