40 Years Of Sounding The Alarm On Nuclea...

In 2020, Jennifer Doudna shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of the gene-editing technique CRISPR. Along with related techniques, it has become an essential tool in genetics, allowing specific sections of genetic code to be cut and replaced in a genome. It’s a ... Show More

In late September 2026, NASA announced that a new telescope called PRIMA was getting a green light and advancing to something called Phase B of the development process. But what does that mean exactly? How does a billion-dollar space project get thought up, designed, approved, an ... Show More

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is one of the most prominent voices in the climate movement. She’s a marine biologist by training, but as she saw the effects of the climate crisis intensify, she took on more public-facing advocacy work.Her work is expansive: She helped organize the March ... Show More

Since the US bombing of Japan in World War II, the world entire has remained terrified of nuclear weapons. Even as scientists and scholars spent decades warning about the existential threat posed by technology that can literally end civilization, countries across the planet raced ... Show More

Gideon talks to the historian and author Serhii Plokhy about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed our calculations about the risk of nuclear war. They discuss the history of the atom bomb from its first use in 1945 to the risk of a resurgence of proliferation. Clip: Harry S T ... Show More

The creation of atomic weaponry changed human civilization forever, but it also left its mark on the Earth itself -- in both obvious and subtle ways. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss some of the ways in which the world would not be the same. Lear ... Show More

The U.S. Department of Defense has sounded the alarm on a worrying hypothetical program from Russia aimed at putting a nuclear weapon into orbit. Associate news editor Allison Parshall explains what we know about nukes in space from a satellite accident and a series of ill-advise ... Show More

July 16, 1945. It happened within a millionth of a second. In the New Mexico desert in the early morning hours, a group of scientists watched in anticipation as the countdown began. It was silent at first, yet hot and unbelievably bright. Then came the sound. The first-ever atomi ... Show More

A mile of pure fire. A flash that melts everything — titanium, steel, lead, people. A blast that mows down every structure in its path, 3 miles out in every direction. Journalist Annie Jacobsen spent years interviewing scientists, high-ranking military officials, politicians, and ... Show More

The creation of atomic weaponry changed human civilization forever, but it also left its mark on the Earth itself -- in both obvious and subtle ways. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss some of the ways in which the world would not be the sa ... Show More

<p>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. </p><p>President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telep ... Show More

July 16, 1945. It happened within a millionth of a second. In the New Mexico desert in the early morning hours, a group of scientists watched in anticipation as the countdown began. It was silent at first, yet hot and unbelievably bright. Then came the sound. The first-ever atomi ... Show More

On 6 and 9 August 1945, the US military bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki using a weapon of unprecedented destructive capability, the atom bomb. These bombings marked the beginning of the nuclear age and remain the only use of a nuclear weapon in an active conf ... Show More