Slow Breaking News: A Giant Tortoise Rev...

The military use of AI is capturing headlines this month. After a dustup with the Pentagon, the AI company Anthropic is out, and OpenAI is in. Meanwhile, in the US war with Iran, AI is being deployed in ways we’ve never seen. To make sense of it all, Host Flora Lichtman talks wit ... Show More

On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It’s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you “stimulate” it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say? Host Flora Lichtman talks with neur ... Show More

In recent months, AI music has moved from novelty act into the realm of listenable music. For the first time, AI-generated songs from AI-generated artists are on the Billboard top 100 charts, and more musicians are coming out saying they use AI in their songwriting process. Is th ... Show More

It’s a measure of their insanity that leaders around the world are seriously considering nuclear war. Ivana Hughes of Columbia on what that would mean. (00:00) How Powerful Are Nuclear Weapons? (09:46) What Would Happen if a Nuke Detonated Over Times Square? (24:56) Ozone Layer D ... 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

Send a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and global security expert Jon Wolfsthal to unravel the stark reality behind the Doomsday Clock - now set at a perilous 89 seconds to midnight. What does this ominous timepiece truly measure, and why has humanity never been closer to catast ... Show More

Much of our discussions about nuclear weapons focus on Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, or the Cold War. But what does the current nuclear age really look like? Sarah Scoles joins Heather Williams to discuss her book “Countdown” and share first hand reporting on the scientists ... Show More

Emmet Penney, creator of Nuclear Barbarians, Grid Brief, and the ex.haust podcast, walks us through the rise, fall and future prospects of nuclear power in the United States. Emmet dives deep on the historical, regulatory, political, and environmentalist forces behind nuclear ene ... Show More

New York has issued a public service announcement advising how people can protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons joined Sean to discuss the potential for nuclear war and what ... Show More

Send a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and award-winning journalist Annie Jacobsen as they discuss Jacobsen’s chilling and rigorous depiction of nuclear war in her groundbreaking book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. With meticulous research and interviews with military and political i ... 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

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 Sch ... Show More