Best of - Edward Teller: Destroyer of Worlds

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2022

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

Russia's war in Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin's threat to unleash nuclear weapons, has put the world on edge. In 2018 we explored the complicated history of the nuclear age, and we thought it was an opportune time to revisit that episode. Our story focuses on Edward Teller, often called "The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb". He was also the force behind Reagan's Star Wars initiative, and the model for "Dr. Strangelove". Teller was a Hungarian math prodigy who fled Hitler's Germany. In America, he became one of the leading scientists at Los Alamos, developing the atomic bomb in a race against the Nazi war machine. But while many of Teller's colleagues later became disheartened by what they had unleashed, Teller stayed the course. His story is told here in his own voice, and by many of the other scientists who created the first weapons of mass destruction. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2018-2022

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Alice.
0:04.0	When Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of his war on Ukraine,
0:08.0	he raised the barely veiled threat of using Russia's nuclear arsenal.
0:13.0	What is the problem with us was the
0:16.0	grossed of our strength,
0:18.0	the nation,
0:20.0	here's the translation of what Putin said.
0:23.0	No matter who tries to stand in our way, or all the more so create threats for our country and our people,
0:29.0	they must know that Russia will respond immediately.
0:33.0	That was not a medley.
0:36.0	And the truth was that was a crime was
0:38.0	that was what was the story
0:41.0	and that was not true. And the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.
0:49.6	Putin also moved Russia's so-called nuclear deterrent forces to combat ready, removing any doubt
0:57.5	about what he meant, and making the nuclear threat more real than it's been at any point since the end of the Cold War.
1:05.1	The age of nuclear weapons, of course, was ushered in during World War II when the United
1:10.0	States afraid that Nazi Germany was developing new weapons of mass destruction
1:15.5	began to develop its own but quickly it turned into an arms race between the
1:21.1	United States and the Soviet Union. We explored this history on our
1:25.5	podcast in 2018 and tragically current events brought it to mind in recent weeks. Thank you for listening. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack.
1:50.0	And so because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rolls out
1:57.0	human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying. This is the second time in recent months I've had occasion to play a clip from Dr. Strangelove on this podcast, which is a little weird.
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