Has the Risk of Nuclear War Been Normalized?

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KQED

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nuclear capabilities have increased dramatically over the past decade and continue to grow, with the U.S. Department of Defense spending $1.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and infrastructure upgrades. But the conversation around nuclear war has only gotten quieter. The anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s-80s was one of the largest protest movements of its time, with a million protesters marching in New York to demand an end to nuclear weapons. Yet the threat is rarely mentioned today. We’ll talk about the anti-nuclear movement, the normalization of nuclear warfare, and what some experts hope to change about that. Guests: Rivka Galchen, contributor, The New Yorker; her most recent article in The New Yorker is "Why Don't We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:31.4	From KQED.
0:36.6	Music From Kikwede in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrival.
0:48.6	Do you remember the looming threat of nuclear apocalypse?
0:52.7	Many of us spent some time in our childhoods contemplating the specter of nuclear winter,
0:58.0	and the threat of nuclear war has never gone away.
1:02.0	Despite the success of peace movements and slowing the spread and usage of nuclear weapons,
1:07.0	the stockpiles have just kept growing.
1:10.0	The Department of Defense is spending $1.5 trillion on upgrading its nuclear weapons and
1:16.8	infrastructure.
1:18.1	What happened to the protest movement of the late 20th century and does it need to come back?
1:22.9	It's all coming up next, right after this news.
1:41.2	Alexis Madrigal here. We've got a pledge break going right now, so you get a bonus on the pledge-free stream, podcast, or on our replay at night.
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