S3 Bonus Preview - Mutants

Wild Thing

Foxtopus Ink

Science

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2022

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A faulty reactor overheats, melting through its containment unit and poisoning a nearby town with radioactive gas. A spacecraft pushes further into deep space, exploring new galaxies, powered by a small nuclear reactor. An ordinary scientist is struck by cosmic rays—and finds he has new powers. Fiction? Or fact? Or a little of both? Stories of nuclear peril and promise permeate American media, and especially comic books. A preview of a special bonus episode, in which we explore atomic comics and why nuclear ideas captured artists’ imaginations.

*Become a premium subscriber to Wild Thing! Premium subscribers get each new episode early, and exclusive access to all bonus episodes (like this one), not to mention the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting the show. Go to https://wildthing.supportingcast.fm/ to find out more!

*Season 3 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lincoln. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

*Find us on social media - @wildthingpod - and on our website https://wildthingpodcast.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Near the southeastern edge of Alva Kyrgyn, Mexico, adjacent to the Kertlin Air Force Base,
0:05.5	a collection of old planes, missiles, submarine sails, and artillery sits baking in the hot desert sun.
0:12.8	It's a monument to our wartime history with nuclear weapons, and it's one of many exhibits
0:17.8	at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Welcome, it's nice to have you here in
0:22.5	the museum today. This is the largest museum about this topic in the world. Jim Walther is the
0:28.8	executive director of the museum, and many of the exhibits are devoted to the Manhattan Project,
0:33.2	which was developed in nearby Los Alamos. We do have often hymer's limousine here. We have the
0:38.2	only full-scale replica of the Trinity test tower here. Fat man and little boy bombs,
0:43.6	shapes, are concurrent copies from 1945. They're not made later. They're the real ones. This is
0:49.6	Trinitite. This is the blast effect of the extreme heat of the Trinity test turned the sand to glass.
0:56.7	There are big sections about nuclear medicine and the basic science around radiation.
1:01.6	Our world is full of radiation. The sun pounds us with energy each second of the day.
1:06.9	Industry, our homes, our tools, and appliances, and even our food combined to expose each of us
1:13.2	to radiation as we live. Then there are the exhibits on how we enrich nuclear fuel and transport
1:18.9	nuclear waste, as well as some displays about the next generation of nuclear technology, sponsored by
1:24.5	none other than the nuclear industry itself. In the background, you can hear the sounds of an
1:29.2	air raid siren, the type used to warn of a nuclear attack. But I'm not here for the science,
1:36.8	or the history, or to duck and cover. I want to feast my eyes on the museum's pop culture collection.
1:43.9	We have automobiles here. We have toys, we have games, magazines, movie posters, t-shirts,
1:52.0	and indication of how atomic energy was taken up by Madison Avenue and brought into our
2:01.0	consciousness through the things we bought and consumed and saw and used. In the aftermath of
2:07.3	World War II, Americans became fascinated with all things atomic. In the 1950s, kids could get
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