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What Happened to Vladimir Alexandrov?

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.715K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rund Abdelfatah and Cristina Kim try to unravel the mystery of a Soviet scientist who was helping to spread the word about nuclear winter theory—until he disappeared. 

This is a peek at the kind of exclusive bonus content Throughline+ supporters get every month. Want more like this? Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. And thank you!


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's runned. Just a quick thing before we start, this is a special bonus episode of ThruLine.

0:05.9

Every month, we make exclusive episodes just for our very special ThruLine Plus supporters that take listeners behind the scenes of our work.

0:13.7

But this month, we thought we'd give everyone a chance to listen.

0:16.9

If you're already a Plus supporter, thank you so much.

0:20.3

It means a lot to us, and you got first access to this episode in your Plus feed.

0:25.1

But if you're not a Plus supporter yet, we hope you'll consider joining.

0:28.8

It's a great way to support NPR and public media.

0:32.4

Go to plus.npr.org slash throughline to join now.

0:36.9

Thank you. npr.org slash throughline to join now.

0:46.7

Earlier this year, I worked with producer Christina Kim,

0:52.9

Hey, Rund, on an episode about nuclear winter theory, which is the idea that if every world power that had nukes started to actually

0:55.5

use them, the world would descend into nuclear winter. Think the end of the world,

1:01.0

a la the end of the dinosaurs.

1:08.7

It was a theory popularized by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan and other scientists in the 1980s.

1:15.6

Some credit the theory with helping to avert nuclear war at the height of the Cold War.

1:19.6

A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism

1:25.6

and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.

1:31.9

Sagan was the scientist of the time, in large part because he hosted this public media show

1:37.1

called Cosmos that made science accessible and, well, human. He was part scientist, part

1:44.0

poet, and 100% magnetic.

1:47.1

We are one planet.

1:50.2

You should check out the episode if you haven't already.

...

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