Where Are We Going? Nuclear War Part 2

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode David talks to S. M. Amadae about what happened when the nuclear age turned into an all-consuming arms race. What is the supposed logic and the terrifying illogic behind the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction? What is the difference between M.A.D. and N.U.T.S.? Do we really believe that our leaders would press the button? And how have we managed to survive to this point – rationality, luck or merely a stay of execution? Tickets are on sale now for our new film season at the Regent Street Cinema in London – starting on 19th March with James Marriott talking to David about Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. All the details are here https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next Time: How Will the Nuclear Age End? You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of our episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:10.0	Hello, my name's David Ronsonan and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas
1:15.1	podcast. Today, it's the second of my three conversations with Sonja Amadai, Director of the
1:21.5	Centre for Existential Risk, and we're talking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war, what they have done to human thinking.
1:30.3	In this episode, we are exploring mutually assured destruction. It's terrible logic and it's terrible illogic.
1:38.3	How did nuclear arsenals get so big? Why did so many states want to join in? How on earth have we survived to this
1:48.3	point? We're going to talk today, Sonia, essentially about from 1945 to now, and then next time
1:59.2	we're going to talk about what might come next. This doesn't
2:02.9	all happen in sequence, but let's start at the beginning. You mentioned last time in relation
2:08.9	to John von Neumann that one of his ideas was in order to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring
2:15.5	the bomb. The bomb might have to be used to destroy
	...

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