Podcasts about Leo Szilard

The story of the atomic age began decades before Robert Oppenheimer watched a mushroom cloud form over the New Mexico desert at the Trinity nuclear test in mid 1945. It begins in 1895, with Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity, setting in motion a series of remarkable and horrifying events. By the early 20th century, a brilliant group of scientists—including Ernest Rutherford, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, and others—were pushing the boundaries of knowledge, seeking to answer fundamental questions about this source of energy that had 2 million times the energy density of oil: What is this mysterious radiation? Could it provide an infinite energy source, where a basketball of it was equal to an oil field? And, ominously, could it be weaponized? Today’s guest is nuclear physicist Frank Close, author of “Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age.” We look at the complete history of the atomic age, from the initial curiosity about radioactivity to the creation of the hydrogen bomb—a weapon of almost unimaginable destructive potential, capable of eradicating life on Earth. This is an account of the scientific discoveries that unlocked the atom’s power, the ethical dilemmas faced by scientists, and the horrifying realization that this newfound energy could lead to humanity’s undoing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    SciCast na Campus Party São Paulo 2024:   Utilize o cupom #SCICAST para comprar seu ingresso na página da CPBR16 Patronato do SciCast: 1. Patreon SciCast 2. Apoia.se/Scicast     3. Nos ajude via Pix também, chave: contato@scicast.com.br ou acesse o QRcode:   Sua pequena contribuição ajuda o Portal Deviante a continuar divulgando Ciência! Contatos: contato@scicast.com.br https://twitter.com/scicastpodcast https://www.facebook.com/scicastpodcast https://instagram.com/scicastpodcast Fale conosco! E não esqueça de deixar o seu comentário na postagem desse episódio! Expediente: Produção Geral: Tarik Fernandes e André Trapani Equipe de Gravação: Tarik Fernandes, Willian Spengler, Roberto Spinelli, Lennon Ruhnke, Marcelo de Matos Citação ABNT: Scicast #597: Pré-Projeto Manhattan. Locução: Tarik Fernandes, Willian Spengler, Roberto Spinelli, Lennon Ruhnke, Marcelo de Matos. [S.l.] Portal Deviante, 21/06/2024. Podcast. Disponível em: https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/scicast-597 Arte: Em 1939, Albert Einstein e Leo Szilard escreveram para o presidente dos Estados Unidos alertando sobre os perigos nucleares Referências e Indicações Scicast #484: Bomba Atômica Scicast #09: Energia Nuclear Parte 1 Scicast #10: Energia Nuclear Parte 2 Scicast #93: Hiroshima Scicast #94: Nagasaki E se as bombas atômicas nunca tivessem sido usadas? (Contrafactual #182) Chernobyl – Parte I (SciCast #335) Chernobyl – Parte II (SciCast #336) Scicast #126: Marie Curie   Sugestões de literatura: BIRD, Kai, SHERWIN, Martin J. Oppenheimer: o triunfo e a tragédia do Prometeu americano. Rio de Janeiro: Intrínseca, 2023. CESAREO, R. Dos raios X à bomba atômica (1895-1945): os 50 anos que mudaram o mundo. Brasília: Embrapa Informação Tecnológica, 2010. Disponível em http://www.alice.cnptia.embrapa.br/alice/handle/doc/1003731. DIAS JÚNIOR, José A., ROUBICEK, Rafael. O brilho de mil sóis: História da bomba atômica. São Paulo: Ática, 1996. KIERNANN, Denise. As garotas da cidade atômica: a história secreta das mulheres que ajudaram a vencer a 2ª Guerra Mundial. São Paulo: Benvirá, 2015. LEWIS, Damien. Caçada à bomba atômica de Hitler: a corrida secreta para impedir a produção de armas nucleares dos nazistas. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2017 NORRIS, Robert S. Racing for the bomb: the true story of general Leslie R Groves. Skyhorse Publishing, 2014. PERUZZO, Jucimar. Armas nucleares: origem, estrutura, funcionamento, evolução e controle. Joinville: Clube de Autores, 2019. PRINGLE, Peter; SPIEGELMAN, James J. The nuclear barons. University of Michigan: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981. RHODES, Richard. The making of the atomic bomb. Simon & Schuster, 1986. SMITH, P. D. Os homens do fim do mundo: o verdadeiro Dr. Fantástico e o sonho da arma total. São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 2008. STRATHERN, Paul. Oppenheimer e a bomba atômica em 90 minutos. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1999. Sugestões de filmes: Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) Oppenheimer (2023)   Sugestões de vídeos: Manhattan (série) The man in the high castle Maravilhas Modernas: Manhattan Project A corrida secreta para a bomba atômica The Real Story of Oppenheimer How Kodak Exposed Nuclear Testing Models of the Atom Timeline Sugestões de links: Quem foi o verdadeiro Robert Oppenheimer Como foi o projeto que criou a bomba A babel de cientistas que criou a "destruidora de mundos" Como a bomba atômica surgiu no meio de um paraíso Museu Nacional Atômico Projeto Manhattan Data importantes do Projeto Manhattan O homem e a máquina: Oppenheimer e a bomba atômica See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is the Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan, talking about his extraordinary new book Question 7. It weaves together memoir, reportage and the imaginative work of fiction. Flanagan collides his relationship with his war-traumatised father and his own near-death experience with the lives of H G Wells and Leo Szilard, the Tasmanian genocide and the bombing of Hiroshima. He talks to me about the work fiction can do, the intimate association of memory with shame, and the liberations and agonies of thinking of non-linear time. 

In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is the Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan, talking about his extraordinary new book Question 7. It weaves together memoir, reportage and the imaginative work of fiction. Flanagan collides his relationship with his war-traumatised father and his own near-death experience with the lives of H G Wells and Leo Szilard, the Tasmanian genocide and the bombing of Hiroshima. He talks to me about the work fiction can do, the intimate association of memory with shame, and the liberations and agonies of thinking of non-linear time.  

In episode 77, I interviewed William Lanouette about Leo Szilard's work on the atom bomb, with a discussion of the roles that Szilard played until the end of World War II. Today, in part two of my interview with Bill, we focus on Szilard's achievements after the war. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and the University of London in 1966 and 1973, respectively. Bill then worked as a journalist for Newsweek, The National Observer, and National Journal, and he was the Washington Correspondent for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, The New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. Bill also worked as a Senior Analyst for Energy and Science Issues at the US Government Accountability Office. Bill's first book was Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, published by Scribner's in 1992, with later editions published by the University of Chicago Press and Skyhorse Publications. Bill also published, in 2021, The Triumph of the Amateurs: The Rise, Ruin, and Banishment of Professional Rowing in The Gilded Age.

Perhaps the most overlooked scientist who played critical roles in the development of the atomic bomb was Leo Szilard. With us to explore Szilard's numerous contributions to science and society is William Lanouette. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and the University of London in 1966 and 1973, respectively. Bill then worked as a journalist for Newsweek, The National Observer, and National Journal, and he was the Washington Correspondent for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, The New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. Bill also worked as a Senior Analyst for Energy and Science Issues at the US Government Accountability Office. Bill's first book was Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, published by Scribner's in 1992, with later editions published by the University of Chicago Press and Skyhorse Publications. Bill also published, in 2021, The Triumph of the Amateurs: The Rise, Ruin, and Banishment of Professional Rowing in The Gilded Age. In this episode, we discuss all things Szilard: the man, the war, the bomb, the innovations, the collaborations, the accusations of espionage, the conflicts, and even the Martians.

For Alfred Einstein's birthday, the story of how he and fellow prominent physicist Leo Szilard co-designed a unique kind of refrigerator in the 1920s. Plus: the letter Einstein wrote in 1936 for a time capsule that would be opened in a thousand years. Einstein's Little-Known Passion Project? A Refrigerator (WIRED) Missive (Futility Closet) It would be an Einstein-level genius move to back our show on Patreon --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coolweirdawesome/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coolweirdawesome/support

A historia de como Einstein e Leo Szilard realizaron 45 patentes para construir unha neveira segura contada pola Avoa de Einstein.

What does this 1964 black comedy about a nuclear doomsday scenario tell us about the strategic thought surrounding potential nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the early years of the 1960s? How does the film play with the concept of a ‘doomsday machine' as described in the strategic literature of the day? How does the device described in the film reflect an option described by Leo Szilard, a key figure in the development of atomic weapons? How did economist/strategist Thomas Schelling's work influence Stanley Kubrick's script? How does the film explore the kind of thinking that backstops the notion of mutually assured destruction? How does the character Dr. Strangelove reflect Kubrick's desire to combine and satirize aspects of the real-world figures Wernher von Braun and John von Neumann.

FALTER-Kolumnist Peter Michael Lingens im Gespräch mit Eva Konzett über einen herausragenden Physiker der Zwischenkriegszeit, der das Manhattan-Projekt anstieß und prägte. Er wurde aber nie dafür geehrt. Und wie er den jungen Lingens schon in den 1950er Jahren vor dem Klimawandel warnte. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Reflections on "Making the Atomic Bomb", published by boazbarak on August 17, 2023 on LessWrong. [Cross posted on windowsontheory; see here for my prior writings] [it appears almost certain that in the immediate future, it would be] possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.- Letter from Albert Einstein (prepared by Leo Szilard) to F.D. Roosevelt, August 1939 Do you know, Josef Vassarionovich, what main argument has been advanced against uranium? "It would be too good if the problem could be solved. Nature seldom proves favorable to man." - Letter from Georgi Flerov to Joseph Stalin, April 1942. I've heard great things about Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Finally, on vacation, I managed to read it. (Pro-tip: buy the Kindle version - the hard copy is far too big to lug around.) It's as great as people say. Can't recommend it enough. I can't remember when, if ever, I've read a book that combines so well popular science and history. Indeed, the Atomic bomb is the one setting where the precise details of the smallest particles have profoundly impacted human history. Here are some quick thoughts after reading the book. (Warning: spoilers below for people who don't know how WWII ended.) The level of investment in the Manhattan Project was truly staggering. I knew it but didn't fully grasp this. This is not just the numbers ($2B, which was almost 1 percent of GDP at the time) but also the project's sheer size, employing more than 100,000 people, and the massive construction of buildings, factories, and roads at multiple sites. As just one example, when they didn't have enough copper, the treasury department lent the project 15,000 tons of silver to be used in the electromagnetic separation plant (to be later melted and returned after the war). Much of this cost was due to the compressed schedule. The staggering cost was mainly due to the need to get the bomb done in time to use in the war. Time and again, whenever the project faced a choice between approaches A, B, or C, they chose to pursue all three in parallel, so if two failed, they could still go ahead. Whenever there was a choice between saving money or time, they opted for the latter. The fact that the cost was primarily due to time is also evidenced by the fact that, following the war, many countries could set up their own atomic bomb programs or reach the threshold of doing so at a much lower cost. This seems to be a general principle in technological innovation: the cost of achieving a new advance decreases exponentially in time. Thus, achieving X transitions over time from being impossible to being inevitable. This is related to Bill Gates' famous quote that in technology, we tend to overestimate progress in two years and underestimate progress in ten years. The Manhattan Project was trying to achieve the Atomic bomb just at the cusp of it being possible. The project got going when General Groves was appointed (September 1942), and it took a little less than three years until the successful test (July 1945). Of course, they could have started much earlier: Einstein and Szilard sent their famous letter to Roosevelt in August 1939. The "impossible vs. inevitable" phenomenon is manifested in another way. The U.S. drastically underestimated how long it would take for the Soviet Union to achieve the bomb (even considering the Soviet advantages due to spying, which the Americans should at least have partially anticipated as well). The government fully trusted the scientists on the science. The project was authorized primarily based on pen and paper calculations. At the time the project was approved, no chain reaction had been demonstrated, and the total quantity of Uranium 23...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Reflections on "Making the Atomic Bomb", published by boazbarak on August 17, 2023 on LessWrong. [Cross posted on windowsontheory; see here for my prior writings] [it appears almost certain that in the immediate future, it would be] possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.- Letter from Albert Einstein (prepared by Leo Szilard) to F.D. Roosevelt, August 1939 Do you know, Josef Vassarionovich, what main argument has been advanced against uranium? "It would be too good if the problem could be solved. Nature seldom proves favorable to man." - Letter from Georgi Flerov to Joseph Stalin, April 1942. I've heard great things about Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Finally, on vacation, I managed to read it. (Pro-tip: buy the Kindle version - the hard copy is far too big to lug around.) It's as great as people say. Can't recommend it enough. I can't remember when, if ever, I've read a book that combines so well popular science and history. Indeed, the Atomic bomb is the one setting where the precise details of the smallest particles have profoundly impacted human history. Here are some quick thoughts after reading the book. (Warning: spoilers below for people who don't know how WWII ended.) The level of investment in the Manhattan Project was truly staggering. I knew it but didn't fully grasp this. This is not just the numbers ($2B, which was almost 1 percent of GDP at the time) but also the project's sheer size, employing more than 100,000 people, and the massive construction of buildings, factories, and roads at multiple sites. As just one example, when they didn't have enough copper, the treasury department lent the project 15,000 tons of silver to be used in the electromagnetic separation plant (to be later melted and returned after the war). Much of this cost was due to the compressed schedule. The staggering cost was mainly due to the need to get the bomb done in time to use in the war. Time and again, whenever the project faced a choice between approaches A, B, or C, they chose to pursue all three in parallel, so if two failed, they could still go ahead. Whenever there was a choice between saving money or time, they opted for the latter. The fact that the cost was primarily due to time is also evidenced by the fact that, following the war, many countries could set up their own atomic bomb programs or reach the threshold of doing so at a much lower cost. This seems to be a general principle in technological innovation: the cost of achieving a new advance decreases exponentially in time. Thus, achieving X transitions over time from being impossible to being inevitable. This is related to Bill Gates' famous quote that in technology, we tend to overestimate progress in two years and underestimate progress in ten years. The Manhattan Project was trying to achieve the Atomic bomb just at the cusp of it being possible. The project got going when General Groves was appointed (September 1942), and it took a little less than three years until the successful test (July 1945). Of course, they could have started much earlier: Einstein and Szilard sent their famous letter to Roosevelt in August 1939. The "impossible vs. inevitable" phenomenon is manifested in another way. The U.S. drastically underestimated how long it would take for the Soviet Union to achieve the bomb (even considering the Soviet advantages due to spying, which the Americans should at least have partially anticipated as well). The government fully trusted the scientists on the science. The project was authorized primarily based on pen and paper calculations. At the time the project was approved, no chain reaction had been demonstrated, and the total quantity of Uranium 23...

In Episode 185 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reviews the Oppenheimer movie, and discusses the legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 78 years after Hiroshima. Manhattan Project dissidents like Leo Szilard petitioned to stop the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. But such sentiment was overruled by Harry Truman's geopolitical imperatives—and what Freeman Dyson called the "technical arrogance" of Oppenheimer and his circle. Now, as open Russian nuclear threats continue to mount in Europe, we are poised at the brink of unparalleled catastrophe. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/countervortex Production by Chris Rywalt We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 57 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 58!

“An imaginative restructuring of a phantasmagoric life into an alternative phantasmagorical story. Oppenheimer fans will be intrigued.” —Martin J. Sherwin, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the basis for Christopher Nolan's movie OppenheimerWhile J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the atomic bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion — the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller's research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the mid-21st century, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire planet Earth.Oppenheimer combines forces with Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Leo Szilard, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel — plus rocket scientist Wernher von Braun — in a race against time to save our planet.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast features the particle physicist Steven Prohira

Case #198: Becoming Death; The Birth of Nukes Classification: [History] Our layman's introduction to nuclear weapons. How exactly do they “detonate”? What occurred in the $2 Billion-dollar Top Secret “Manhattan Project”? What is the anatomy of a nuclear explosion? And just what would happen if a nuclear weapon detonated near you? All these questions and more answered today, on OVPOD.   Guests: Isis, Brannigan Presenters: Ood Gallifrey, Misfit @MisfitRader Poison: Caffeinated Cottage Cheese   Topics Mentioned: Trinity Test, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Bombs, Atom Bomb, Atomic Bomb, Nukes, Implosion, Radiation, Thermonuclear, Fission, Fusion, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, World War II, Mushroom Cloud, Uranium, Plutonium, Demon Core, The Manhattan Project   -Pallet Cleanser- Reaction to Russian Nuclear Test Tsar Bomba Upscaled History, 1961   Subscribe to US! Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/occultae-veritatis-podcast-ovpod/id1281366530?ign-mpt=uo%3D4 Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9vdnBvZC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw Android: https://www.subscribeonandroid.com/ovpod.libsyn.com/rss Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/48ZAhs40tA1kGeQqdzsfZC?si=TgBA2oeiQ6Wj4pglZjBPnQ&nd=1 Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/nbyvd-5c160/Occultae-Veritatis-Podcast---OVPOD Website: https://www.ovpod.ca/ RSS: https://ovpod.libsyn.com/rss Support Us: http://www.patreon.com/ovpod   Misfits Links: Kinda Fruity Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@kindafruitypod https://kindafruity.podbean.com/ https://open.spotify.com/show/5XB7eLLxdBuFfBhec7Admy https://twitter.com/KindafruityPod Bonus Misfit: https://twitter.com/MisfitRader https://www.youtube.com/@monsterpaws6090/videos https://www.twitch.tv/brennamsm   Tags: #TrinityTest #NuclearWeapons #Nukes #atombomb #atomicbomb #Implosion #Radiation # Thermonuclear #Fission #Fusion #AlbertEinstein #Oppenheimer #MushroomCloud #Uranium #Plutonium #DemonCore #ManhattanProject   Floating Cities Kevin MacLeod License: CC BY 3.0 http://goo.gl/BlcHZR   Inspired Kevin MacLeod License: CC BY 3.0 http://goo.gl/BlcHZR   Lamentation Kevin MacLeod License: CC BY 3.0 http://goo.gl/BlcHZR

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard, published by jasoncrawford on January 5, 2023 on LessWrong. Leo Szilard—the physicist who first conceived of the nuclear chain reaction and who urged the US to undertake the Manhattan Project—also wrote fiction. His book of short stories, The Voice of the Dolphins, contains a story “The Mark Gable Foundation,” dated 1948, from which I will present to you an excerpt, without comment: “I'm thinking of setting up a trust fund. I want to do something that will really contribute to the happiness of mankind; but it's very difficult to know what to do with money. When Mr. Rosenblatt told me that you'd be here tonight I asked the mayor to invite me. I certainly would value your advice.” “Would you intend to do anything for the advancement of science?” I asked. “No,” Mark Gable said. “I believe scientific progress is too fast as it is.” “I share your feeling about this point,” I said with the fervor of conviction, “but then why not do something about the retardation of scientific progress?” “That I would very much like to do,” Mark Gable said, “but how do I go about it?” “Well,” I said, “I think that shouldn't be very difficult. As a matter of fact, I think it would be quite easy. You could set up a foundation, with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make out a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. And the very best men in the field should be appointed as chairmen at salaries of fifty thousand dollars each. Also have about twenty prizes of one hundred thousand dollars each for the best scientific papers of the year. This is just about all you would have to do. Your lawyers could easily prepare a charter for the foundation. As a matter of fact, any of the National Science Foundation bills which were introduced in the Seventy-ninth and Eightieth Congresses could perfectly well serve as a model.” “I think you had better explain to Mr. Gable why this foundation would in fact retard the progress of science,” said a bespectacled young man sitting at the far end of the table, whose name I didn't get at the time of introduction. “It should be obvious,” I said. “First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly, the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. For a few years there might be a great increase in scientific output; but by going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn't would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too.” Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard, published by jasoncrawford on January 5, 2023 on LessWrong. Leo Szilard—the physicist who first conceived of the nuclear chain reaction and who urged the US to undertake the Manhattan Project—also wrote fiction. His book of short stories, The Voice of the Dolphins, contains a story “The Mark Gable Foundation,” dated 1948, from which I will present to you an excerpt, without comment: “I'm thinking of setting up a trust fund. I want to do something that will really contribute to the happiness of mankind; but it's very difficult to know what to do with money. When Mr. Rosenblatt told me that you'd be here tonight I asked the mayor to invite me. I certainly would value your advice.” “Would you intend to do anything for the advancement of science?” I asked. “No,” Mark Gable said. “I believe scientific progress is too fast as it is.” “I share your feeling about this point,” I said with the fervor of conviction, “but then why not do something about the retardation of scientific progress?” “That I would very much like to do,” Mark Gable said, “but how do I go about it?” “Well,” I said, “I think that shouldn't be very difficult. As a matter of fact, I think it would be quite easy. You could set up a foundation, with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make out a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. And the very best men in the field should be appointed as chairmen at salaries of fifty thousand dollars each. Also have about twenty prizes of one hundred thousand dollars each for the best scientific papers of the year. This is just about all you would have to do. Your lawyers could easily prepare a charter for the foundation. As a matter of fact, any of the National Science Foundation bills which were introduced in the Seventy-ninth and Eightieth Congresses could perfectly well serve as a model.” “I think you had better explain to Mr. Gable why this foundation would in fact retard the progress of science,” said a bespectacled young man sitting at the far end of the table, whose name I didn't get at the time of introduction. “It should be obvious,” I said. “First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly, the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. For a few years there might be a great increase in scientific output; but by going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn't would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too.” Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Get all of your questions about the history of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project answered. Learn what drove scientists such as Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer to develop it, and why it was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Part 1 of this episode explains how the bomb was developed and how it was used. Part 2 of this episode explores the arguments for and against the use of the atomic bombs on Japan. 

Get all of your questions about the history of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project answered. Learn what drove scientists such as Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer to develop it, and why it was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Part 1 of this episode explains how the bomb was developed and how it was used. Part 2 of this episode explores the arguments for and against the use of the atomic bombs on Japan. 

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What could an AI-caused existential catastrophe actually look like?, published by Benjamin Hilton on September 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This article forms part of 80000 Hours's explanation of risks from artificial intelligence, and focuses on how an AI system could cause an existential catastrophe. Our full problem profile on risks from AI looks at why we're worried things like this will happen. At 5:29 AM on July 16, 1945, deep in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, the Manhattan Project carried out the world's first successful test of a nuclear weapon. From that moment, we've had the technological capacity to wipe out humanity. But if you asked someone in 1945 to predict exactly how this risk would play out, they would almost certainly have got it wrong. They may have thought there would have been more widespread use of nuclear weapons in World War II. They certainly would not have predicted the fall of the USSR 45 years later. Current experts are concerned about India–Pakistan nuclear conflict and North Korean state action, but 1945 was before even the partition of India or the Korean War. That is to say, you'd have real difficulty predicting anything about how nuclear weapons would be used. It would have been even harder to make these predictions in 1933, when Leo Szilard first realised that a nuclear chain reaction of immense power could be possible, without any concrete idea of what these weapons would look like. Despite this difficulty, you wouldn't be wrong to be concerned. In our problem profile on AI, we describe a very general way in which advancing AI could go wrong. But there are lots of specifics we can't know much about at this point. Maybe there will be a single transformative AI system, or maybe there will be many; there could be very fast growth in the capabilities of AI, or very slow growth. Each scenario will look a little different, and carry different risks. And the specific problems that arise in any one scenario are necessarily less likely to happen than the overall risk. Despite not knowing how things will play out, it may still be useful to look at some concrete possibilities of how things could go wrong. In particular, we argued in the full profile that sufficiently advanced systems might be able to take power away from humans — how could that possibly happen? How could a power-seeking AI actually take power? Here are seven possible techniques that could be used by a power-seeking AI (or multiple AI systems working together) to actually gain power. These techniques could all interact with one another, and it's difficult to say at this point (years or decades before the technology exists) which are most likely to be used. Also, systems more intelligent than humans could develop plans to seek power that we haven't yet thought of. 1. Hacking Software is absolutely full of vulnerabilities. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology reported over 8,000 vulnerabilities found in systems across the world in 2021 — an average of 50 per day. Most of these are small, but every so often they are used to cause huge chaos. The list of most expensive crypto hacks keeps getting new entrants — as of March 2022, the largest was $624 million stolen from Ronin Network. And nobody noticed for six days. One expert we spoke to said that professional ‘red teams' — security staff whose job it is to find vulnerabilities in systems — frequently manage to infiltrate their clients, including crucial and powerful infrastructure like banks and national energy grids. In 2010, the Stuxnet virus successfully managed to destroy Iranian nuclear enrichment centrifuges — despite these centrifuges being completely disconnected from the internet — marking the first time a piece of malware was used to cause physical damage. A Russian hack in 20...

Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer Prize for his definitive book on the development of nuclear weapons called “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” It's one of 26 books he's written, several of them focused on the world in the nuclear age. He joins Tim to talk about the wartime effort that changed everything, The Manhattan Project. This Encore Episode was first released November 4, 2019. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/shapingopinion/Encore_-_The_Building_of_the_Bomb.mp3 In 1938, nuclear fission was discovered in Nazi Germany just in time for Christmas. News of the scientific breakthrough was published in Germany, and later in a British scientific journal in 1939. At that same time, many Jewish scientists had escaped or were in the process of escaping from Nazi Germany. They would continue their lives and work in places like Canada and the United States. The persecution of the Jews was quickly brewing as the imminent threat of war loomed. These scientists knew the Nazis personally. They also knew that Germany still had many good scientists working on nuclear fission. This fact worried a group of Hungarian Jewish scientists who came to the United States from Germany. They wondered if the Nazis were developing an atomic bomb. They knew that it was possible, if not probable. How much progress have the Nazi scientists made? No one knew. Once Hitler had a bomb, would he use it? Everyone knew the answer to that question. Something else they knew, they had to help the United States develop the bomb before the Germans, and to do that, they had to get the attention of the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The same thing was true in Great Britain. They enlisted the support of Albert Einstein, who together with scientist Leo Szilard, signed a letter to the president informing him of the grave threat. It worked. Winston Churchill also made a persuasive argument of his own. That was the formal beginning of America's commitment to the nuclear age. The actual beginning was on Monday, August 6th 1945 when the United States would drop a bomb called “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima that would forever change the threat of war in the world. Colonel Paul Tibbets piloted a B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb that would kill at least 70,000 people, and through radiation poisoning that total would rise to somewhere between 90,000 and 160,000 within a year. That bomb was the first time in history that an atomic bomb would be used in warfare, bringing about a swift end to the Allies' war with Japan and that country's unconditional surrender. Just as the bomb sent shockwaves in its wake, so, too did the emergence of the nuclear age. For the first time, one bomb could eliminate entire cities, leaving immediate and residual devastation. This in the context of the burgeoning Cold War, where the United States stood up against its geopolitical rival the Soviet Union, which was on its way to becoming the world's other nuclear power. In the ensuing decades as tensions between the super powers ebbed and flowed, no one ever felt as safe as they once did before the nuclear age. Richard Rhodes has authored 26 books, and has studied the nuclear age like few others. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, MIT and Stanford. He is an emeritus member of the Atomic Heritage Foundation's Board of Directors, and has interviewed several of the Manhattan Project's scientists in his work. Links Richard Rhodes (website) The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (Amazon) Manhattan Project, History.com The Atomic Heritage Foundation Why They called it The Manhattan Project, New York Times About this Episode's Guest Richard Rhodes Richard Rhodes is the author of 26 books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Precognition, published by jasoncrawford on the LessWrong. This is a linkpost for It's almost impossible to predict the future. But it's also unnecessary, because most people are living in the past. All you have to do is see the present before everyone else does. To be less pithy, but more clear: Most people are slow to notice and accept change. If you can just be faster than most people at seeing what's going on, updating your model of the world, and reacting accordingly, it's almost as good as seeing the future. We see this in the US with covid: The same people who didn't realize that we all should be wearing masks, when they were life-saving, are now slow to realize/admit that we can stop wearing them. For a dramatic historical example (from The Making of the Atomic Bomb), take Leo Szilard's observations of 1930s Germany: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. . In late March, Jewish judges and lawyers in Prussia and Bavaria were dismissed from practice. On the weekend of April 1, Julius Streicher directed a national boycott of Jewish businesses and Jews were beaten in the streets. “I took a train from Berlin to Vienna on a certain date, close to the first of April, 1933,” Szilard writes. “The train was empty. The same train the next day was overcrowded, was stopped at the frontier, the people had to get out, and everybody was interrogated by the Nazis. This just goes to show that if you want to succeed in this world you don't have to be much cleverer than other people, you just have to be one day earlier.” How to be earlier 1. Independent thinking. If you only believe things that are accepted by the majority of people, then by definition you'll always be behind the curve in a changing world. 2. Listen to other independent thinkers. You can't pay attention to everything at once or evaluate every area. You can only be the first to realize something in a narrow domain in which you are an expert. But if you tune your intellectual radar to other independent thinkers, you can be in the first ~1% of people to realize a new fact. Seek them out, find them, and follow them. I was taking covid precautions in late February 2020, about three weeks ahead of official “lockdown” measures—but only because I was tuned in to the people who were six weeks ahead. But: 3. Distinguish independent thinkers from crackpots. Both are “contrarian”; only one has any hope of being right. This is an art, honed over decades. Pay attention to both the source's evidence and their logic. Credentials are relevant, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient. 4. Read broadly; seek out and adopt concepts and frameworks that help you understand the world (e.g.: exponential growth, network effects, efficient frontiers). Finally: 5. Learn how to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Even when you see the present earlier, you won't see it with full clarity, nor will you be able to predict the future. You'll just have a set of probabilities that are closer to reality than most people's. To return to the covid example: in January/February 2020, even the people farthest ahead of the curve weren't certain whether there would be a pandemic or how bad it would be. They just knew that the chances were double-digit percent, before it was even on most people's radar. Find low-cost ways to avoid extreme downside, and low-investment opportunities for extreme upside. For example, when a pandemic might be starting, it makes sense to stock up on supplies, move meetings to phone calls, etc.—these are cheap insurance. In some fantasy worlds, there are superheroes with “pre-cognition”, able to see the immediate future. They're always one step ahead. But since most people are a few steps behind reality, you don't need pre-cognition—just independent thinking. Thanks for listening. to h...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Thomas C. Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict" , published by cousin_it on the AI Alignment Forum. It's an old book, I know, and one that many of us have already read. But if you haven't, you should. If there's anything in the world that deserves to be called a martial art of rationality, this book is the closest approximation yet. Forget rationalist Judo: this is rationalist eye-gouging, rationalist gang warfare, rationalist nuclear deterrence. Techniques that let you win, but you don't want to look in the mirror afterward. Imagine you and I have been separately parachuted into an unknown mountainous area. We both have maps and radios, and we know our own positions, but don't know each other's positions. The task is to rendezvous. Normally we'd coordinate by radio and pick a suitable meeting point, but this time you got lucky. So lucky in fact that I want to strangle you: upon landing you discovered that your radio is broken. It can transmit but not receive. Two days of rock-climbing and stream-crossing later, tired and dirty, I arrive at the hill where you've been sitting all this time smugly enjoying your lack of information. And after we split the prize and cash our checks I learn that you broke the radio on purpose. Schelling's book walks you through numerous conflict situations where an unintuitive and often self-limiting move helps you win, slowly building up to the topic of nuclear deterrence between the US and the Soviets. And it's not idle speculation either: the author worked at the White House at the dawn of the Cold War and his theories eventually found wide military application in deterrence and arms control. Here's a selection of quotes to give you a flavor: the whole book is like this, except interspersed with game theory math. The use of a professional collecting agency by a business firm for the collection of debts is a means of achieving unilateral rather than bilateral communication with its debtors and of being therefore unavailable to hear pleas or threats from the debtors. A sufficiently severe and certain penalty on the payment of blackmail can protect a potential victim. One may have to pay the bribed voter if the election is won, not on how he voted. I can block your car in the road by placing my car in your way; my deterrent threat is passive, the decision to collide is up to you. If you, however, find me in your way and threaten to collide unless I move, you enjoy no such advantage: the decision to collide is still yours, and I enjoy deterrence. You have to arrange to have to collide unless I move, and that is a degree more complicated. We have learned that the threat of massive destruction may deter an enemy only if there is a corresponding implicit promise of nondestruction in the event he complies, so that we must consider whether too great a capacity to strike him by surprise may induce him to strike first to avoid being disarmed by a first strike from us. Leo Szilard has even pointed to the paradox that one might wish to confer immunity on foreign spies rather than subject them to prosecution, since they may be the only means by which the enemy can obtain persuasive evidence of the important truth that we are making no preparations for embarking on a surprise attack. I sometimes think of game theory as being roughly divided in three parts, like Gaul. There's competitive zero-sum game theory, there's cooperative game theory, and there are games where players compete but also have some shared interest. Except this third part isn't a middle ground. It's actually better thought of as ultra-competitive game theory. Zero-sum settings are relatively harmless: you minimax and that's it. It's the variable-sum games that make you nuke your neighbour. Sometime ago in my wild and reckless youth that hopefully isn't over yet, a certain ex-girlfriend...

John Von Neumann was born in Hungary at the tail end of the Astro-Hungarian Empire. The family was made a part of the nobility and as a young prodigy in Budapest, He learned languages and by 8 years old was doing calculus. By 17 he was writing papers on polynomials. He wrote his dissertation in 1925 he added to set theory with the axiom of foundation and the notion of class, or properties shared by members of a set. He worked on the minimax theorem in 1928, the proof of which established zero-sum games and started another discipline within math, game theory. By 1929 he published the axiom system that led to Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory. And by 1932 he'd developed foundational work on ergodic theory which would evolve into a branch of math that looks at the states of dynamical systems, where functions can describe a points time dependence in space. And so he of course penned a book on quantum mechanics the same year. Did we mention he was smart and given the way his brain worked it made sense that he would eventually gravitate into computing. He went to the best schools with other brilliant scholars who would go on to be called the Martians. They were all researching new areas that required more and more computing - then still done by hand or a combination of hand and mechanical calculators. The Martians included De Hevesy, who won a Nobel prize for Chemistry. Von Kármán got the National Medal of Science and a Franklin Award. Polanyl developed the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science. Paul Erdős was a brilliant mathematician who published over 1,500 articles. Edward Teller is known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, working on nuclear energy throughout his life and lobbying for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. Dennis Gabor wrote Inventing the Future and won a Nobel Prize in Physics. Eugene Wigner also took home a Nobel Prize in Physics and a National Medal of Science. Leo Szilard took home an Albert Einstein award for his work on nuclear chain reactions and joined in the Manhattan Project as a patent holder for a nuclear reactor. Physicists and brilliant scientists. And here's a key component to the explosion in science following World War II: many of them fled to the United States and other western powers because they were Jewish, to get away from the Nazis, or to avoid communists controlling science. And then there was Harsanyl, Halmos, Goldmark, Franz Alexander, Orowan, and John Kemeny who gave us BASIC. They all contributed to the world we live in today - but von Neumann sometimes hid how smart he was, preferring to not show just how much arithmetic computed through his head. He was married twice and loved fast cars, fine food, bad jokes, and was an engaging and enigmatic figure. He studied measure theory and broke dimension theory into algebraic operators. He studied topological groups, operator algebra, spectral theory, functional analysis and abstract Hilbert space. Geometry and Lattice theory. As with other great thinkers, some of his work has stood the test of time and some has had gaps filled with other theories. And then came the Manhattan project. Here, he helped develop explosive lenses - a key component to the nuclear bomb. Along the way he worked on economics and fluid mechanics. And of course, he theorized and worked out the engineering principals for really big explosions. He was a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission and at the height of the Cold War after working out game theory, developed the concept of mutually assured destruction - giving the world hydrogen bombs and ICBMs and reducing the missile gap. Hard to imagine but at the times the Soviets actually had a technical lead over the US, which was proven true when they launched Sputnik. As with the other Martians, he fought Communism and Fasciscm until his death - which won him a Medal of Freedom from then president Eisenhower. His friend Stanislaw Ulam developed the modern Markov Chain Monte Carlo method and Von Neumann got involved in computing to work out those calculations. This combined with where his research lay landed him as an early power user of ENIAC. He actually heard about the machine at a station while waiting for a train. He'd just gotten home from England and while we will never know if he knew of the work Turing was doing on Colossus at Bletchley Park, we do know that he offered Turing a job at the Institute for Advanced Study that he was running in Princeton before World War II and had read Turing's papers, including “On Computable Numbers” and understood the basic concepts of stored programs - and breaking down the logic into zeros and ones. He discussed using ENIAC to compute over 333 calculations per second. He could do a lot in his head, but he wasn't that good of a computer. His input was taken and when Eckert and Mauchly went from ENIAC to EDVAC, or the Electronic Discrete Variable Calculator, the findings were published in a paper called “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” - a foundational paper in computing for a number of reasons. One is that Mauchly and Eckert had an entrepreneurial spirit and felt that not only should their names have been on the paper but that it was probably premature and so they quickly filed a patent in 1945, even though some of what they told him that went into the paper helped to invalidate the patent later. They considered these trade secrets and didn't share in von Neumann's idea that information must be set free. In the paper lies an important contribution, Von Neumann broke down the parts of a modern computer. He set the information for how these would work free. He broke down the logical blocks of how a computer works into the modern era. How once we strip away the electromechanical computers that a fully digital machine works. Inputs go into a Central Processing Unit, which has an instruction register, a clock to keep operations and data flow in sync, and a counter - it does the math. It then uses quick-access memory, which we'd call Random Access Memory, or RAM today, to make processing data instructions faster. And it would use long-term memory for operations that didn't need to be as highly available to the CPU. This should sound like a pretty familiar way to architect devices at this point. The result would be sent to an output device. Think of a modern Swift app for an iPhone - the whole of what the computer did could be moved into a single wafer once humanity worked out how first transistors and then multiple transistors on a single chip worked. Yet another outcome of the paper was to inspire Turing and others to work on computers after the war. Turing named his ACE or Automatic Computing Engine out of respect to Charles Babbage. That led to the addition of storage to computers. After all, punched tape was used for Colossus during the war and and punched cards and tape had been around for awhile. It's ironic that we think of memory as ephemeral data storage and storage as more long-term storage. But that's likely more to do with the order these scientific papers came out than anything - and homage to the impact each had. He'd write The Computer and the Brain, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Continuous Geometry, and other books. He also studied DNA and cognition and weather systems, inferring we could predict the results of climate change and possibly even turn back global warming - which by 1950 when he was working on it was already acknowledged by scientists. As with many of the early researchers in nuclear physics, he died of cancer - invoking Pascal's wager on his deathbed. He died in 1957 - just a few years too early to get a Nobel Prize in one of any number of fields. One of my favorite aspects of Von Neumann was that he was a lifelong lover of history. He was a hacker - bouncing around between subjects. And he believed in human freedom. So much so that this wealthy and charismatic pseudo-aristocrat would dedicate his life to the study of knowledge and public service. So thank you for the Von Neumann Architecture and breaking computing down into ways that it couldn't be wholesale patented too early to gain wide adoption. And thank you for helping keep the mutually assured destruction from happening and for inspiring generations of scientists in so many fields. I'm stoked to be alive and not some pile of nuclear dust. And to be gainfully employed in computing. He had a considerable impact in both.

Learn how your brain replays the things you've practiced at 20 times speed; and an engine that uses information as fuel. On your practice breaks, your brain replays memories of your practice session at 20x speed by Kelsey Donk Human brain replays new memories at 20 times the speed during waking rest. (2021). EurekAlert! https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/cp-hbr060321.php  Buch, E. R., Claudino, L., Quentin, R., Bönstrup, M., & Cohen, L. G. (2021). Consolidation of human skill linked to waking hippocampo-neocortical replay. Cell Reports, 35(10), 109193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109193  Scientists built an ultrafast engine that they claim uses information as fuel by Briana Brownell Ratner, P. (2021, May 24). Researchers design an engine that uses information as fuel. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/fastest-ever-information-engine  ‌World's fastest information-fuelled engine designed by SFU researchers - University Communications - Simon Fraser University. (2021). www.sfu.ca. http://www.sfu.ca/university-communications/issues-experts/2021/05/world-s-fastest-information-fuelled-engine-designed-by-sfu-resea.html  ‌Saha, T. K., Lucero, J. N. E., Ehrich, J., Sivak, D. A., & Bechhoefer, J. (2021). Maximizing power and velocity of an information engine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(20), e2023356118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023356118  Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

आज ही के दिन 4 जुलाई 1932 को लियो जिलार्ड ने एटम बम के पेटेंट के लिए आवेदन दिया था। मई 1932 में जैम्स चेडविक ने न्यूट्रॉन की खोज की थी। इसके कुछ महीनों बाद ही लियो के दिमाग में ये बात आ गई थी कि न्यूट्रॉन चेन रिएक्शन के जरिए एटॉमिक एनर्जी को नियंत्रित किया जा सकता है, और इसका उपयोग बम बनाने में भी हो सकता है।

HG Wells motivated authors, inventors, scientists, politicians and the every day man. Specifically Orson Welles, Leo Szilard, Robert Goddard and George Lucas were inspired by Wells to change the world. And from his words we put astronauts on the moon, created NASA and now rovers on Mars. Get ready to hear the story of how one man shaped science. 

HG Wells motivated authors, inventors, scientists, politicians and the every day man. Specifically Orson Welles, Leo Szilard, Robert Goddard and George Lucas were inspired by Wells to change the world. And from his words we put astronauts on the moon, created NASA and now rovers on Mars. Get ready to hear the story of how one man shaped science. 

In December 1938, a frustrated nuclear physicist named Leo Szilard wrote a letter to the British Admiralty telling them that he had given up on his greatest invention — the nuclear chain reaction. "The idea of a nuclear chain reaction won’t work. There’s no need to keep this patent secret, and indeed there’s no need to keep this patent too. It won’t work." — Leo Szilard What Szilard didn’t know when he licked the envelope was that, on that very same day, a research team in Berlin had just split the uranium atom for the very first time. Within a year, the Manhatta Project would begin, and by 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It was only four years later — barely a decade after Szilard had written off the idea as impossible — that Russia successfully tested its first atomic weapon, kicking off a global nuclear arms race that continues in various forms to this day. It’s a surprisingly short jump from cutting edge technology to global-scale risk. But although the nuclear story is a high-profile example of this kind of leap, it’s far from the only one. Today, many see artificial intelligence as a class of technology whose development will lead to global risks — and as a result, as a technology that needs to be managed globally. In much the same way that international treaties have allowed us to reduce the risk of nuclear war, we may need global coordination around AI to mitigate its potential negative impacts. One of the world’s leading experts on AI’s global coordination problem is Nicolas Miailhe. Nicolas is the co-founder of The Future Society, a global nonprofit whose primary focus is encouraging responsible adoption of AI, and ensuring that countries around the world come to a common understanding of the risks associated with it. Nicolas is a veteran of the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government, an appointed expert to the Global Partnership on AI, and advises cities, governments, international organizations about AI policy.

The Bomb explores the scientific and political events that led to the development of the atomic bomb. The story focusses on scientist Leo Szilard and his role in the discovery of nuclear fission. The Bomb follows Szilard, a Hungarian exile, to his work in Berlin, London, New York and Chicago. The story also highlights his attempts to stop the use of nuclear energy in warfare.Emily Strasser is the narrator of The Bomb. Her personal connection to the development of the atomic bomb if familial in nature; Emily’s grandfather was a chemist on the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was a secret US government initiative during World War II to develop an atomic weapon before the Germans did the same.Emily has researched and written about nuclear arms. Her work also considers the powerful effects of state regimes of secrecy, institutional structures and individual choice and action. Her personal journey to come to terms with her grandfather’s work along with her passion for meaningful change make her more than just a narrator. Listeners can expect to be asked to do more than think.In this episode of MetaPod, we talk to Emily about what it was like to work with the BBC on The Bomb. We also hear her personal stories and opinions on the threats and choices that we face today, such as climate change and cyber warfare.

With the outbreak of war and the entry of the United States into World War 2, Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein write a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, detailing the possibility of nuclear bomb technology. The president heeds their warning, and orders the military to begin the Manhattan project, a massive scientific and industrial effort led by the seasoned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The successful Trinity test proves the immense power and destructive potential of the nuclear bomb.The Atomic Bomb podcast describes the history leading to the discovery of the atomic bomb, as well as its role in World War 2. We also examine the science behind the understanding of the atomic nucleus, how it enables the release of atomic energy, as well as the design and function of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. We follow the stories of some of the scientists involved – their discoveries, tragedies, and adventures. Lastly, we consider the geopolitical impact that nuclear weapons have made on the world.Credits and Licensing Information:Written, presented, and edited by Lane VotapkaAdditional edits by Gary VotapkaOriginal logo and banner by Inova Enterprise.If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing or making a donation at https://buymeacoffee.com/lvotapka or by engaging in discussions at my Thinkspot page: https://www.thinkspot.com/forum_type/lane-votapka/author/4WtDOo/author/4WtDOo.Music:"Americana", “Black Vortex”, “Crusade”, “Eastern Thought”, “Egmont Overture”, “Evening Melodrama”, “Fanfare for Space”, “Five Armies”, “Full On”, “Gaslamp Funworks”, “Gregorian Chant”, “Hero Down”, “Industrial Revolution”, “Oppressive Gloom”, “Return of Lazarus”, “Stormfront”, “Tempting Secrets”, “The Descent”, “The Pyre”, “The Sky of Our Ancestors”, “Thunderbird”, “Unlight” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Sound Effects:“Atomic Explosion and Sub Rumble”GowlerMusic (https://freesound.org/s/265459/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Radio Noise 2”ERH (https://freesound.org/s/30335/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Super 8 mm projector”Eelke (https://freesound.org/s/256647/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Bullroarer Flyby”Benboncan (https://freesound.org/s/91384/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Windy farming land NL 160310_0872”klankbeeld (https://freesound.org/s/339699/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Bf-109 Flyby”Fight2FlyPhoto (https://freesound.org/s/143558/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“ModelAHorn”daveincamas (https://freesound.org/s/43801/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Geiger Counter”johnnythesalesman (https://freesound.org/s/423291/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Applause 1”FunWithSound (https://freesound.org/s/381355/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Gun-Pistol(one shot)”Shades (https://freesound.org/s/37236/)Licensed under Creative Commons: Sampling Plus 1.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode“Crowd Screaming, A”InspectorJ (https://freesound.org/s/421852/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Alien Breath 2”FiveBrosStopMosYT (https://freesound.org/s/537023/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“hissing_gas”Taberius (https://freesound.org/s/327534/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“dot matrix printer”azumarill (https://freesound.org/s/485468/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“thunder”xerana (https://freesound.org/s/199638/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

In the middle of the 20th century, the combination of scientific brilliance and a globe-spanning war produced weapons so powerful that a single bomb could flatten an entire city. The origin of this technology takes us back into history, to Leo Szilard's first conception of a nuclear chain reaction, and even further back, when scientists weren't sure whether atoms even existed. Once atoms, and all their various parts, were discovered, great scientists like Ernest Rutherford, JJ Thompson, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein peeled back layers of the mysteries of the atomic and subatomic realm to reveal the immense energy that lies within.The Atomic Bomb podcast describes the history leading to the discovery of the atomic bomb, as well as its role in World War 2. We also examine the science behind the understanding of the atomic nucleus, how it enables the release of atomic energy, as well as the design and function of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. We follow the stories of some of the scientists involved – their discoveries, tragedies, and adventures. Lastly, we consider the geopolitical impact that nuclear weapons have made on the world.Credits and Licensing Information:Written, presented, and edited by Lane VotapkaAdditional edits by Gary VotapkaOriginal logo and banner by Inova Enterprise.If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing or making a donation at https://buymeacoffee.com/lvotapka or by engaging in discussions at my Thinkspot page: https://www.thinkspot.com/forum_type/lane-votapka/author/4WtDOo/author/4WtDOo.Music:"Americana", “Black Vortex”, “Crusade”, “Eastern Thought”, “Egmont Overture”, “Evening Melodrama”, “Fanfare for Space”, “Five Armies”, “Full On”, “Gaslamp Funworks”, “Gregorian Chant”, “Hero Down”, “Industrial Revolution”, “Oppressive Gloom”, “Return of Lazarus”, “Stormfront”, “Tempting Secrets”, “The Descent”, “The Pyre”, “The Sky of Our Ancestors”, “Thunderbird”, “Unlight” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Sound Effects:“Atomic Explosion and Sub Rumble”GowlerMusic (https://freesound.org/s/265459/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Radio Noise 2”ERH (https://freesound.org/s/30335/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Super 8 mm projector”Eelke (https://freesound.org/s/256647/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Bullroarer Flyby”Benboncan (https://freesound.org/s/91384/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Windy farming land NL 160310_0872”klankbeeld (https://freesound.org/s/339699/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Bf-109 Flyby”Fight2FlyPhoto (https://freesound.org/s/143558/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“ModelAHorn”daveincamas (https://freesound.org/s/43801/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Geiger Counter”johnnythesalesman (https://freesound.org/s/423291/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Applause 1”FunWithSound (https://freesound.org/s/381355/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Gun-Pistol(one shot)”Shades (https://freesound.org/s/37236/)Licensed under Creative Commons: Sampling Plus 1.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode“Crowd Screaming, A”InspectorJ (https://freesound.org/s/421852/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“Alien Breath 2”FiveBrosStopMosYT (https://freesound.org/s/537023/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“hissing_gas”Taberius (https://freesound.org/s/327534/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“dot matrix printer”azumarill (https://freesound.org/s/485468/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode“thunder”xerana (https://freesound.org/s/199638/)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Unportedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

Emily Strasser is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Ploughshares, Guernica, Colorado Review, The New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Tricycle, among others, and she was the presenter of the BBC podcast “The Bomb.” She is also working on a book about the intersection of family and national secrets in the nuclear city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. To give some background, Oak Ridge was established in 1942 as a production site for the Manhattan Project—the massive American, British, and Canadian operation that developed the atomic bomb. It's the site of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, scientific and technological development and still plays a crucial role in the city's economy and culture in general. The location and low population also helped keep the town a secret, though the settlement's population grew from about 3,000-3,750 in 1942 to about 75,000 by 1945. At the same time, the government is still cleaning up from the sites' historic roles. In 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Oak Ridge Reservation as a Superfund site. With Emily, we discuss the history of the nuclear age with Leo Szilard and her grandfather who worked at Y-12, what secrecy means to her within the nuclear industry, how Oak Ridge became a Superfund site and what their clean up process, and what motivated her to write her book. Contact and connect with Emily: http://emilystrasser.com BBC podcast The Bomb: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-bomb/id1524778767 Oak Ridge History and Clean Up: https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/oak-ridge-a-look-into-the-superfund-sites-environmental-cleanup/51-552401280 Leo Szilard: https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/leo-szilard https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/biographies/szilard.html

Oh hey. You’re here again. It must mean it’s PODCAST TIME. This week, Zane gets his zzz in a spooky kooky way with On a Cold Dark Night. Liz finds a podcast that tests the limits of extreme internet satire with The Renner Files. And Nick gets ready for war, with The Bomb. Then it’s time for reviews reviews reviews. Well, just three of them, from the whole “we recommended some podcasts last week” thing.Liz Recommends - The Renner Files“The Renner Files is a new kind of true crime podcast… one that’s not about true crime at all. Instead it’s about Jeremy Renner’s ill-fated app. Why did Oscar-nominated actor Jeremy Renner ever have an app? What did it do? Who made it? Who used it? And why did it shake the internet to its core? Hosts Caroline Goldfarb and Sarah Ramos set out to investigate the mystery of the app, but got so much more in return. The Renner Files tells a larger story: one about the dangerous side of celebrity fandom, the ethics of audience exploitation, the celebrity influencer complex, and the destructive power of ironic internet comedy.”For both: start from the start, it’s a serial.https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-renner-files/id1530942600Nick Recommends - The BombA little-known scientist discovers something that will change the course of human history.After befriending some of the world’s greatest physicists in 1920s Berlin, Albert Einstein among them, Leo Szilard is forced to flee when the Nazis come to power. In London, he discovers the destructive possibilities of harnessing nuclear power; setting the course for the world’s first atomic bomb.For both: from the start https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-bomb/id1524778767Zane Recommends - On a Dark, Cold Nighthttps://www.kristenzaza.com/podcastOn a Dark, Cold Night is the ideal podcast for horror-lovers with insomnia; a creepy friend to tell you bedtime/ghost stories. The podcast involves Your Narrator telling you a spine-chilling yet soothing ghost story every week. Launched in January 2018, the show has over 100 episodes to listen to and is written, performed, and produced by Kristen Zaza.For Both: It is a series, so start at the beginninghttps://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-a-dark-cold-night/id1335069754 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Robert Oppenheimer is the name that most people would associate with the development of the Atomic bomb. He famously invoked a line from the ancient Hindu text The Bhagavad Gita saying "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." But of course, this project involved hundreds of Scientists among the most interesting of whom, Leo Szilard, is the subject of a new BBC Podcast “The Bomb”. Emily Strasser is the host of “The Bomb”.

Time is running out. As Manhattan Project scientists test the world’s first nuclear bomb, Leo Szilard knows it’s the last chance to stop the US government from dropping the bomb on Japanese civilians. Working with colleagues at Chicago’s Met Lab, Szilard does all he can to alert the US President. But will his message get there in time? #thebomb

The FBI pursues Leo Szilard as he loses control of the project to create a nuclear bomb. With his influence waning, the leaders of the Manhattan Project now threaten his liberty. But as the world’s first nuclear bomb comes within touching distance, Szilard fears it might soon be used on a city in Japan. #thebomb

An attack on Pearl Harbour changes everything. After a surprise Japanese attack destroys US ships, the US declares war on Japan, and intensifies its efforts to create the first nuclear bomb. Caught in the middle of it all, Leo Szilard starts to lose his grip on the project. #thebomb

A vital message must be delivered to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fearing the Nazis are on the verge of creating the first nuclear bomb, Leo Szilard needs to convince the US Government to take the threat seriously. In his hour of need, he reaches out to an old friend, Albert Einstein. #thebomb

Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.

Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.

Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.

Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s a race against time to beat the Nazis to the first nuclear bomb. After his epiphany in London, Leo Szilard must convince the scientific establishment to take the nuclear threat seriously. He turns to Frederick Lindemann, a friend of Winston Churchill. Meanwhile, in Germany, two scientists are about to make a discovery that will change the rules of science. #thebomb

A little-known scientist discovers something that will change the course of human history. After befriending some of the world’s greatest physicists in 1920s Berlin, Albert Einstein among them, Leo Szilard is forced to flee when the Nazis come to power. In London, he discovers the destructive possibilities of harnessing nuclear power; setting the course for the world’s first atomic bomb. #thebomb

27 Haziran 2019 tarihli sabah kaydında, 1898-1964 yılları arasında yaşamış Macar asıllı fizikçi Leo Szilard ile ilgili yaşanmış bir olay paylaşılmıştır.

Michael Falzon is the real deal. He is charm personified and comes with an engaging sense of humour and an infinite industry wisdom born of extensive time as a performer and producer, in the business we call show.Upon any meeting with Falzon I best describe him as possessed of a gentle bonhomie. He is humble and modest but at the same time can be direct, frank and insightful.His early career saw him singing professionally in Brisbane with Vocal Point, an 8-part group specialising in close harmony. So too began his extensive travel nationally and internationally.Early work on the stage provided him with an opportunity to explore classical musical theatre styles and operetta in a succession of shows that included The Pirates of Penzance (with Jon English), HMS Pinafore, Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (with David Dixon) and Hello, Dolly! (with Jill Perryman). These experiences would lay valuable foundations that would see him develop terrific versatility as a stage performer, and vocal skill that would extend to rock and popular repertoire.In 2003 he was rewarded with his break-through role in We Will Rock You. Selected by creators Ben Elton and Queen’s Roger Taylor and Brian May, his performance as ‘Galileo Figaro' earned great acclaim. After a tour nationally, Falzon played the show in Japan and throughout the United Kingdom.We Will Rock You offered him a chance to play huge stadiums in arena performances. This was an experience also provided by his performance as 'the Artilleryman’ in Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of The Worlds.Falzon’s extensive on stage work has included Hedwig and The Angry Inch, Ordinary Days, Floyd Collins, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rock of Ages, Chess and an opportunity to craft the role of ‘Leo Szilard’ in the Australian/USA co-production of Atomic, and early work on the developing rock opera Get Jack.I know you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording this conversation, with the bouyant Michael Falzon.

Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer Prize for his definitive book on the development of nuclear weapons called “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” It's one of 26 books he's written, several of them focused on the world in the nuclear age. He joins Tim to talk about the wartime effort that changed everything, The Manhattan Project. https://traffic.libsyn.com/shapingopinion/Manhattan_Project_-_auphonic.mp3 In 1938, nuclear fission was discovered in Nazi Germany just in time for Christmas. News of the scientific breakthrough was published in Germany, and later in a British scientific journal in 1939. At that same time, many Jewish scientists had escaped or were in the process of escaping from Nazi Germany. They would continue their lives and work in places like Canada and the United States. The persecution of the Jews was quickly brewing as the imminent threat of war loomed. These scientists knew the Nazis personally. They also knew that Germany still had many good scientists working on nuclear fission. This fact worried a group of Hungarian Jewish scientists who came to the United States from Germany. They wondered if the Nazis were developing an atomic bomb. They knew that it was possible, if not probable. How much progress have the Nazi scientists made? No one knew. Once Hitler had a bomb, would he use it? Everyone knew the answer to that question. Something else they knew, they had to help the United States develop the bomb before the Germans, and to do that, they had to get the attention of the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The same thing was true in Great Britain. They enlisted the support of Albert Einstein, who together with scientist Leo Szilard, signed a letter to the president informing him of the grave threat. It worked. Winston Churchill also made a persuasive argument of his own. That was the formal beginning of America's commitment to the nuclear age. The actual beginning was on Monday, August 6th 1945 when the United States would drop a bomb called “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima that would forever change the threat of war in the world. Colonel Paul Tibbets piloted a B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb that would kill at least 70,000 people, and through radiation poisoning that total would rise to somewhere between 90,000 and 160,000 within a year. That bomb was the first time in history that an atomic bomb would be used in warfare, bringing about a swift end to the Allies' war with Japan and that country's unconditional surrender. Just as the bomb sent shockwaves in its wake, so, too did the emergence of the nuclear age. For the first time, one bomb could eliminate entire cities, leaving immediate and residual devastation. This in the context of the burgeoning Cold War, where the United States stood up against its geopolitical rival the Soviet Union, which was on its way to becoming the world's other nuclear power. In the ensuing decades as tensions between the super powers ebbed and flowed, no one ever felt as safe as they once did before the nuclear age. Richard Rhodes has authored 26 books, and has studied the nuclear age like few others. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, MIT and Stanford. He is an emeritus member of the Atomic Heritage Foundation's Board of Directors, and has interviewed several of the Manhattan Project's scientists in his work. Links Richard Rhodes (website) The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (Amazon) Manhattan Project, History.com The Atomic Heritage Foundation Why They called it The Manhattan Project, New York Times About this Episode's Guest Richard Rhodes Richard Rhodes is the author of 26 books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in History; and...

Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer Prize for his definitive book on the development of nuclear weapons called “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” It’s one of 26 books he’s written, several of them focused on the world in the nuclear age. He joins Tim to talk about the wartime effort that changed everything, The Manhattan Project. https://traffic.libsyn.com/shapingopinion/Manhattan_Project_-_auphonic.mp3 In 1938, nuclear fission was discovered in Nazi Germany just in time for Christmas. News of the scientific breakthrough was published in Germany, and later in a British scientific journal in 1939. At that same time, many Jewish scientists had escaped or were in the process of escaping from Nazi Germany. They would continue their lives and work in places like Canada and the United States. The persecution of the Jews was quickly brewing as the imminent threat of war loomed. These scientists knew the Nazis personally. They also knew that Germany still had many good scientists working on nuclear fission. This fact worried a group of Hungarian Jewish scientists who came to the United States from Germany. They wondered if the Nazis were developing an atomic bomb. They knew that it was possible, if not probable. How much progress have the Nazi scientists made? No one knew. Once Hitler had a bomb, would he use it? Everyone knew the answer to that question. Something else they knew, they had to help the United States develop the bomb before the Germans, and to do that, they had to get the attention of the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The same thing was true in Great Britain. They enlisted the support of Albert Einstein, who together with scientist Leo Szilard, signed a letter to the president informing him of the grave threat. It worked. Winston Churchill also made a persuasive argument of his own. That was the formal beginning of America’s commitment to the nuclear age. The actual beginning was on Monday, August 6th 1945 when the United States would drop a bomb called “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima that would forever change the threat of war in the world. Colonel Paul Tibbets piloted a B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb that would kill at least 70,000 people, and through radiation poisoning that total would rise to somewhere between 90,000 and 160,000 within a year. That bomb was the first time in history that an atomic bomb would be used in warfare, bringing about a swift end to the Allies’ war with Japan and that country’s unconditional surrender. Just as the bomb sent shockwaves in its wake, so, too did the emergence of the nuclear age. For the first time, one bomb could eliminate entire cities, leaving immediate and residual devastation. This in the context of the burgeoning Cold War, where the United States stood up against its geopolitical rival the Soviet Union, which was on its way to becoming the world’s other nuclear power. In the ensuing decades as tensions between the super powers ebbed and flowed, no one ever felt as safe as they once did before the nuclear age. Richard Rhodes has authored 26 books, and has studied the nuclear age like few others. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, MIT and Stanford. He is an emeritus member of the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s Board of Directors, and has interviewed several of the Manhattan Project’s scientists in his work. Links Richard Rhodes (website) The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (Amazon) Manhattan Project, History.com The Atomic Heritage Foundation Why They called it The Manhattan Project, New York Times About this Episode’s Guest Richard Rhodes Richard Rhodes is the author of 26 books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in History; and...

Timothy Sandefur comes back to the show to talk about John Bronowksi. Bronowski had a wide array of interests. He invented smokeless coal and was a friend to Leo Szilard, the inventor of the atomic bomb. In fact, he led the mission to assess the aftermath of the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was not much this famous scientist, philosopher, and poet didn’t do and Sandefur was the first author to write a biography of him.Who was John Bronowski? Why was Bronowski a socialist? Should politics stay out of science? What scientific research was conducted by the Nazis?Further Reading:The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski: The Life and Ideas of a Popular Science Icon, written by Timothy SandefurFrederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, written by Timothy SandefurThe Ascent of Man, BBC DocumentaryThe Disestablishment of Science: I, written by John BronowskiRelated Content: Science Doesn’t Need Public Funding, Free Thoughts PodcastBias in Scientific Research, Free Thoughts PodcastWhat Role Should Science Play in Public Policy?, Free Thoughts Podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What do you do when you've described the nature of the universe? In the late 1920s Einstein was working on a grand unified theory of the universe, having given us E=mc2, space-time and the fourth dimension. He was also working on a fridge. Perhaps motivated by a story in the Berlin newspapers about a family who died when toxic fumes leaked from their state-of the-art refrigerator, Einstein teamed up with another physicist Leo Szilard and designed a new, safer refrigerating technology. And so it was that in 1930, the man who had once famously worked in the patent office in Bern was granted a patent of his own. Number: 1, 781, 541. Title: refrigeration. Phillip Ball explores this little known period of Einstein's life to try and find out why he turned his extraordinary mind to making fridges safer. Despite considerable commercial interest in the patent, Einstein's fridge didn't get built in his lifetime.The Great Depression forced AEG and others to close down their refrigeration research. But in 2008 a team of British scientists decided to give it a go.Their verdict : Einstein's fridge doesn't work. Producer: Anna Buckley.

In the late 1920s Einstein was working on a grand unified theory of the universe, having given us E=mc2, space-time and the fourth dimension. He was also working on a fridge. Perhaps motivated by a story in the Berlin newspapers about a family who died when toxic fumes leaked from their state-of the-art refrigerator, Einstein teamed up with another physicist Leo Szilard and designed a new, safer refrigerating technology. And so it was that in 1930, the man who had once famously worked in the patent office in Bern was granted a patent of his own. Number: 1, 781, 541. Title: refrigeration. Phillip Ball explores this little known period of Einstein's life to try and find out why he turned his extraordinary mind to making fridges safer. Despite considerable commercial interest in the patent, Einstein's fridge didn't get built in his lifetime. The Great Depression forced AEG and others to close down their refrigeration research. But in 2008 a team of British scientists decided to give it a go. Their verdict : Einstein's fridge doesn't work. (Photo: Refridgerators stand in rows. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

We’re saddened hear of the death of historian and biographer Lisa Jardine. Here she is in one of her last interviews, talking about the scientist Leo Szilard, a friend of her father’s for a Whistledown documentary on the origins of the H-Bomb. The programme, "HG and the H Bomb" was presented by Samira Ahmed and broadcast on Radio 3 earlier this year.

Hiroshima at 70, a look back, some comments on nukes and the remarkable work of Leo Szilard, the man who first envisioned the nuclear chain reaction; pro-nuke then anti-nuke

Hiroshima at 70, a look back, some comments on nukes and the remarkable work of Leo Szilard, the man who first envisioned the nuclear chain reaction; pro-nuke then anti-nuke

A discussion of the developments in nuclear physics that led to the discovery of fission.  These include Francis Aston's development of the mass spectrometer, George Gamow, Neils Bohr and Charles Weisacker and the development of the Liquid-Drop Model of the nucleus, the work of Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch in discovering nuclear fission and both H. G. Wells and Leo Szilard's prophetic predictions of the development of atomic weapons.  

The UC San Diego Library Channel presents a talk by William Lanouette, author of “Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard.” Lanouette explains how Szilard’s fear of German dominance of nuclear research in the 1930’s inspired the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb used by the United States in World War II. Szilard could see its potential for mass destruction in the wrong hands and became a strong advocate for nuclear arms control and disarmament. Szilard spent his final days as a founding member of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 28013]

The UC San Diego Library Channel presents a talk by William Lanouette, author of “Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard.” Lanouette explains how Szilard’s fear of German dominance of nuclear research in the 1930’s inspired the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb used by the United States in World War II. Szilard could see its potential for mass destruction in the wrong hands and became a strong advocate for nuclear arms control and disarmament. Szilard spent his final days as a founding member of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 28013]

The UC San Diego Library Channel presents a talk by William Lanouette, author of “Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard.” Lanouette explains how Szilard’s fear of German dominance of nuclear research in the 1930’s inspired the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb used by the United States in World War II. Szilard could see its potential for mass destruction in the wrong hands and became a strong advocate for nuclear arms control and disarmament. Szilard spent his final days as a founding member of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 28013]

The UC San Diego Library Channel presents a talk by William Lanouette, author of “Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard.” Lanouette explains how Szilard’s fear of German dominance of nuclear research in the 1930’s inspired the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb used by the United States in World War II. Szilard could see its potential for mass destruction in the wrong hands and became a strong advocate for nuclear arms control and disarmament. Szilard spent his final days as a founding member of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 28013]

Lisa Jardine learned the story of Leo Szilard from her father who regarded him as an exemplary figure in science. Szilard, an Hungarian physicist, helped to develop the atom bomb, but later fought against its use. His story provides lessons about the relationship between science and human values - even though the version of the tale Lisa was taught turns out not to have been entirely true.Producer: Sheila Cook.

Enrique Ganem. Primera parte de el "Proyecto Manhattan". Descubrimiento del átomo. La fuerza escondida en el núcleo es un millpjn de veces más grande que la que une a los átomos para formar moléculas. Lise Meitner la injusticia. El heroe desconocido (Leo Szilard). El verdadero papel de Albert Einstein. La famosa carta y el inicio del proyecto... Todo esto y más. Contactos: elexplicador@yahoo.com.mx, Facebook: Enrique Ganem Sitio Oficial y Twitter: @ENRIQUE_GANEM. Gracias!.

Lydia Millet's novel Oh Pure and Radiant Heart plucks the three scientists who were integral to the invention of the atom bomb: Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi as they watch history's first mushroom cloud rise over the desert on July 16th, 1945, and places them down in modern-day Santa Fe. One by one, the scientists are spotted by a shy librarian who becomes convinced of their authenticity. Entranced, bewildered, and overwhelmed by their significance as historical markers on the one hand, and their peculiar personalities on the other, she, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. Soon the scientists acquire a sugar daddy - a young pothead millionaire from Tokyo who bankrolls them. Heroes to some, lunatics or con artists to others, the scientists finally become messianic religious figureheads to fanatics, who believe Oppenheimer is the Second Coming. As the ever-growing convoy traverses the country in a fleet of RV's on a pilgrimage to the UN, the scientists wrestle with the legacy of their invention and their growing celebrity, while Ann and her husband struggle with the strain on their marriage, a personal journey married to a history of thermonuclear weapons.

In this episode, the first of a two-part interview with anthropologist Carel Van Schaik about the role of culture in boosting intelligence in animals; historian and writer William Lanouette discusses an upcoming History Channel program about the roles of Einstein and Leo Szilard in the beginning of the nuclear age; and Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie reports on a recent sustainable development conference. Plus, test your knowledge about some recent science in the news.

Alistair Cooke explains how Leo Szilard, a little know Hungarian refugee, helped stop World War II.