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In this episode, we hear the wrenching stories of two survivors of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. These two women, known as “Hibakusha” or “explosion affected persons”, both suffered injury and radiation sickness, but unlike the more than 200,000 who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, survived to bear witness to the horrors of nuclear weapons. One, Setsuko Thurlow, culminated a life-long effort at nuclear awareness and activism, when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for ICAN, along with ICAN leader Beatrice Fihn. We’ll learn more about why the bombs were used, and why they were so uniquely devastating.

Dear listener, We wanted to pause in the midst of this series and share our heartfelt thanks with you. This is an important, timely topic, and your engagement and interest is giving us real hope. You have the power to create change and make this world a better, safer place. We also want to extend an important invitation to you!As you’ve been listening to At the Brink, what are some of the questions about nuclear history, policy, protocols, or disarmament that have crossed your mind? Send them to us at contact@atthebrink.org or tweet them to us at @AtTheBrinkPod.We’re going to be launching a new series called “Ask the Brink” where we break down those questions with an expert. For now, you can visit AtTheBrink.org for behind the scenes photos, links to further informational resources, and action steps you can take to get involved. And last thing: subscribe, rate, and share the show with your friends and family. This support helps us continue creating content for you!

The history of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions has see-sawed between crisis and hope. Bill Perry tells how close we came to war in 1994, and he and Philip Yun tell their story of negotiating directly with North Korea in the 1999 crisis. But their hopes were dashed as the deal they crafted was rejected by the new Bush administration. Dr. Siegfried Hecker describes his historic trips during the early 2000s to view the North Korean nuclear program up close, and Dr. Jeffrey Lewis describes what we know about today’s North Korean arsenal and ballistic missile program. Our guests offer their analysis of where we’re at now, and what is possible to accomplish going forward in dealing with a nuclear “Hermit Kingdom.”

Was the Iran nuclear deal really “the worst deal ever negotiated”, as Donald Trump claimed? We’ll hear from Ambassador Wendy Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator, former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, Iranian diplomat Seyed Mousavian, and others in U.S. politics and diplomacy who supported the deal, explain what the deal actually did, why Trump was wrong, and what might happen now that the United States has walked away from it.

In 1994, Andy Weber was serving at the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan when his auto mechanic asked if he wanted to buy some uranium. This was the beginning of a story straight out of spy novels, as the U.S. executed a complicated plan to smuggle out over 600 kg of bomb-grade uranium, to avoid its seizure by terrorists bent on creating their own nuclear weapon. We learn how devastating such a result would have been, and how Andy and the team at the Pentagon implemented this daring scheme to prevent such an outcome. We also hear from experts who are continuing the work today to lower the risk of nuclear terrorism.

In January 2020, the Doomsday Clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight, telling us that the world is the closest to catastrophe it has ever been during the nuclear age. A big reason is that both the U.S. and Russia are embarking upon an unprecedented expansion of nuclear arsenals, which will cost American taxpayers upwards of two trillion dollars, under the misleading heading of “modernization.” Learn about what is being planned, and why it is decreasing our security, not enhancing it.

Most Americans cheered when the Soviet Union broke apart into 15 independent countries in 1991, but a few had a sobering concern: the break-up created three new nuclear states overnight: Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. They had no resources or infrastructure to deal with their inherited nuclear weapons and fissile material, and security was woefully inadequate. Listen to the remarkable story of how a group of dedicated individuals conceived and implemented the Nunn-Lugar program, which removed over 4,000 so-called “loose nukes” from these former Soviet states, securing the remaining weapons in Russia.

Is there anything more quintessentially American that naming the briefcase that the President uses to authorize a nuclear attack, “the football”? The authority to single-handedly decide the fate of the world with a deadly weapon is possibly one of the most important responsibilities to understand about the President’s role. In this episode, we unpack the history of this power, how it came to be, and what it is like to carry the weight of that decision according to Bill Clinton. We further discuss the dangerous Cold War hangovers of sole presidential authority and the failure of the United States to commit to no first use of nuclear weapons with Congressmen and scientific experts.

There is an urgent, specific danger facing our world today: nuclear weapons. In our first episode, producer and filmmaker Cynthia Lazaroff recounts the 40 minutes of terror she experienced during Hawaii’s nuclear missile false alarm in 2018. We also explore the history of nuclear false alarms with former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, historian Taylor Downing, and writer Peter Anthony. Understanding why we are still at risk for these false alarms that could potentially trigger World War III is the first step in mediating the immediate risk and finding a new way forward.