Episodes
Martin Pfeiffer aka @nuclearanthro joins Shelly to discuss the origin story of NORAD Tracks Santa and why it matters. Not suitable for children and may contain foul language.
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Published 12/24/22
Young scientists from the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) Conference react to the nuclear weapon talks which opened the conference. Hear their thoughts about the role nuclear scientists play in the future of nuclear policy and disarmament.
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Published 12/15/22
With all the talk of nuclear weapons in Europe, learn about the US nuclear weapon triad with Dr. Steve Fetter. Recorded live during a nuclear physics conference, Drs. Fetter and Lesher discuss the US Nuclear Posture Review, the US Nuclear Triad, Nuclear Modernization, and the history of ICBMS.
Published 11/29/22
In this episode, we take you inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with Dominik Orfanus founder of ChernobylX and lead tour guide, Lara Graldina. What is it like inside the "Zone"? Who lives there? What can you do to help? This and more on Episode 38. Note: This episode does not discuss the disaster itself. To hear about that event, listen to Episode 16 - The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster with Adam Higginbotham.
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Published 10/25/22
The St. Louis Baby Tooth Study has been reimagined. Using the original teeth collected from the children of the 1950s and 1960s Marc Weisskopf and his colleagues at Harvard are seeking to find new answers from old teeth. Shout out to Taz & Mookie Weisskopf who make their presence known on the recording. Note: For background on the Baby Tooth Study listen to Episode 36 first.
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Published 09/27/22
Nina Gilden Seavey discusses how the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey helped persuade U.S. President Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which ended above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the US, UK, and the Soviet Union. In the process, citizen science was born and children sported cool buttons on their lapels.
Published 08/30/22
He was and served as the 39th President of the USA. But before his career in politics, Jimmy Carter was a Navy Nuke under Gen. Rickover. What did he do in the Navy? How did this time in the Nuclear Navy shape his policies? What would happen if someone who thought like a scientist gained access to the highest seat in the land? Find out in this episode when Shelly speaks to Jimmy Carter’s biographer, Jonathan Alter.
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Published 07/26/22
What is a war game? How did they shape our understanding of the Cold War? Did the mathematicians or social scientists win the war of the COW game? Learn about issues surrounding wargaming at RAND and elsewhere as Shelly & John dive deep into the question, "Can wargaming teach ethics?"
Find John Emery's paper here:
Moral Choices without Moral Language
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Published 03/29/22
Special episode on reducing nuclear threat with Prof. Matthias Grosse Perdekamp. Recorded when Russia was invading Ukraine.
Published 03/08/22
Today's episode features the musical duo Charming Disaster. They discuss the process of writing their new album based on the life of Marie Curie and the element she discovered, stories that did not make it into their songs, and ways that this album should sound familiar to fans but is also a departure from their usual writing style. Also, Elia & Jeff dispel Shelly's notion of "Goth Rock".
Preorder their new album:Our Lady of Radium
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Published 02/22/22
What role does nuclear science play in understanding art and culture? Michael Wiescher from The University of Notre Dame explains.
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Published 01/25/22
Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhnle from The UnCover Up podcast discuss Dr. Strangelove with Shelly and introduce an interesting conspiracy theory. Lee poses a question on if Nikita Khrushchev should receive story credit for the plot of the movie and backs it up with some interesting history of who could launch a nuclear attack. Wait - did Stanley Kubrick accidentally get it right?
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Published 01/06/22
Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhnle from The UnCover Up podcast discuss Failsafe (1964) with Shelly and compare it to Dr. Strangelove. Find out what character made Lee want to quit watching Failsafe, who the gang thinks would have a better chance at surviving a nuclear exchange: file clerks or prisoners, and what Shelly wants etched on her tombstone.
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Published 01/04/22
Nathan and Lee from the UnCover Up podcast join today’s conversation in discussing their favorite nuclear movies spanning over the decades, involving wars, nuclear disasters, and so much more! Amongst the 100’s of movies, they’ll be touching on just a sampling—this is a conversation you won’t want to miss!
Movie links can be found on our website.
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Published 12/28/21
In this episode Pete Burgess discusses the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian spy who defected to the UK. Why is polonium-210 a good poison? How do you make it? Why wasn’t the public scared it could happen to them? All of those questions and more are answered in this exciting episode.
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Send an email to My Nuclear Life or visit our website mynuclearlife.com. Please leave a 5-star review on iTunes...
Published 11/30/21
In this episode, host Shelly Lesher is joined by Neal Bascomb, author of The Winter Fortress, which tells the story of the plan to sabotage Hitler’s atomic bomb. Listen as Neal tells about the several different missions set out to destroy the Nazi atomic bomb program and how they affected the course of the World War II.
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Published 10/26/21
Our release schedule has changed to the last Tuesday of the month. This episode also introduces information about entering to win some great prizes at mynuclearlife.com drawing on 16 Dec 2021.
Published 10/12/21
Go inside a US missile silo with Col. (Ret.) Charles G. Simpson as he discusses his time as a US Air Force Missileer which started weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis and ends shortly before the end of the Cold War.
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Published 09/28/21
This episode features Don Howard, a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame with an interest in the ethics of emerging technologies. Shelly & Don explore the ethical considerations behind the Manhattan Project and building the H-bomb, and discuss question such as: Should scientists use their expertise to be involved in politics? What is the moral obligation to one’s work? How are scientists involved in human rights work? and more. Don also shares his...
Published 09/15/21
In this episode Shelly speaks with Thomas Haigh, a historian of computing, about the ENIAC and its influence on nuclear physics. Learn how the ENIAC was more of an experimental apparatus than a computer, the role of women in early computing, why we know so much about the secret h-bomb calculations, what Wikipedia gets wrong, and the confusion surrounding the MANIAC. All of this and more in this super-sized episode.
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Published 08/17/21
In this episode Shelly is joined by Dr. Vincent Intondi, history professor at Montgomery College in Maryland. He is invited on the podcast today to discuss his recent authorship of his eye opening book entitled African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement. Shelly shares that while reading this book, she was uncomfortable with material, and had to process material from perspectives that she had never considered before. This interview proves...
Published 08/03/21
In this episode, Shelly is joined by 2/3rds of The Uncover Up Conspiracy Podcast, Nathan Radke and Lee Kuhlne. They discuss the Pentagon UFO report, their joint Cold War obsession, what we can learn from conspiracy theory, and various nuclear conspiracy theories.
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Published 07/20/21