Show Notes
The nuclear age began in fear, secrecy, and scientific ambition. The bomb created in a moment of wartime urgency became the foundation of a new global order defined by terror and deterrence. The story is familiar, but its implications have never left us. In episode two of the series, Jane Perlez interviews nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein about the origins of the bomb and the Americans’ race to build a weapon before Hitler. Wellerstein explains how the White House first learned about a terrifying source of energy and the top-secret decision-making that culminated in Los Alamos and the creation of the first atom bomb used on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Jane Perlez also travels to Hiroshima with Associate Producer Frank Zhou to interview an atomic bomb survivor and retrace her steps through the decimated city in the hours after the blast. Decades later, we must ask: will we let it happen again?
Reading Recommendations:
Hiroshima by John Hersey. The gruesome, influential reportage by the famed New Yorker writer about Hiroshima eight months after the bombing.
Fallout by Lesley M.M. Blume. The riveting behind-the-scenes story of how John Hersey got his Hiroshima story.
90 Seconds to Midnight by Charlotte Decroes Jacobs. A biography of Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow, a schoolgirl who survived Hiroshima.
The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age by Alex Wellerstein. When he gave the go-ahead to bomb, Truman thought Hiroshima was mainly a military base. He was mistaken.
Face-Off is produced and reported by Jane Perlez. Our production team is Nina Porzucki, Louise Morris, and Frank Zhou. Sound design and mixing by John Myers and Rowhome Productions.
This project is made possible by the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Managing the Atom Project. Our special guest is Professor Matthew Bunn, Faculty Chair of the Managing the Atom Project (@matthew-bunn.bsky.social).
Face Off is produced in partnership with Rowhome Productions. Rowhome's Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome's Executive Producer.
Episode Art Image Credit: U.S. Department of Energy (or predecessor organization) employee. Image Caption: Leslie Groves (left), military head of the Manhattan Project, with Professor Robert Oppenheimer (right). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Face-Off
Jane Perlez reports on the thirteen most dangerous days in human history, when the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than ever before or since: the Cuban Missile Crisis. In October 1962, a Soviet submarine trapped under the Atlantic with a nuclear-tipped torpedo faced orders so ambiguous they could spell the end of civilization. Above the surface, American President John F. Kennedy learned of Soviet missiles in Cuba and had to decide: invade, bomb, or negotiate? With historian Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize winner and foremost biographer of President Kennedy, Perlez explores how a young president and a Soviet leader, both haunted by war, chose empathy over escalation.
For the first time in half a century, the world is drifting into a nuclear era with fewer constraints and more danger. The old arms control architecture is gone. The United States is modernizing its arsenal, Russia is making explicit nuclear threats, and China is expanding rapidly and in secret. Each development is destabilizing on its own. Together, they make a world in which the nuclear threat risks escalating faster than diplomacy can contain it. In episode one of the series, Jane Perlez and New York Times White House and National Security Correspondent David Sanger lay out the stakes. How did we get to a world with crumbling nuclear guardrails? And what might happen next?
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