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Van and Lyle are joined by historian Dan Borus, Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester, to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, a film that continues to define political satire as much as it mocks the very impulses that make satire necessary. The conversation revisits the Cold War’s toxic blend of paranoia, sexual repression, and bureaucratic madness, drawing from Borus’s essay “The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name in the War Room.” Together they trace how Kubrick and screenwriter Terry Southern transformed the age of McCarthyism and “moral hygiene” into a Freudian nightmare of militarized masculinity, nuclear brinkmanship, and closet panic.

What does it mean that the “rational men” who planned for nuclear annihilation also spoke in the language of purity, fluids, and perversion? How does Dr. Strangelove turn Cold War homophobia back on its accusers? And what do the film’s grotesque sexual metaphors—its refueling scenes, cowboy bombs, and “ten women per man” survival plan—tell us about a society that loves peace through domination?

Further Reading

“The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name in the War Room,” by Dan

“The Dark Satire of Pete Hegseth’s Quantico Speech,” by Lyle

“Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” by Carol Cohn

The End of Victory Culture by Tom Englehardt

War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce Franklin

Teaser from the Episode

Dr. Strangelove Trailer