Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that makes you think... things like "wow, I wish an actual 10-year-old had been running the country for the last four years..."

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are… sound effects. The other hosts all send their best wishes… and past selves… to you this week. While I’m happy to say that everyone is feeling much better than they were for our last archive show we’re not entirely back up to full production-speed just yet.

I’m sure we’ll be back with new and amazing weirdness next week, but until then, let’s roll that beautiful, remastered (shameless, I know), archive audio. Jenn, take it away:

International Diplomacy and Goodwill: the little girl edition

* http://www.samanthasmith.info/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith

* https://www.avclub.com/in-1982-a-10-year-old-american-wrote-to-the-head-of-th-1830869949

I’m dipping my toes back into tales from history this week. Not a ‘weird history’ one, sad to say, but one that I’ve always liked and not everyone may be familiar with. Today I’m going to be discussing the story of Samantha Smith, often referred to as ‘America’s Youngest Ambassador’. I picked this story to share today because international tensions are again on the rise, with diplomacy) at least on the American end, is currently at a depressingly loooow point. This is a reminder that small things and normal people can sometimes make great things happen. (Unless Trump is re-elected and then we’re all doomed.)

The setting of the story is the tense later-Cold War days of the early 80s. Samantha herself was born June 29th, 1972, in Maine, and was a general contemporary of Steve. Being a school child during this time of heightened nuclear war fears, obviously, she was curious about why there were talks of war and made-for-TV movies about society’s annihilation (seriously, Amazon Prime carries ‘Testament’ and I’m really glad I didn’t see that as a kid). From her own words:

"Actually, the whole thing started when I asked my mother if there was going to be a war. There was always something on television about missiles and nuclear bombs. Once I watched a science show on public television and the scientists said that a nuclear war would wreck the Earth and destroy the atmosphere. Nobody would win a nuclear war. I remembered that I woke up one morning and wondered if this was going to be the last day of the Earth.

I asked my mother who would start a war and why. She showed me a news magazine with a story about America and Russia, one that had a picture of the new Russian leader, Yuri Andropov, on the cover. We read it together. It seemed that the people in both Russia and America were worried that the other country would start a nuclear war. It all seemed so dumb to me. I had learned about the awful things that had happened during World War II, so I thought that nobody would ever want to have another war. I told Mom that she should write to Mr. Andropov to find out who was causing all the trouble. She said, "Why don't you write to him?" So I did."

And yes she did. In 1982 at the age of 10 she wrote a letter to the newly elected, heavily titled General Secretary of the Central Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov. Now, Samantha was nothing if not precocious. She had previously written a letter to Queen Elizabeth at the age of 5 to tell her how much she admired her (and probably to get tips on how to become a future world leader, as the kid had moxy), so her next focus turned, of course, to the Iron Curtain.

The refreshingly direct letter:

Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not?