A US nuclear test in the Bikini atoll went horribly awry in early March. The explosion was much bigger than anticipated - whoops! and fallout rained down on a Japanese fishing boat - Lucky Dragon 5.  Not so lucky for them it turns out. It gave rise to the story behind Godzilla, released later that year.  The terrible monster from the deep created by nuclear radiation.

Like the errant nuclear test in Bikini, the rapidly expanding power of the USA - dueling with the Soviet Union around the world in a Cold War while also on an epic tear of economic growth - was transforming into a world-crushing monster like the one that that emerged from the deep.

The USA had its own monsters - including Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the famous drunken, redhunter. Another lurking monster was the US involvement with the French as our ally tried to hold onto its colonial vanity while slowly losing its final battle in Vietnam at a place called Dien Bien Phu.

Doomed French paratroopers, Communist ghosts, tail gunners and monsters, and lots of nuclear fallout. This is the Raspberry Podcast looking at the week of March 20-26, 1954.

In February 1978 the good old USA had big problems, inflation was high and also unemployment was high.  This was stagflation and it was raging.  No one seemed to have a handle on how to address these multiple issues.

Jimmy Carter was the serious president attempting to deal these issues in a serious way, as an adult president.

1978 was the final year of the era when you could be a president looking to solve problems. From 1979, with the start of the "Killer Rabbit" fake scandal, the right-wing attack machine found its stride and has not let up since then. In fact, you can draw direct line to Joe Biden stealing the 2020 election.

Today we are looking at the week of December 25 to December 31, 1941.  The start of the US involvement in World War 2.  

It was a surprisingly smooth transition from the chaos of December 7, where no one had any idea what was happening either in Hawaii or Washington.

World War 2 was 3 weeks old and already we knew the outcome.  It was assumed that we would win. Where and when this ultimate victory would occur was not known.  But not whether we would achieve ultimate victory.  

Now, three weeks into the war, the transition to a plan for victory was deftly performed.  Factories switched over to wartime production.  Leaders were putting plans into motion for how to  finance, arm and transport this massive war machine.  

In the last week of December 1941 here was no hint that victory was not within reach.  It was not a plan for survival or a plan to eke out a victory.  The plan was clear, we are going to create a massive war machine and crush the enemies into an unconditional surrender.  There was anger, there was determination, there was fear and anxiety.  But there was no doubt.

Welcome to a special episode of the Raspberry Podcast, where we welcome our first guest author, Adam Hochschild, the author of American Midnight; The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.   American Midnight is about the crisis of democracy that was precipitated when the United States joined The Great War on April, 2 1917.

The Great War, which ended up costing the United States 240,000 casualties, had been underway for almost three years by the spring of 1917, and the European belligerents were stuck in the trenches of the Western Front, grinding away in their stalemated static warfare.  Tanks had only that month been introduced onto the battlefield as the horrors continued to accumulate. 1916 had been the most deadly year of the war. 

In April 2017 the US, after resisting joining the fight for years, finally threw in with the Entente powers - Britain, France, Italy and  Russia.  Libraries of books have covered the fighting at the front but little has been written about what was happening here in the US.  While President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed we were fighting to Make the World Safe for Democracy, here he led a fervent war Against Democracy, condoning torture, imprisonments and detentions of America’s internal enemies in an endless parade of bloody and repressive scenes as the official and unofficial organs of the government attacked dissenters, minorities, immigrants and organized labor.   This edition is truly alarming and timely as 100 years later we are about to enter a second Trump presidency dedicated to similar goals.

Adam Hochschild writes frequently about issues of human rights and social justice. American Midnight is only the latest of his eleven books. He is a three-time winner of the Gold Medal for Nonfiction of the California Book Awards. His reporting from five continents has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and many other magazines. He teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Kennedy, Castro.  Khrushchev and nuclear missiles.  It’s October 1962 and the world is on the brink of nuclear war over Cuba.  The funny thing is that no one knows.  The world churned on as Nobel prizes were announced and the junior league set their annual luncheon date (watercress sandwiches again) . 

Meanwhile, beneath this surface of calm and normal, the world teetered on a razor’s edge.  Throughout the week the nation’s top leaders met in secret to discuss how to handle the biggest crisis of the postwar world.  The Soviets were installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.  They knew.  We knew.  But the Ruskies did not know we knew.  It was the best kept secret since the bomb was invented.  Better even.

The gap between what was happening and what the world knew was huge.  Perhaps a gap this large has never happened since.  And today, in a world where information is free to ricochet around the world in an instant, it is hard to believe such a secret could be kept.

This week on the Raspberry podcast, October 1962, where what you did not know could kill us all.

September 5 through September 11, 1952.  A week we call Peak - If this Ain’t Peak, you don’t know Peak.

This was the Great Times people want to go back to…The Good Old Days, if this is not the great time, then there is no great time.  

The late summer of 1952 saw the US at the peak of its powers, the undisputed kings of the post-war world.  The economy was roaring, we were fighting a huge war in Korea to stop the Communists but it barely registered with the American public. 

At the same time there was a US presidential election - General Dwight Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson that dominated the news. 

Meanwhile popular culture was shifting under their feet.  The era of Hemingway was coming to its apex with his Pulitzer Prize this year with "Old Man and the Sea", while this week Kurt Vonnegut’s first book, "Player Piano", debuted, signalling a shift in the tone of American literature.

The Bush political dynasty got its start, a Donald Trump mentor becomes big news…  This was the Peak year of the Good ‘ole USA…

Join us at the Raspberry Podcast.

The 70s were crazy.  And they still aren’t over. 

We are in this episode looking at August 29 - September 4, 1973.   This week was the culture war kickoff.  The Vietnam War was still raging despite the US combat troops all leaving in March 1973.

The biggest war was now being fought in Washington DC - Watergate.  On one side was good old Tricky Dick “I am not a crook” Nixon who was holding out from Judge Sirica’s slap down to cough up the White House tapes. Dick said no way. 

His vice president, Spiro Agnew, announced he would never resign because of the accusations he was taking bribes - cash in paper bags -  but he did finally quit that October, the first big victim of the culture war.  In August he was still taking bribe…it’s a good bet..

American culture was splitting apart, never to come together again. Not yet. The pro-Vietnam War supporters versus the anti-war counter-culture, about to be enshrined in mass media by the amazing artists of the era, from movies to arts to books and then politics.

The battle over Watergate was front and center….a bellwether for the decades to come.

August 22-August 28, 1947. Two years after the US and its allies, Britain, France, Canada and Australia had won the war.  Peace and prosperity has arrived, or so everyone had hoped.  The US had dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan to win the war.  The country and the world celebrated the end.

But the reality of winning the war was proving to be quite different than imagined. In 1947 the real result wasn’t peace, just a big gigantic mess. The Big Mess.

A worldwide mess.  

1947, Peak mess!

The peace dividend was nowhere to be found. 

And it was much worse overseas. The world was in chaos as everyone rolled from a full-out fight against the Axis powers into a cold war against endless Soviet assaults and aggression.

The Cold War was the major issue. But not to be outdone, our English allies decided within the space of 3 months to give independence to its prize jewel, India.  Unexpectedly, this triggered the great transfer of millions of people between India and Pakistan following independence and partition.  The Muslims and Hindus clashed.  Millions died. This was called the partition of India, one of the largest, but from the US perspective, less known crisis of the 20th century.

August 15-21, 1930. Who was Van Lear Black?  And what was he a harbinger of?  He wasn’t just a man with three middle names, he was the very wealthy owner of the Baltimore Sun back when newspapers were the only media that mattered.

His demise tells us about 1930, the year the depression really started to bite.

While times were bad and getting worse, people were still obsessed with two things:  keeping tabs on people who were flying around the world in flimsy aircraft which today you wouldn’t step into even if it had wheels, and liquor.  

Prohibition was going strong, but politicians were openly calling for its repeal, while the cops were still making a show of locking up people for having booze.  The US was a country split between the wets and dries.

Meanwhile, a drought was ravaging the Midwest.  Another harbinger.  

But baseball, still the number one sport here in the US, provided quite a show. Batting batting averages were never higher.  It was the year of everyone being a great hitter.  

In politics we had a General who later became a dictator, a marine who later became a dictator and a German general turned Bolivian general.  Wets and dries, drought and a rain of hits, and too many dictators, as usual.

August 8-14, 1982. Midnight in America.

Two years before there was Ronald Reagan's Morning in America, we had 1982, what we call Midnight in America. It was anything but the roaring 1980s from popular memory.  This week was like an alternative universe in many ways to the 1920s.  

Brand new President Ronald Reagan was heading up to Capitol Hill to stump for a tax increase of all things.  The tax increase would turn out to be the largest tax increase in US history. The economy was still suffering a long hangover from the exploding interest rates that got cranked up in the late 1970s.  15%! The 70s in America were a little crazy and 1982 was the transition from the ugly 1970s to the more sedate 1980s. 

In Europe, things were testier, as usual.

The Solidarity trade union in Poland had been officially outlawed by the government of President Jaruzelski, but was holding mass demonstrations in the streets this week.

Israel was fighting the PLO in Lebanon.  And President Reagan told them to stop fighting…and they did. 

The summer of blockbuster movies was upon us, more great movies than you can remember.

AIDS was stalking the land but it was only beginning to be known and understood.