The Harper’s Podcast

The Doomsday Machine


Listen Later

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock has never been closer to midnight, yet the nuclear panic of the 1960s feels like history. Jackson Lears, who served as a naval officer on a nuclear-armed ship during the Cold War, discusses how we have embraced the myth of technological prowess to detach ourselves from the horrors of war. “War is the most unpredictable, least controllable enterprise that human beings are capable of, and yet it’s the one to which we pay the most technological homage,” he writes. 

* Subscribe to Harper’s for only $16.97: harpers.org/save

* “Behind the Veil of Indifference,” Jackson Lears’s story in the July issue of Harper’s 

* The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg

* Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt

* Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

* The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

* 2:35: 9/11 security state and its doomsday undertones

* 6:40: The government has “given up on diplomacy”

* 10:25: Stalin was less demonized than Putin today

* 13:45: “The media is more like a stenographer for the security state now”

* 16:45: “There was genuinely more interest in, curiosity about, and public awareness of the danger of nuclear war in the 1960s.”

* 21:03: Faith in technology allows for a distance between the soldier and the target

* 29:05: “Algorithmic rationality” protects the soldier from the “dreaded human error”

* 37:38: The religiosity of the American military

* 46:15: Assange, Ellsberg, any hope for whistleblowers?



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Harper’s PodcastBy Harper's Magazine

  • 4.3
  • 4.3
  • 4.3
  • 4.3
  • 4.3

4.3

135 ratings


More shows like The Harper’s Podcast

View all
Bookworm by KCRW

Bookworm

571 Listeners

The Book Review by The New York Times

The Book Review

3,897 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,139 Listeners

The New Yorker: Fiction by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker: Fiction

3,312 Listeners

The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books

The LRB Podcast

288 Listeners

Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,348 Listeners

London Review Bookshop Podcast by London Review Bookshop

London Review Bookshop Podcast

124 Listeners

The TLS Podcast by The TLS

The TLS Podcast

183 Listeners

The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,683 Listeners

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

2,085 Listeners

Radio Atlantic by The Atlantic

Radio Atlantic

2,239 Listeners

City Arts & Lectures by City Arts & Lectures

City Arts & Lectures

377 Listeners

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan by Andrew Sullivan

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

811 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,311 Listeners

Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

574 Listeners