Time Zero

The US government knew that uranium mining posed existential threats to workers. But throughout the Cold War, as they bought ton after ton of uranium ripped out of the Four Corners region—frequently on the Navajo Nation—they provided miners, millers, and transporters little, if any, protective equipment or education about the well-documented dangers of radioactive materials.

In Episode 04: Wastelanding (Part 01), you'll hear from Diné artists Will Wilson and Shayla Blatchford; Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matthew Coolidge; environmental scholar Traci Brynne Voyles (Wastelanding, 2015); uranium researcher Dr. Tommy Rock; and Curtis Francisco and Eldon Francisco, of Laguna Pueblo.

Learn more, make a donation, or find a text-based version of today's program at: timezeropod.com.

And make sure to check out Shayla Blatchford's Anti-Uranium Mapping Project.

Between 1945 and 1992, the United States detonated over 1,000 nuclear bombs, primarily at the Nevada Test Site and in the Marshall Islands, with additional detonations in New Mexico, Alaska, Mississipi, Christmas Island, Colorado, and in the Pacific Ocean. That amounts to, essentially, setting off a nuclear bomb every two weeks for half a century. The colossal amounts of radioactive fallout produced by these "tests" have permanently contaminated diverse landscapes and harmed generations of communities across the world.

On this episode, you'll hear from artists Trevor Paglen, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, Richard Misrach, Cara Despain, and Michael Light; environmental scholar Sarah Fox (Downwind, 2014); downwind activists Mary Dickson and Tina Cordova; nurse practitioner Rebecca Barlow; and Stephanie Wheeler and Melissa Carter of the St. George Art Museum.

Learn more, make a donation, or find a text-based version of today's program at: timezeropod.com.

Read "Witness to the Cold War in the desert" by Terry Tempest Williams for High Country News.

In the early hours of July 16, 1945, the US military detonated Trinity, the world's first nuclear weapon, in the Tularosa Basin of southern New Mexico. Locals were not warned beforehand, evacuated after the blast, or given any follow-up information.

On this episode, you'll hear from members of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, artists Joanna Keane Lopez and Eric J. Garcia, and anthropologist Joseph Masco. We'll also consider aesthetic represenations of the Trinity detonation in two contemporary media properties: Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: The Return." And we'll take a deeper look at the Radiaction Exposure Compensation Act—or RECA—and its recent and surprising return to national politics.

Learn more, make a donation, or find a text-based version of today's program at: timezeropod.com.

On the premiere episode of Time Zero, we look at the ways that the threat of nuclear annihilation has shaped global realities for 80 years—and how contemporary artists, filmmakers, and writers have responded.

We also consider the nuclear industry's many ecological violences, from uranium extraction, to large-scale atomic energy disasters, to the ethical and engineering failures inherent to the disposal of radioactive waste.

Time Zero aims to make one thing abundantly clear: if we are to imagine any future narrative for our species, we must rethink the nuclear entirely, understanding it not as a technology, but as a monster.

Learn more, make a donation, or find a text-based version of today's program at timezeropod.com.

Time Zero is a ten-episode series about the nuclearized world from American writer, researcher, composer, and visual artist Sean J Patrick Carney.

Episode 01 arrives June 25.

Visit timezeropod.com to get an essay version of every episode with citations, links, and images delivered directly to your inbox.