Thought the holiday season and atomic annihilation didn’t mix… you were wrong!

As a little post-Christmas gift, it’s my pleasure to share this fun chat with Beth Lisogorsky from You Need to Watch This! about a largely-forgotten 1980s Australian atomic movie from director John Duigan, One Night Stand.

It’s a weirdly enjoyable - and in its own offbeat way, undeniably thought-provoking - movie that surreally combines teen romance and coming of age tropes with (probably) the end of the world.

If you enjoy this discussion, then I reckon you’d also love my members’ online movie club, The Film Thread, whose first season is all about atomic movies. You can find out more about the club and sign up to join here:

Other films mentioned in the discussion:

* Flirting (Dir. John Duigan, 1991)

* Sirens (Dir. John Duigan, 1994)

* Testament (Dir. Lynn Littman, 1983)

* The Day After (Dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1983)

* Threads (Dir. Mick Jackson, 1984)

* When the Wind Blows (Dir. Jimmy T. Murakami, 1986)

* Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em (Dir. Ray Boseley, 1988) - black comedy set in Melbourne in the aftermath of a nuclear war)

PS This will also be uploaded as a podcast (available on most podcast platforms - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pocket Casts, Overcast) if you’d prefer to listen to the conversation. Just search for The Atom & Us.

Welcome along to another in my series of occasional book reports. These are currently lifted from my heavily-laden atomic bookshelf but I may also turn my attention to some titles around autism and neurodivergence next year to coincide with the new themed season in my movie club The Film Thread, we shall see.

Till then, please do settle in to enjoy my overview and thoughts on what proved to be a smart charity shop purchase of mine some years back - not just for the illuminating contents, but because it seems this book is rather a rare beast.

The only copy I could find available to purchase online is currently going for an eye-watering £180 on Oxfam Books! Abebooks, Amazon & Ebay all drew a blank (though you can buy a hoodie with the cover printed on if that appeals!)

I found this an incredibly interesting read and enjoyed learning more about the woman who wrote it and the Penguin series it’s a part of, as well as brushing up on the basics of atoms, ions and radioactivity and getting a first hand look at atomic issues from the distinct perspective of the mid-1960s, when both nuclear fallout and casual sexism were rife!

Here are a few links I mention in the video:

* Penguin Specials – because we’ve been here before on so many contemporary issues - this blog post highlights a host of other titles in the Penguin Specials series (and their eye-catching covers) and gives a great sense of the depth, breadth and serious-minded approach that underlay it

* Margot Bennett (writer) - her Wikipedia entry if you’d like to find out more about her eventful & varied career (this footnote in particular is well worth a click - it takes you straight to the Google Books upload of a 1993 cultural history book on 18th to 20th century images of gender in science & medicine whose Afterword discusses The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation)

* The Long Way Back (1954) - Bennett’s sci-fi novel about African colonisation of Britain in a far future after a nuclear holocaust wiped out most of humanity

* Ninki by Margaret - a highly recommended Substack with art, culture and memoir written by Bennett’s namesake. By chance her latest post is (partly) about one of my all time favourite documentary series)

If you enjoy this I’d so appreciate if you could take a moment to tap the like button - or even better drop me a comment with any thoughts or observations of your own. It really helps other people find my work. Thanks!

A lively, candid and wide-ranging conversation exploring the renewable energy revolution, nuclear debates, electrification, and the evolving political and media landscape shaping the clean energy future in the UK and beyond with Dr David Toke, reader in Energy Politics at Aberdeen University and author of Energy Revolutions by David Toke.

Find more conversations and writing on atomic politics, culture and history over on Substack at Vicki Lesley is... Documental And check out my feature documentary The Atom: A Love Affair at theatomfilm.com

As promised in my interview post with Yuki Miyamoto to mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, I’ve recorded some extracts from the following book, which I purchased from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum when I visited in 2004.

Please take care listening as these testimonies feature graphic and extremely distressing descriptions. But the first-hand memories are vital for the world to hear - and even more so as the events recede further and further into history.

The survivors’ appeals - that nuclear weapons must be abolished and no nuclear strike ever allowed to happen again - can not, must not be ignored.

If you missed the interview with Yuki, you can read it here:

I was also very interested to come across this piece by Kjeld Duits which includes the very photo taken on Miyuki Bridge by Yoshito Matsushige, one of the survivors whose testimonies I’ve read out here.

In my ignorance, I hadn’t realised quite how significant the photo Matsushige describes taking is and I’d highly recommend taking a look at the full piece, which goes into a lot more detail on this photo as well as many other rare and important images.

It’s been a little while but I’m back with another video book report for your delectation and this time I’m looking at Chain Reactions: A Hopeful History of Uranium by Lucy Jane Santos, published by Icon Books in the UK and Pegasus books in the US. It’s still a pretty new book - it came out in hardback last year and the paperback version is out at the end of this month (July 2025).

You can get it from Bookshop in the UK here, and in the US here. And if you’re based elsewhere, as always the internet is your ally 😊 Here’s the publishers’ blurb:

Tracing uranium's past, and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements, this book aims to disentangle our attitudes and to unpick the atomic mindset.

Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten, stories that can be found throughout the history of the element. Ranging from glassworks to penny stocks; medicines to weapons; something to be feared to a powerful source of energy, this global history not only explores the development of our scientific understanding of uranium, but also shines a light on its cultural and social impact.

By understanding our nuclear past, we can move beyond the ideological opposition to atomic technology and encourage a more nuanced dialogue about whether it is feasible - and desirable - to have a genuinely nuclear-powered future.

A couple of quick show notes.

I talked a bit about the Linear No-Threshold model for assessing cancer risk from radiation exposure, which forms the widely accepted basis for radiation protection in almost all countries around the world. But I forgot to mention that it hit the headlines again recently when the Trump administration issued several executive orders relating to the nuclear industry, including one directing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ‘reconsider’ its use of the model. You can read more on that here: To boost nuclear power, Trump orders controversial rewrite of radiation safety rules

And I’m afraid I suffered an embarrassing menopausal brain freeze over the title of Richard Rhodes’ classic tome on the American nuclear weapons programme. It is of course The Making of The Atomic Bomb.

Lastly, if you’re interested in Lucy Jane Santos’ earlier book on radium that one is called Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium.

I’m still finding my feet doing videos like this so if you enjoy this one, you can really give my confidence a boost by letting me know you liked it - by clicking the ❤️ or commenting or replying if you’re getting this over email.

I was delighted when Keris Fox kindly agreed to talk to me in this unvarnished chat delving deeper into the money stories behind my debut film - a companion piece to my recent tell-all post on the true financial numbers from its production/release:

In this wide-ranging and intimate conversation, Keris and I covered so much, mostly focusing on my own financial journey with the film, but also finding many points of comparison with her own experience in the world of books and publishing and, earlier in her career, working in the music industry in London.

Here’s an overview of what we talked about:

* My experience of secrecy around earnings in TV

* How I went about raising the money for my film & the differences to the mainstream broadcast model I was used to

* How I knew how much money I needed to raise

* Co-producing, working with investors, tax relief, the 'waterfall' of payments (in the event the film ever actually makes a profit!)

* How I used credit cards to fund the film

* Getting hired in TV with small children

* Radio vs TV budgets

* Diversity issues in the media

* Class issues, privilege, buying a flat in my 20s, class confidence & entitlement

* The impossibility of living in London doing a creative job now

* How I got my first ever job in TV

* Use of archive footage - cost, fair dealing, AI

* How I really feel about what I spent making the film

* What films I want to make next

* Where my fascination with nuclear stuff came from

* Noticing and appreciating what you HAVE achieved

I really hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did - and if you do, I’d highly recommend delving into The Ladybird Purse • Opening up about money where you’ll find many more revealing and honest financial conversations Keris has had with her guests. The more we talk honestly about this stuff the better, right!

Lastly, please do forgive the rather abrupt ending - this is the first conversation like this I’ve recorded and I was having such a lovely time I didn’t think properly about wrapping it up nicely on the recording! I thought I’d spare you the slightly inept tech chat that we actually ended on and next time I do one of these I’ll try to remember to finish things more professionally, promise 🤣

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on Bluesky & at LinkedIn

This is a deep, deep dive into the true £££ numbers behind my independent feature documentary, 'The Atom: A Love Affair' released in the UK in 2020 - breaking down exactly how much it cost to make that film, how much money I raised up front and how much income the film has made since it was released.

You can find the full written version of the piece at https://open.substack.com/pub/vickilesley/p/i-sold-my-film-around-the-world-but-im-still-in-debt

Welcome back gang. Trying something a little different today.

After experimenting for the first time with Substack video last week, sharing a short animated film from my archives as a producer…

…I’ve decided to step completely out of my comfort zone by recording myself actually talking to camera for you. And here it is!

The prompt for this was that I finished reading a wonderfully vivid, impressionistic atomic memoir - about a 1980s childhood spent in the shadow of the US nuclear weapons programme at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I really enjoyed it and felt moved to tell you about it and try to give you a little flavour through reading some of my favourite extracts.

A video book report if you will.

The book is This Atom Bomb in Me, by Lindsey A. Freeman, and it’s published by Redwood Press, an imprint of Stanford University Press.

You can get it from Bookshop in the UK here, and in the US here. And if you’re based elsewhere, then the internet is your friend - just search and I’m sure you’ll be able to find yourself a copy 😊

I really hope you enjoy this. And if you do, PLEASE let me know by clicking the like button - those little hearts truly make my day and give me the confidence to keep showing up and creating different things that I hope will resonate.

And comments, re-stacks and shares all really help with getting my work out to more people too. Thanks!

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on Bluesky & at LinkedIn

Hello there friends,

I hope you’ve had a good week and that you enjoyed reading my interview with Cornelius Holtorf. If you didn’t get a chance to check it out yet, here’s the link again:

As well as personal memories from around the time of the Chernobyl disaster (which had a particularly profound social impact in Germany, where Cornelius is from), it’s packed with ideas and insights from his work as an archaeologist into the monumental challenge of safely storing the high-level radioactive waste material produced by both nuclear weapons and nuclear power, over an almost unimaginably long timescale.

One of the things he references is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and the work done by a panel of experts at the Sandia National Laboratories, including social scientists, historians, archaeologists, futurists and climatologists convened to try to come up with a warning system to alert people many thousands of years into the future to the presence of this radioactive material.

The resulting report, first published in 1993, included a warning text and images of possible physical warning markers that could be left at the eventual waste repository (on the basis that language might have changed or even disappeared over such a vast time frame).

And back in 2010, I produced a brief animation inspired by this report, which I’m sharing with you here today.

It was the first time I’d ever worked directly with an animator and one of the earliest films I produced independently outside of my TV work and there are definitely things I would change about it if I made it again today. But it was a fascinating piece to work on. And fun fact (which will probably only make sense to readers of a certain age) it was narrated by none other than… the Man from Del Monte!

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Here’s the text of the Long Term Nuclear Warning Waste Message in full:

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Do let me know what you think of the video and I’ll look forward to being back in your inbox with more guests sharing their atomic experiences with you very soon.

And don’t be shy in clicking on the ❤️ or re-stacking in Notes if you enjoyed this - it really does help others to find it too.

Read More…

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on Bluesky & at LinkedIn