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Stuff You Should Know - Episode Summary: The Great Nuclear Winter Debate of 1983
Overview In this episode of "Stuff You Should Know," hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the historical debate surrounding the concept of nuclear winter during the Cold War, specifically focusing on the findings and controversies that emerged in 1983. The episode discusses the scientific theories proposed about the catastrophic environmental effects resulting from nuclear war and examines the polarized responses from the scientific community and public.
Key Concepts and Discussions
Introduction to Nuclear Winter
- Nuclear Winter Definition: Refers to the severe and prolonged climatic cooling that is theorized to occur after a nuclear war, primarily due to smoke and soot from burning cities blocking sunlight.
- Historical Context: The discussion is framed within the backdrop of heightened tensions during the Cold War, particularly the 1980s.
Debate and Controversy
- Fearmongering Accusations: A group of scientists led by Carl Sagan argued for the potential disastrous consequences of nuclear war, which led to accusations of fearmongering from other factions, primarily those supporting nuclear armament.
- Scientific Dispute: The core of the debate lay in the severity and inevitability of nuclear winter; while most agreed some form of nuclear winter could occur, the extent and impact were hotly contested.
Scientific Contributions
- Key Players: Sagan, Richard Turco, and others produced the T-TAPS paper, a pivotal document in the discussion, published in *Science,* asserting the dire consequences of nuclear conflict.
- Modeling Scenarios: The episode outlines various modeling scenarios for nuclear winter, categorized by the scale of nuclear detonations:
- Minimal: Represents small-scale bombings with limited global effects.
- Marginal & Nominal: Increasing levels of detonations leading to significant temperature drops and agricultural impact.
- Substantial & Severe: Full-scale nuclear war scenarios resulting in massive loss of life and irreversible ecological damage.
Environmental Impact
- Atmospheric Effects: The smoke from nuclear explosions, rather than fallout, would primarily block sunlight, leading to a dramatic drop in temperatures globally.
- Past Events as Indicators: Historical volcanic eruptions (e.g., Krakatoa, Mount Tambora) provided evidence of how particulate matter in the atmosphere can drastically affect climate, reinforcing the scientists' predictions about nuclear winter.
Criticism and Support
- Opposition Arguments: Critics of the nuclear winter theory, including some scientists with ties to military interests, argued against the legitimacy of the findings, suggesting that the predictions were exaggerated.
- Public Reception: The episode discusses how public articles by Sagan, including a piece in *Parade* magazine, contributed to the polarization of public opinion and the scientific community regarding nuclear winter.
Modern Implications
- Ongoing Concerns: The episode highlights how the threat of small-scale nuclear conflicts (e.g., between India and Pakistan) could still pose significant risks to global food security and climate stability today.
- Doomsday Clock Reference: The discussion concludes with a reference to the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the perceived threat of nuclear annihilation, currently set at three minutes to midnight.
Key Takeaways
- Importance of Scientific Debate: The nuclear winter debate exemplifies how scientific findings can influence policy and public perception, revealing the complexities of communicating scientific risk.
- Historical Lessons: The episode serves as a reminder of the unpredictable nature of nuclear warfare consequences and the need for continued dialogue on nuclear disarmament and security.
- Call for Awareness: The hosts emphasize the necessity for vigilance regarding nuclear arsenals and climate change, urging informed public discourse on such pivotal issues.
Conclusion The episode "The Great Nuclear Winter Debate of 1983" encapsulates a critical moment in scientific discourse during the Cold War, reflecting on the lasting implications of nuclear warfare on humanity and the environment. Through humor and engaging dialogue, Josh and Chuck provide listeners a thorough understanding of both the scientific theories and the socio-political dynamics at play during this era.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. I picked this selection. This is Chuck, by the way, of Stuff You Should Know, co-host. September 17th, 2015, we did an episode called The Great Nuclear Winter Debate of 1983. And I picked this one because I don't remember even recording it. What in the world were they debating in 1983 about the great nuclear winter. It was probably just nuclear winter and the great refers to the debate now that I see how it's worded, but you know what I mean. I guess I'm going to learn right around with you because I'm about to listen to it right now.
1:45Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:55Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there somewhere off in the ether. But I don't think on ether. Just in the ether. Oh, man. She's trying not to breathe right now. We had a tank of ether in here. It'd be a much different podcast. Josh and Chuck's Ether Cats. Do they put those things in tanks? Oh, I don't know. Surely, yeah, right? No? Is it like in the bottle still, like the 1800s? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I think you just have it in a little milk bottle. You put it in a rag. You put it in your face. Then go to Happy Town. Yeah, exactly.
2:31If there's any pharmacists out there that want to set us straight, let us know how ether comes these days. It's probably a gas. Yeah, I imagine. It's not like Hunter S. Thompson. I think we talked about it before in anesthesia. Probably. It's like ether gas. What a weird start. Yeah, that has nothing to do with what we're about to talk about. I was trying to relate it, but there really is nothing. One of my favorite, favorite topics of all time, nuclear holocaust from the Cold War. Yeah. We did one in the Cold War, didn't we? We've done several. Yeah. We've batted around this thing, but we've never done a full nuclear holocaust podcast, have we?
3:11No. And nuclear holocaust is not quite right. That's not the right way to put it because what we're talking about is actually the after effects from a nuclear holocaust. Isn't that the holocaust? Well, I mean, if you want to be a purist, the nuclear holocaust is the immediate destruction as a result of exploding nuclear bombs over population centers. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was the whole kit and caboodle. I should say, if you're a purist and you want to say it from my opinion, that's what a nuclear holocaust is. Okay. I think we know what's going on here. Got it. Yeah. Robert Lamb wrote this, Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
3:53Yeah. I have to say, I said, man, way to go on that one. That was a good one. You told him that? I did. I actually uttered those words. What did he say? Thanks, man. That's nice. But the thing that gets me about Nuclear Winter, which we will talk about in depth, what fascinates me about it just as much as the Nuclear Winter itself, Chuck, is the controversy, the debate that arose from it throughout the 80s. There was a huge debate. Debate on the severity? Debate, yeah, debate on whether it was something to worry about or not. Yeah, well, I looked up because I was like, does anyone think that this is a myth?
4:33An outright myth. And from what I saw in my research is that, no, this is fact. It's just a dispute. What's a dispute is the scenario and the severity of what would happen. But no one says, like, no, there would be no nuclear winter. There would be no problems after a nuclear bomb. So there used to be. Like back in the early 80s when this was a huge new thing. Yeah. there was a group of scientists who were hawkish, very much in favor of the U.S. building up its nuclear arsenal as much as possible and started basically a PR letter-writing campaign to discredit the science behind this. And they thought— These guys don't know what they're talking about.
5:19So would they think that the bomb would drop and then the next day the birds would be out? They said initially, yeah, that was kind of their position was just to poke holes in this and that it wasn't legitimate science, right? Yeah, it didn't sound like it. And then ultimately the whole point was that this came from an argument over whether the U.S. should engage in the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, which is the lasers that shoot nukes from space, right? They shoot down nukes from space. We did a show on that, didn't we? We did. That was another one. But that's what the whole thing was.
5:57It's the context of it. It was an argument over either nuclear disarmament, which Carl Sagan and his friends were in favor of. Hippies. Or nuclear proliferation and the Star Wars program. Warmongers. Right. The hippies versus the warmongers. But the weird thing is this debate, Chuck, took place in the pages of academic journals. And it ended up being a fight between science and science deniers. Yeah, it sounds like the scientists that you mentioned might have had their coffers full from the U.S. government. So potentially, or private industry or something like that. Yeah. And the thing is, is they use this old chestnut where, so if you're a scientist, there's no certainty in anything you say.
6:48It can always be disproven. Remember we talked about this in the scientific method episode. Yeah. All your stuff can be disproven, ultimately, which is why it's just a theory. Yeah. So no scientist is going to be like, this is 100 % certain. Right. Well, these other scientists who were poking holes in it would point out, these guys aren't even certain, which means that there's disagreement over whether we'll have a nuclear winner or not. So they were being very disingenuous in poking holes in it by saying, these scientists aren't even certain in their findings. Well, no scientist is certain in their findings.
7:22That's so dangerous. But to the public, you think, oh, well, these scientists can't say that they're certain, so they must not know what they're talking about. That's dangerous. That's why we're at three minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock. That's exactly right. Because some people might say, well, you're not certain, so let's just not act fast enough. Yeah. Man. And I should say also, Chuck, we should prepare for a lot of listener mail because this is a conservative flashpoint nuclear winter is, longstanding one. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Great. Sounds good. Let's talk about this. All right. Well, Robert starts where most people should start when talking about nuclear winter, and that's in the atmosphere.
8:04It's a very finely tuned system we have. I want to say it's like homeostasis, but it's not people, So I guess it's like an ecostasis where the sun, just enough sun gets through to make things, make the earth habitable and proliferate with plants and water and humans and animals and all kinds of great stuff. Too much sun, even by a little bit, could be catastrophic. And too little sun, even by a little bit, could be catastrophic. Right. So we've, thanks to humans, we've struck a great balance here with the sun. A great deal was made. And you can shine. Just don't shine too much, sun. Yeah, and it's working out awesome.
8:49The idea of nuclear winter is that there would be enough ash and smoke. It's really not the fallout from the nuclear bombs themselves, from what I understand. It's more the smoke from the resulting fires that would cause the blacking out of the sky and the sun not getting through. It's actually all of it. Yeah, but everything I read across the board said it's almost 100 % the smoke that goes on. Yes. It's true. I mean, you shouldn't negate the idea that nuclear radiation poisoning is going to kill a lot of people as a result. But the blacking out of the skies is due to the smoke from fire. Exactly.
9:33From the bomb that happened. Right. So this whole thing, the context of it, again, comes from the 70s, right, Chuck? Yeah, in the 80s. Yeah, and back in, I think, 1975, a group issued a statement that said, you know, there probably wouldn't be that big of a fallout from nuclear explosions. A few years after that, another group, I think the first group was the National Academy of Sciences. Another group said, you know what? We don't think that's exactly true. We think that there probably is some sort of, there will be something, but our models are too primitive to say for certain what the fallout would be.
10:18A few years after that, Carl Sagan and his crew got together and said, no, there's going to be serious consequences, and here's what they are. Billions of lives lost. Billions and billions, right. And one of the things they base this on, this idea on, that if you spew a bunch of smoke or particulate matter into the atmosphere, that it'll have a negative influence on the global climate. Oh, yeah. Is past history from volcanic eruptions. Yes. Most noted. Well, there are a few over the years, but one of the notable ones in 1883 at the time in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, Krakatoa. That volcano was massive to the tune of 36 ,000 deaths just from the volcano.
11:10And this is in Krakatoa in 1883. Yeah, there's only like 10 people there somehow. It's not like it was super populated. And two-thirds of Krakatoa collapsed. The smoke rose up and warmed the global temperature, global, by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. I think it, no, it lowered it. Yeah, lowered, sorry. Yeah. It took five years for temperatures to return to normal, and it affected, this was in Indonesia, and it actually, they think, increased the rainfall in Los Angeles by more than double that next year. Wow. That's in L.A. and Southern California. So that was the Krakatoa blast from 1883, right? Yeah, and it literally changed the color of the sky for, like, years afterward.
11:58The sky was red such that they think, you know, the scream, the painting, the scream, Munch? Yeah. The red sky, they think that was, like, the way the sky looked was because of this volcano. That is so neat. Yeah, isn't that crazy? That guy was like, that volcano is crazy. That's what the man is saying. And that's just one of them. What was the other one? Mount Tambora. Yeah, Indonesia once again. Yeah, Indonesia's got bad luck with the volcanoes back in the 19th century. And this was actually earlier in 1815. Yeah, I remember learning about this when I was a kid because Ohio got it really bad.
12:33A volcano went off in Indonesia in 1815, and the following year, much of the United States did not have a summer. It was actually called the year without a summer. And Ohio was affected? Yes. Oh, wow. Yeah, there was like snow on the ground in the middle of July. Did you learn that in state history class? Yes, I did. I remember that. Yeah, Georgia state history. That was like a full course at our school. Yeah, half of it was just sitting around with the teacher, like staring off into the distance. Right. I remember ours was just like a lot of talk about Crawford Long and the Civil War. Yeah. We didn't talk about Crawford Long and ours.
13:11No, because he wasn't from Georgia. We talked about Anthony Wayne. Yeah. The Battle of Fallen Timbers. Yeah. Well, that summer without a winter. Year without a summer, I mean. Uh-huh. And then there's some like canals and locks that donkeys used to pull barges on. Yeah. I just remember Crawford Long and a lot of racism. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Georgia history. That's right. So that was Mount Tambora, the year without summer. There have been other events like when the oil fields burned during the war in the early 90s. Yeah, apparently Carl Sagan predicted basically a nuclear winter from that. Yeah, that's...
13:54It didn't pan out. Yeah, that's where they take some flack. was not nearly as bad, the fallout from that smoke, as Sagan predicted. No. But what can you do but predict? You're going to be wrong occasionally. Yeah, surely you're going to be wrong. It doesn't mean you should be like, oh, well, that smoke didn't do much, so let's start building nuclear bombs again. Yeah. Well, that's the whole thing, Chuck. I am so glad you said that because that's the whole mad thing to this argument. Yeah. Because it's like, what are you arguing in favor for? If you're arguing against the idea of nuclear weapons, what precisely are you arguing for?
14:34Yeah, like it won't be that bad? We'll talk a little bit more about it later on in the show, what some people have argued about. But it seems like what you say, ultimately, you're arguing in favor of more nuclear weapons. That seems wrongheaded by definition to me. Well, not even just that, but using them won't be as bad as you say. Right. Like, not just have them, but, well, the fallout wouldn't be as bad as they all predict, so use them. You almost get the impression like they're just like, well, let's just find out. Let's just shoot a couple off and find out what happens. Come on, you'll see them, right?
15:06And then as they die from smoke inhalation, they say, I was wrong. What have I done? Oh, goodness. Let's take a break. All right. Let's do. And we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more about the nuclear winter.
15:31new year new goals and in this economy a better money plan is more necessary than ever i am matt and i'm joel uh we are from the how to money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter save more and make sense of what's going on out there if you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make can happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
16:06Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.
16:45We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.
17:23In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.
18:09I said nuclear in jest before the break. I know, I heard. That was good stuff. I just want to point that out because some people might think it was serious. No. And now that you said it was in jest, some people are like, what a jerk. Maybe. That man was my hero. I posted something on Facebook the other day that said, you're sciencing wrong as a joke. And people called me out. They're like, you can't use science as a verb. I thought in the 21st century you could use everything as a verb. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, people have gotten extremely serious, extremely self-serious. I'm a not self-serious person, so I don't fit in today's world.
18:47You're a relic. You're an old dinosaur. Just a stupid laughing dinosaur. Speaking of dinosaurs. Yeah, what? Well, I guess we should talk about the KT boundary extinction event, which was some people, some in science, have theorized that that's what happened to the dinosaurs, was there was an impact winter, not quite the same as a nuclear winter, but the same effect as a nuclear winter due to the impact of an asteroid. That's right. And that would have happened at the border of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, again, when the dinosaurs all died off. Still inexplicably. There's no definitive answer.
19:30Again, though, we're talking science. No one found a journal. Right. Dear diary, today something is streaking through the sky and it's making everyone nervous. It's very hot now, but I noticed the dinosaurs are dying, so that's good. Oh, this is a dinosaur riding it in my opinion. Oh, oh, so that's bad. Right. Right. Okay, so let's talk nuclear winter, right? You kind of said it earlier, but the whole idea behind nuclear winter is that if you shoot off nuclear bombs, especially a bunch of them, and you have to understand at the time that these scientists were really starting to debate this, there were like 70 ,000 nuclear warheads.
20:17Like many, many times more nuclear warheads in existence in like the early 80s than there were today. And when they started debating them, they really took up this cause because the Reagan administration was saying, we need this Star Wars program because we can prevent almost with 90 % certainty a Soviet nuclear attack. Right, with laser guns. Exactly. And so these scientists who were concerned scientists, basically anti-nuke scientists, said, wait a minute, there's something that you guys aren't thinking through here. If you do that, the Soviets are going to say, well, wait a minute, if this thing is 90 % effective, then we need to build up our nuclear arsenal so that when we shoot everything we got at them, still that 10 % will totally annihilate the United States.
21:10That the presence of the Star Wars program was going to put the nuclear arms race into even higher gear than it already was. Yeah. So they very much took it upon themselves to tackle this with science but also publicize it and sell it to the public. And it's that that's stuck in the craw of a lot of other scientists, but particularly scientists who were in favor of nuclear proliferation as a matter of national defense. That's right. The point of it is when they tackled this, they said, here's the big problem with it. If you shoot off a bunch of nuclear bombs, a lot, a lot, a lot of nuclear bombs, which could totally go off as far as the nuclear war is concerned, it's going to cause a lot of smoke to enter the atmosphere.
21:58And that is where this domino effect is going to create this global catastrophe. And the whole outcome of it is based on the number of nukes that you shoot off. Right. Which is basically what Carl Sagan and his buddy Richard Turco divided the different types of nuclear winter into. That's right. Mr. Sagan and Mr. Turco, are they doctors? Let's just call everyone a doctor. Well, yeah. Carl Sagan was a doctor of astrochemistry, I believe. And Richard Turco is... He's a veterinarian. I can't remember what he was. They wrote a book called A Path Where No Man Thought. A Path Where No Man Thought. Right.
22:40And it seemed like there would be one more word. There. And they have one, two, three, four, five, six scenarios for what a nuclear winter might look like, ranging from minimal to extreme. And minimal, best case scenario, which is just a little bit of a nuclear attack. Not many bombs going off. Yeah. Maybe like, let's say, Hiroshima or Nagasaki, which we'll talk about in more detail. Those were like 21 kilotons. Yeah. That means that there would be minimal cloud cover, not much environmental impact globally, and the targeted areas would be wiped out, of course. But the world itself would not have big consequences.
23:29Right. Atmospherically. So if you are talking nuclear war, especially a Cold War nuclear war, that was a fairly unlikely scenario. Yeah. By the time the early 1980s rolled around and people started talking about the concept of a nuclear winner, those Hiroshima and Nagasaki level nuclear bombs were attached to the average fighter jet. Yeah. They were considered just tactical. You just could shoot them off on a battlefield if you needed to. Yeah. So the idea that it would just amount to that is... Unlikely. It was. But... That would be nice. That's the best case scenario. They're trying to cover all avenues here.
24:08Yes, number two is marginal, and that's a few detonations, again, in the northern hemisphere. And they said it would lower the temperature by a few degrees, and there would be some crops and some agriculture that suffered and probably some famine. Yeah. But it would not—oh, black rain, of course. Yeah, who wants that? Did happen in Hiroshima. Yes. They drank it. You have to go. Yes, because it was radioactive rain. Yeah, but they drank it because they were thirsty because they had no water. Yes. It's devastating. You and everyone should have to go to the city of Hiroshima. Like, it is amazing what they've done to preserve what happened there.
24:56Oh, I'm sure. As like a teaching lesson for everyone. Yeah. It's really moving. We should have one of those here. We should. But instead, people are like, yeah, Japan forced the U.S. to drop the bomb. It's fact. Right. Which is not correct. Right. So black rain would happen in that marginal scenario. Man, this is a really political episode, isn't it? I think any time you tackle nuclear war, it's going to be divisive. Yeah. Because some people think it's awesome. Nuke the whales. Got to nuke something. Things below the equator in that scenario in the southern hemisphere would be just fine. So here's something that I found really interesting and wrong in this analysis of it.
25:38Sagan, I guess he was strictly talking about atmospheric effects. Yeah. But he mentions like famine and stuff like that. The thing is— That would have a global effect for sure. Yeah. The rest of the world depends in large part on North American wheat and corn. Yeah. So if there's a nuclear fallout in North America that affects our crop yields dramatically and causes famine in the U.S., it's going to cause famine elsewhere, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think what he's saying is as far as climatologically speaking. Yeah. What he and Turco are saying is as long as you're not shooting off nuclear bombs in the southern hemisphere, it's going to climatologically speaking be unaffected.
26:19Right. Or largely unaffected because the wind goes down to the equator and then back up. Like the equator separates the hemispheres as far as the atmosphere is concerned. Yeah, totally. There would still be global troubles. Yes. But in reading all these scenarios, it made me really want to move to Australia. Well, that's another thing, too. How many people would be like, I need to get out of the United States, so I'm moving down to Mexico, or I'm moving down to Brazil, or I'm moving down to Australia. And then the infrastructure in those countries are just super stressed because the northern hemisphere that survived is suddenly moving down to the southern hemisphere.
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26:55Yeah. It's another widespread effect. Mexico would help you too much, though. Well, weren't they like super helpful in Independence Day? Was it Independence Day or the morning? No, the day after tomorrow? Everybody starts having to move south because North America is just frozen ice sheet? Yeah, but I just mean as far as you'd have to go pretty far south, further south than Mexico if you want to escape the atmospheric fallout. Oh, you're right. So Ecuador. Yeah, like what is it, like half of Africa and South America are in the Southern Hemisphere? Yeah, that's true. Probably not half. Yeah. Roughly.
27:30So the Northern Hemisphere would show up at the Southern Hemisphere's doorstep and be like, Christmas in July? We'll get used to it. That's right. Your drain goes the other way when you release the water from the tub? Yeah. Neato. And I know Christmas doesn't fall in July. It was a metaphorical statement, everyone. Yeah. I get you. Nominal nuclear winner is number three. That is what they consider the low-end, full-scale nuclear war. Right. But still full-scale. 6 ,000 to 12 ,000 nuclear weapons. That's all. Just 6 ,000 to 12 ,000 nuclear bombs. Right. And we're talking a megaton or more bombs.
28:10And a megaton was, I think, 50 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. Wow. So 12 ,000 times 50 of those for this kind of nominal nuclear war. Yeah, that's a lot of zeros. Yeah. They predicted noon sunlight would be about a third of what it was. Global temperature drops of 18 degrees. That's bad news, my friend. It would destroy a lot of the ozone layer. And again, the southern hemisphere wouldn't experience major climactic change. To cut to the southern hemisphere, they're all at the beach. There's like tropical music playing. But they have no wheat. Who needs wheat when you got rum drinks? Dude, that's a t-shirt.
28:58Josh Clark said that one. Number four, substantial. That is full-scale nuclear war, freezing temperatures, big-time fallout. The whole day would be like it's overcast. Yeah. Billions of humans dead. Billions? Billions and billions. And species going extinct. And finally, possible damage to the southern hemisphere. Finally. Possibly. Okay. And then the last two we can just bunch together, I think. severe and extreme. Less than 1 % of the sunlight getting through for months and months on end. Global temperature dropping. No photosynthesis happening. Every crop dying. All life perishing. Let's just go ahead and wrap it up right there.
29:52As Robert puts it, most of the planet's life would perish within the chilly confines of this black atmospheric tomb. Yeah, he's got a little Lovecraft in him, doesn't he? He does. This unnameable tomb. Chuckers, let's take another break, and then we will come back and talk about the fallout from nuclear winter theory.
30:21New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
30:57which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.
31:35We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.
32:14In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
33:00So, like we said, Carl Sagan and his friends got together and basically took it upon themselves to educate the public about the potential catastrophe that could happen as a result of nuclear war. Everybody before was like, yeah, that would really suck to be in a city that a nuclear bomb went off on. Yeah. But maybe it wouldn't be my city. I live in Schenectady, New York. No one's going to bomb Schenectady. So I'm probably going to be okay. These guys said, hey, Western civilization, not just in the U.S., but also the USSR, that's not necessarily the case. You, too, will be affected. There's going to be big problems after a nuclear war, so much so that let's make sure that our leaders never do this, right?
33:51Wake up, basically, is what they were doing. And so Sagan and his friends created a paper, and it's now called the T-TAPS paper, after all of their names, right? Turko, Toon, Ackerman, Pollock, and Sagan. Okay, and they wrote this paper and had it published in Science, the preeminent scientific journal in the United States. Yeah. It was a big deal. Yeah. They also held a very well-publicized conference. Mm-hmm. And Carl Sagan, apparently, without the group's knowledge or blessing, went off and also wrote a piece in Parade magazine. Oh, wow. Yeah, to make sure that every Dick and Jane in the U.S.
34:31knew about this. It was like a three-page article about the nuclear winner, which is a new term at the time, complete with illustrations where like the earth was like this dead lifeless, what's called like a gray chalk billiard ball basically. Yeah. Just really scary stuff. Sure. And then he also simultaneously wrote another longer piece that was in Foreign Affairs that's a little more wonky. So Sagan went off after writing this scientific paper and publicized it to policymakers and to the American public. Yeah, this is the early 1980s. Yes, it's 1983. And this was before all the science was in.
35:11This is from the first paper. Before the first paper's conference was even held, right? Yeah. And a lot of people, including people who were on his side about this issue, were really mad at him because it opened up this group and the whole idea of nuclear winter to allegations that they were fear-mongering and that they were basically trying to sell the public on science, which is, you know, that's not what science does. Right. Yes, pure science is about research and coming up with facts and whether they're popular or unpopular, it doesn't matter. Science is science and fact is fact, right? Yeah.
35:44A good theory is a good theory. But these guys, again, were concerned that something really, really bad could happen and they went to the trouble of taking it upon themselves to advertise it to the public. But again, Sagan going off and doing this, it really opened them up for a lot of allegations and debate that took place afterward. Yeah, but some say that their work in the TTIP's report actually did help cool things down in the Cold War a little bit. Yeah, and I mean, it wasn't just these American scientists. They worked with Soviet scientists as well, and apparently sometimes it went good, Sometimes it didn't go so well, but both sides were working on this issue.
36:24And the fact that it got so much publicity actually created a firestorm of back and forth in the scientific community. And this issue ended up getting really well studied. Yeah, it did. And seven years later, they revised the report in 1990. And it had new, more modernized data. and it wasn't quite as dire, which some critics were like, all right, this is a little more reasonable. Yes, they revised it to call it the nuclear autumn. Yeah. And everyone loves autumn. Yeah, autumn's great. Autumn all the time, that'd be wonderful. Oh, man, that would be wonderful. That'd be Chuck's world. And there are disagreements over that still, and basically there's a few four variables that are always the factors that are the unknowns.
37:15And it's really, they're all, to me, kind of four versions of the same variable, which is we don't know how much smoke there would be. Yes. We just don't know. And number one is how much material is there to burn. So the idea is you drop a bomb on a city, a nuclear bomb, and everything catches on fire. And that creates tremendous amounts of smoke. But since these are all theoretical and you don't know what would happen if you dropped something the size on, like, let's say a major city like New York. They're like, what would be there to burn? Like, we just don't know. Well, that's, yeah. So if you dropped it on a city, is it an old city that isn't super modern?
37:58Sure. And therefore isn't built out of, like, lots of plastic that can get into the atmosphere and really mess things up? Yeah, like the really bad stuff. Yeah, if it's an old city, maybe the burning wouldn't be so bad, even after a nuclear holocaust. Or maybe you're not shooting nuclear bombs to cities, but to other nuclear installations that are out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. Right. Because we have, I mean, there's been like 2 ,000 nuclear bombs detonated, but only two on a city. Right, exactly. Everything else has been out over the ocean or out in the middle of nowhere, and there's been no fire.
38:33Right. The assumption is that, though, if you shot a nuclear bomb at a modern city, a lot of really toxic smoke would be produced. Oh, yeah. That's probably the worst-case scenario in both the immediate nuclear holocaust and the fallout, the nuclear winter as a result, because of all the smoke that would be created. I mean, look at the fallout from 9-11, and that was two buildings. Right. You know? Yeah. The second variable is how much would remain in the atmosphere and then how much goes back to the Earth. No idea. Yeah, no one really knows that at all. How much sunlight would be deflected. Again, just theorizing.
39:12And you can go back and plug in these numbers. Yeah. The problem is if you're a detractor of nuclear winner theory, you would say, that's a guess. Right. Where'd you get that number? Yeah. You know, and you could take every number and come up with a different model for each one. They usually don't do that. But even still, it's like, which one's going to be the one? And again, it goes back to how much smoke would there be to begin with? Yeah. And then finally, when did it happen? If it was actually in winter, perhaps it's not so bad. Yeah, nuclear winter and winter, ironically, is the best case scenario.
39:49The best case scenario of the bad scenarios. Right. So they did initially back off of their findings. They said that there could initially be like a 35 to 40 degree drop in global temperatures. Celsius. Yeah. So we're talking like 70 degrees, 72 degrees Fahrenheit drop in temperatures. And that's for a full-on nuclear war. Yeah, yes. Later on, as they revised their findings, and again, more and more scientists got involved and studied this issue, they came upon what seemed to be a consensus that you could probably count on something like a 15 degree Celsius drop in global temperatures, which would be substantial and could still have widespread effects, right?
40:36Yeah. So from this debate, nuclear winter kind of got settled on. There was a scientific consensus that came about. And there was also a consensus that not only would there be huge problems inland, there would be oceanic problems as well because one of the great casualties of detonating nuclear bombs is the ozone layer. Yeah. The fireball from the blast burns up nitrogen, converting it to nitrogen oxide. Nitrogen oxide just punches holes, basically chemically burns the ozone layer. Yeah. So then when all that smoke that's acting as like an umbrella that's blocking out the sunlight falls back to Earth, all that particulate matter falls back to Earth and is radioactive, by the way.
41:21Yeah. Now the sunlight that does come through is way hotter and has way more UV light than it had before the nuclear bombs went off. Because we had our little delicate balance that's now disrupted. Exactly. Yeah. The problem with that for the oceans is that that UV light would likely be too intense for phytoplankton at the ocean surface. Well, that is the keystone species for the ocean aquatic environments, the ecosystems, all start with phytoplankton. and zooplankton feed on phytoplankton, little fish feed on zooplankton, larger fish feed on little fish, and so on and so on. So if you get rid of the phytoplankton, you're in big trouble.
42:02Big trouble. So there would be huge ramifications, and science came to a consensus on this. But again, it was attacked very early on by nuclear proliferation hawks as basically being against the interests of United States national security. Right. And then later on, it continued to be attacked. It became a customary traditional flashpoint among conservatives as a great example of the lengths that hippie environmental scientists will go to to dupe the American public into being scared about nuclear bombs and just nuclear stuff in general. Like Michael Crichton famously attacked it in a 2003 speech.
42:48And his whole thing, he was very famously a climate denier. He was a climate skeptic until his death, as far as I know. Was he dead? Yeah. And he wrote some great books. But he was also contrarian by nature is what he said as well. But I get the impression that he tended to land on the more conservative, anti-environmental side. Oh, yeah. And on this case, he also attacked the nuclear winner as well. and what he accused these guys of doing is creating science by consensus, right? That to me is, that's just like a one-two sucker punch. So the initial scientist that challenged Nuclear Winner said, you guys can't even agree.
43:34There's no consensus. Like you can't be certain in what you're saying. So therefore, we don't need to take you seriously. So they said, okay, you know what? We're going to get all these scientists around the world together to study this issue, and we're going to come to a consensus. And when they did, years later, guys like Michael Crichton said, you guys are practicing science by consensus and politicizing science. It's not real science. So it was like they were very much damned if they did and damned if they didn't. And ultimately, you just have to kind of decide, is it worth the risk? Maybe we can't say for certain.
44:07Yeah. And at the time, you couldn't say for certain. What's cool is that some of these same climate scientists are still at work, and they have come up with fairly recent models using very sophisticated climate models compared to the stuff they were using back in the 80s and even the 90s. The stuff they're using now says, actually, we think nuclear winter might be worse than was initially predicted. Yeah, and even if it's not a full-scale nuclear war, I think the worry, there's not as much worry these days for something like that. what the worry is now is that some rogue nation gets a hold of one, or maybe even not a rogue nation, just India and Pakistan drop a couple of nuclear bombs.
44:50Well, that's the model, and that is entirely possible. I think a one megaton detonation is what they did this model on, and it had a substantial effect. Yeah, they said 10 years of smoke clouds and a three-year temperature drop of about 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit. Which doesn't sound like much, But if you go back and you read that scientist's study, his executive summary of the study, he points out that that kind of drop ultimately equals a shortened growing season by 10 to 20 days. Yeah. And that last 10 to 20 days makes or breaks a crop. Like that means you can either harvest it or it dies before it matures and can be harvested.
45:29And so even just a couple of degrees can lead to widespread crop failure. Yeah. But this is just if India and Pakistan shoot 50 bombs at one another in a regional war. It could have that effect around the world. So we mentioned Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those are the only places we can look. But like we pointed out, the bombs were so different back then. It's not the best comparison. But as far as looking at what kind of fires could happen, you can't tell a whole lot. But in Hiroshima, there were more fires than in Nagasaki just because of the way the geography is in the two cities. But in neither case did they see a ton of secondary fires.
46:15Like it wasn't blacking out the sky. There was black rain. But apparently, you know, like a week later, most of that stuff had cleared up. But again, that is – you can't even really compare the two. No, it's a single 21 kiloton bomb. Yeah, exactly. We're talking 50 of those going off in the same area. But that report that you mentioned on just like if India and Pakistan, how much was it, 10 megatons? 50. 50? No, it was one megaton, so 50 of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Well, it was enough to cause the Atomic Science and Security Board to move the doomsday clock two minutes closer to midnight.
47:03Yeah. And the doomsday clock is, some people say it's good science. Some people say they're fear-mongering. But what it is, is it's a design that basically says, here's how close we are to destroying ourselves as a civilization. and there are a lot of factors that go into it like biotechnology or cyber technology but the main two are obviously nuclear weapons and climate change are the two main things that factor into where the doomsday clock sits and I think in the 1950s they've only changed it how many times 18 times since it was created in 1947 have they changed the hands on the clock in the 1950s it was at 2 minutes till midnight in the early 1950s the best I think it's been in the early 90s was 17 minutes till midnight oh nice doesn't that feel good?
48:05that's a lot of time right now we are the closest we've been since 1983 and on January 22nd of this year it was changed to three minutes till midnight is where they sit. And they had a big press release. I'll just read the opening and closing paragraphs. The opening paragraph. In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapon modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity. And world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on earth.
48:48And then the final paragraph, and there's lots of fun stuff in between. Yeah. Just like fart jokes and stuff. And then they close with, in 2015, with the clock hand moved forward to three minutes to midnight, the board feels compelled to add, with a sense of great urgency, the probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risk of disaster must be taken very soon. They don't mess around. No. And even though we had been doing a good job of reducing the amount of warheads between the United States and Russia, but things have slowed to a snail's pace now. From 2009 to 2013, Obama cut only 309 warheads from the stockpile.
49:32And they're basically saying, we're not doing this as fast as we need to. Yeah. Like, we need to act now. Yeah, well, there's other people who are saying we need to rebuild our nuclear arsenal because it's aging and rotting and will be useless by 2020 to 2030. How are we going to drop nuclear bombs on people in the future? Right. It's weird. Like, some people are trying to reignite the Cold War. Well, trust me. On both sides. I don't agree with it, but I know that most of those people aren't saying, hey, so we can bomb people, it's so we can keep each other in check. Yes. Which was the Cold War.
50:07We could also get rid of nuclear bombs entirely. We could do that. And, you know, Sagan's whole thing, I should say, and it's funny that he's kind of like the villain of this whole thing, of the whole nuclear winner debate because he's such a revered figure, such a great guy. But he really purposefully made some serious missteps as far as publicizing the results went before they were fully in. But his whole thing was, and if you read his foreign policy thing, his article, it's really, really good. It's not too obtuse, so it's kind of fun to read. But it's called Nuclear War and Climactic Catastrophe, colon, Some Policy Implications.
50:48And he says, like, we don't know what the right answer is. We don't know if it's entirely possible that nuclear winter, maybe our ideas are overblown or whatever. But he says, I'm not willing to take the chance. Right. Why should we take the chance? That's my thing. It's like, why risk it? Right. So his solution is, how about this, U.S. and USSR? How about you de-escalate the arms race, deproliferate until you get down to a threshold that science has said, okay, nuclear winter probably couldn't happen beyond this payload, right? Yeah. So even if all the nuclear bombs in the world at this lower number were set off, we still wouldn't go into nuclear winter.
51:36But you guys can take out all of your major city centers and still fight your nuclear war, but the rest of the world won't be destroyed by it. That was his solution, and no one took him up on it. I've never understood—I don't know, man. We'll do one on climate change at some point, too, but I've never understood why people—and I get that economics play a factor, but why risking the future of mankind for your ancestors to follow is worth it. A lot of it is fear. A lot of these people who have, over the last decades, pushed for that kind of thing, fear that the U.S. will be caught with its pants down, genuinely feared the Soviet Union, and their heart was in it like that.
52:24It's fascinating to me, this whole basically secret publicity war that went on throughout the 20th and well into the 21st century. there's a book again I think I mentioned it called Merchants of Doubt everybody should read save your emails to me because you can still think what you want to think I just personally don't get it I'm not going to throw stones at you and say you're wrong I probably should but I won't because it's not nice to throw stones it isn't Chuck are you good? I'm great if you want to know more about Nuclear Winter you can read this fine article written by Robert Lamb by typing nuclear winner in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com.
53:06Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Oh no, my friend. It's time for... Administrative Details.
53:23All right. This is the time that we all know and love. When Josh and I read out and say thanks, we give thanks. We should call this Thanksgiving and not Administrative Details. Oh, okay. Ready? No, that's okay. Because Administrative Details is such a weird name. This is long where it's meant to be. So this is when we thank people for the very kind gifts that they have sent us over the months. And, dude, I think this goes back all the way to January for me. Oh, man. I've got one for Christmas cookies to Mona Collentine and Grandma Collentine. I think we always say her name wrong, by the way. No, I think she corrected us and said it was like Valentine.
54:01So I think I'm saying it right. Man, Mona's going to be so mad at me. Colin Tine. Alright. Is the administrative detail music playing? Sounds like it. Great. Can't you hear that? I'll get it started with Richard sent us a guide to the round things of the solar system. Very fun. Very nice. I remember that, yes. Blair sent us a plug-in key holder. You come home, plug your key chain in, and you never forget it. It's pretty awesome, actually. You can get them on Amazon. Electric socket, unplugged chain holder. Search for that. It will bring it up. That's right. I got a postcard, a very nice postcard, from Jean-Pierre Bonasco and Stephanie Crick from Port La Croix, Antarctica.
54:42Nice. And it's worth saying again, thank you to Mona Collentine and Grandma Collentine for our Christmas cookies. We look forward to them again this year. Yes, we certainly do. Oh, we've gotten nougat, homemade nougat from Kristen Ferguson again. Okay. It's so delicious. I am hooked on that stuff. It's great. It is, she, you can find her at Solace Sweets. Man, it is so good. Yeah, Kristen's been sending us this homemade nougat for years, and I was always like, homemade nougat, I don't know about that, and then I put it in my mouth. It's amazing stuff. It's really good. I know. And then we also got some sweets from Dude Sweet Chocolate out of Texas.
55:19I think they might be out of Dallas. They made a, like, they sent us really great chocolates, but they also make these incredible marshmallows, too. They made a sweet potato marshmallow. Wow. And dudes at Dude Sweet Chocolate, thank you for those. They were amazing. Yumi was crazy for those marshmallows, like I am for the nougat. That was quite the bounty, I remember that. As always, every Christmas, our buddy Aaron Cooper in Kansas sends us great printouts of these great photoshops that he does of us that he puts online. Yeah, you can see them on Internet Roundup. Yeah, we even got T-shirts this year of Shea Guevara, Josh, and Chuck.
55:54So, Coop, you're the best. Yeah, that is true, Coop. Mark Allen and the Trade Monkey team sent us some beautiful jewelry made by female artisans in Southeast Asia and traded fairly. Awesome. That's the key. Our buddy Van Nostren sent us a book. Which book? Well, he's always sending us stuff. He is. I honestly can't even remember which book. But we have boxes full of things that he sent. He sent us a CD of the Shag's Philosophy of the World. You know, what's known as the worst album ever recorded. I've got it in my desk. That's his sense of humor. The problem is my computer doesn't have a CD drive any longer.
56:32Have you noticed that it's gone? No. Yeah, computers don't have those any longer. Try to find it on my computer. I defy you. I was like, what's that little slot? And you're like, that's where the tissues come out. Right. It's the coffee cup holder. Our buddies from Venice's Sinking Band sent us an LP, sand and lines, and a CD, What We Do Is Secret. And there are our friends from Athens, Georgia. Georgia. Huge, huge thanks to Hilary Lozar who has sent us a lot of cheese over the last year. Some of the best cheese. Flathead Lake Cheese. Yeah, Montana. Which, like, they make a hoppy Gouda that's to die for.
57:12It is very Gouda. Flathead Lake Cheese. And she sent us some awesome t-shirts that say mouthfeel on them. Yeah, Lozar is... Based on our bar episode. She's the best. She and her husband Mike have been big time fans. They're very active on our Facebook page. and they drove to Seattle for our show from Montana. From Montana. Yeah, she's a teacher. And they sent Yumi and Emily earrings, so thanks for that from all of us. Yeah, that's right. Jerry got nothing. Tommy Lukrich. Tommy Lukrich. Lukrich? Lukrich. He sent us a nice letter. The man whose last name you say four times. Well, he's the guy. He's walking from Seattle to New York City, and if you want to follow this, he might be there by now.
57:55Tommywalks.tumblr.com. You can check that out. Okay. Huge, huge thanks from me personally to Laura Snow, who I don't know if you remember when we did the Hot Wheels episode. Boy, do I. I said that the Hot Wheels I would love to have was this station wagon camper that said Good Time Camper on it. Oh, I remember. She mailed it to me. That's pretty remarkable. Yep. So thank you very much, Laura Snow. That was very nice of you. Yeah, if anyone's listening, my favorite Hot Wheel was the one that had$1 ,000 stuffed in the body of the car. That's a good one. Um, Stephan, uh, Stephan Brom, he sent us some currency bank notes.
58:33Yeah. Which I've never collected money, but he sent a 1953 dollar certificate, a 1957 series, $2 bill, and an 1874 fractional currency 10 cent note. Yeah, that was pretty neat. I think you got the 10 cent note, didn't you? Because we spent it up. I spent it on candy. No. They're like, what's this? It's 10 cents, sir. It's a fraction of a note. meteorologist Michael Erb who also moonlights as a young adult murder mystery author sent us a book of one of his murder mysteries Kevin MacLeod and the Seaside Storm it's about a little weather detective it's pretty cute Jeff Payton sent us a book Darwin's Black Box and Bethany at the base element the.base.element at gmail.com If you want any of the Fleur de Sel caramel she sent us, we can highly recommend them.
59:31And I got one more from both of us, Chuck. All right. Dan Kent, name ring a bell? It does. He sent us the pints of Pliny the Elder. Ew. Yes, thank you, Dan. That's why it rings a bell. You're a top-notch human being. I think we met him in San Francisco at our show, too. Yes. Thanks, dude. I believe so. Yep. The famous, world-renowned Pliny the Elder beer. Yes. Which I finally tried, and it was delicious. It is delish. Yep. Thank you very much, everybody. We have more. If you didn't hear your name, hang tight. We've got probably a couple more episodes worth of administrative details. That's right.
1:00:05Or Thanksgiving is what we're calling it now. And in the meantime, you can get in touch with us. Send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
1:00:37Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement.
1:01:14the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
1:01:54I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
At the height of the Cold War, a group of concerned scientists promoted their findings on the horrific aftereffects of nuclear war and were accused of fearmongering. But were they right after all? Learn all about the debate and its context in this classic episode.
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