100 Seconds to Midnight: Lesley Blume on the Nuclear Threat and Climate Change

An extended interview on the ignored danger looming over our world, plus a Stoned Moment and Katie's Hiroshima song

The 76-year-anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki passed earlier this month. It’s important to remember the catastrophic number of lives lost and come to terms with the United States’ deadly role. It’s important to study history.

But that’s not why we’re talking about it.

This problem isn’t one to sadly remember because the danger isn’t over. In 2020, Rachel Bronson, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said:

“It is 100 seconds to midnight. We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds – not hours, or even minutes. It is the closest to Doomsday we have ever been in the history of the Doomsday Clock. We now face a true emergency – an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay.”

The bulletin explains: “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change.”

But for some reason, this wasn’t big news. Since the end of the Cold War, the threat of mutually assured destruction has descended from the center of cultural conversation to a peripheral idea used in video games.

Author Lesley Blume is here to warn us against this complacency. And just like scientists and reports warning us about an imminent pandemic for years before 2020, the warnings are here. Will we do pay attention this time?

And, just to really drive the point home, Katie sing’s her old camp’s Hiroshima song.

Plus, President Joe gets lost in a new stoned moment, and the balls of a certain podcast get lit on fire.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s subscriber-only episode of Useful Idiots. Watch it here.