Nuclear Technology
33 episodes
#5882: Half of All Energy Becomes Heat. Now What?
Half the world's energy ends up as waste heat — but only 6% is worth recovering. Inside the cities that built the pipes anyway.
#5797: How Many Nuclear Tests Have There Really Been?
Three credible sources, three different numbers — and the gap isn't new explosions. It's what each one decided to count.
#5795: Digging Harbors with Nuclear Bombs: Project Plowshare
From Sedan's 104-kiloton crater to a plan for 520 bombs in the Negev — how the atomic age tried to become civil engineering.
#5794: Starfish Prime: When the US Nuked Space
In 1962, the US detonated a 1.4-megaton warhead 400 km above the Pacific. The sky turned green for 90 minutes.
#5792: Tsar Bomba: The 50-Megaton Test That Shook the World
In 1961, the Soviets dropped the largest bomb ever built — a weapon with no military purpose, designed to be seen.
#5757: Why the Grid Still Runs on AC When DC Won
Every reason AC beat DC has been overturned by power electronics. So why is your wall socket still AC?
#5649: Who Actually Controls Europe's B61 Bombs?
The US parks B61 bombs in six allied countries — but never hands over the keys. How nuclear sharing is engineered to not require trust.
#5628: What a Nuclear Warhead Actually Looks Like
Real warheads aren't cinematic — they're warm, gold-plated, softball-sized pits inside floor vaults under aircraft shelters.
#5231: Uranium: From Yellow Glass to Little Boy
Connecticut well water, Roman glass, and the isotope that changed the world — the strange story of element 92.
#5040: The 130,000-Person Secret: Beyond Oppenheimer's Story
The Manhattan Project wasn't just physicists on a mesa. It was 130,000 workers, secret cities, and an industrial effort we rarely hear about.
#4985: Kazakhstan's Wild Apple Forests and Futuristic Cities
Where every apple's DNA began and a capital built from scratch on the steppe.
#4767: What Future Generations Will Blame Us For
We examine today's miracle materials and practices that history may judge as our biggest mistakes.
#4595: Charging Mountains: Inside the Aetherius Society
A London taxi driver founded a UFO religion where mountains are spiritual batteries. Here's how it works.
#3582: The Sponge That Might Be Cheese: Dream Logic of Bikini Bottom
Why does a brainless sea sponge (or is it cheese?) live in a pineapple under the sea? We explore the unsettling worldbuilding of Bikini Bottom.
#3555: Three Ways to Seize Iran's Enriched Uranium
A military and logistics breakdown of the options for securing or destroying Iran's buried nuclear material at Isfahan.
#3548: Can Iran's HEU Actually Be Destroyed?
The physics and logistics of handling, transferring, and downblending Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile.
#3336: Why "Entombed" Uranium Won't Stay Buried
Iran's enriched uranium is "entombed" after strikes — but debris removal, tunneling, and seismic risks make recovery likely.
#3256: The Seasteading Dream That Sank
Silicon Valley tried to build floating nations. The ocean and the law had other plans.
#3093: Israel’s Undeclared Nuclear Triad: Warheads, Missiles, Subs
How Israel built a nuclear arsenal of ~90 warheads, Jericho missiles, and a submarine fleet — all without ever admitting it.
#3026: How 23,000-Year-Old Barley Rewrites Farming History
An Ice Age camp in Israel shows people cultivating grain 13,000 years before farming was supposed to begin.
#2881: Nuclear's Surprising Role in Clean Energy
Nuclear provides 9% of global electricity but 25% of carbon-free power. Here's how safety has changed since Chernobyl.
#2830: What CERN Actually Does: Beyond the Big Ring
CERN is a treaty organization, not a lab. How 24 countries pool resources to run the LHC and beyond.
#2620: How Atomic Clocks Actually Keep Time
Why the second is defined by a cesium atom, not the Earth's rotation — and why leap seconds are causing chaos.
#1739: AI Just Designed a New Life Form
Meet Evo: the 40B parameter AI that writes DNA, designs novel CRISPR systems, and is reshaping synthetic biology.