The Gist

Why We’ve Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

A painter, a Vietnam vet, and a nun walk into a nuclear storage facility. So begins Dan Zak’s fascination with the Pandora’s box of weaponry.

An atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the U.S. at Enewetak Atoll on Nov. 1, 1952. It was the world’s first successful hydrogen bomb.

The Official CTBTO Photostream/Flickr

Listen to Episode 564 of Slate’s The Gist:

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Are the nation’s most dangerous warheads secure if a rag-tag troika of peaceniks can break through the storage facility’s back door? On The Gist, Washington Post reporter Dan Zak considers the good and not-so-good arguments for nuclear weapons. His book is Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age.

For the Spiel, Jill Stein’s unforgivable comments on debt forgiveness.

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