In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Fred Kaplan about the ever-present threat of nuclear war. I have listened to most of this podcast. It reminded me of the insane peacetime costs and risks of the world’s vast nuclear arsenals. Harris describes his reaction to delving into this topic: It is like learning that for your entire life you have lived in a house that is rigged to explode.

From listening to this episode, I learned that a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Stanislav Petrov, should be a household name for preventing a nuclear war that would have cost hundreds of millions of lives, American and otherwise. In this episode you will also learn the insanity and technological fragility, past and present, of the American nuclear arsenals and strategies.

There’s no paywall on this episode. I highly recommend it.