dr. alan peterman is an

assistant professor global affairs at trinity washington university. since 2011. he also served as an assistant of research at the nuclear studies institute. his primary research and teaching areas are modern u.s. history and u.s. foreign policy, focusing on nuclear weapons policies and cold war diplomacy. but he also believes in making education more accessible to people outside of universities. so he works to give public presentations on wide ranging topics like the cultural of road trips throughout american, the rise of the american suburbs, the gilded age, the role prohibition played in shaping the 1920s. the history of food, dining in the united states. reexamining the cuban missile crisis. or like this, what i'm looking at oppenheimer and the atomic age, alan, is also the author of

norman cousins peacemaker in the atomic age. now. so excited to have alan here with us this evening so without any further ado, please join me in welcoming alan petrova. hello everyone. thank you, heather, for very generous introduction. i am very excited to be here tonight because as you heard the long list of topics i present on but nuclear weapons is actual area of expertise, so i'm excited to talk to you about julius robert oppenheimer and there are a number of different ways that could look at the life of this and his sort of moment in time in american and global history. we can look at oppenheimer course as father of the atomic bomb director of the national lab. we could look at oppenheimer as a university professor and to a

generation of physics students who many of whom would go on to win prizes of their own. we look at oppenheimer as a public political figure after the war we could look at him as his friends saw him as a brilliant of unique intellect. or we could look at him. his foes saw him as a cross stick, arrogant man with, no social skills, and yet we could look at oppenheimer as serial marital cheater and sort of terrible father. whose neglected firstborn son into a quiet life as a rancher and whose daughter ended up committing suicide. but to explore all of that and we'll try to weave all of this in tonight where i actually to begin is on one of the most impact full days of

oppenheimer's like a day that would haunt the rest of his days and to put us in the right mindset to understand oppenheimer and this moment in history, i first need to start back. in august 1945. and i want to tell you a story because tail gunner bob karan had been counting seven, eight, nine. he is 26,000 feet above japan and he's crammed into a shoulder wide compartment at, the back of the aircraft operating a gun at the rear of his b-29 superfortress bomber. now, on any other mission would have had some help in defending the aircraft. usually a b-29 is equipped with ten heavy machine guns. but on that morning, all but one of them has been stripped off the plane to save weight, order to accommodate the inner miss

bomb that they're carrying it keeps counting. 2120 223. the engines roar vibrate motions pulsed through the polished aluminum body and upon reach their target. karen had started counting the moment the bomb, the plane, and despite confined to the claustrophobic compartment at the back of the plane, he knew precisely when happened because freed from 9,700 pounds weight, the b-29 shot up in the air like a bull trying to buck a rider. 3630 738 first officer colonel paul tibbets a tight grip on the controls and executed an evasive maneuver that was designed to get the aircraft as far away from the shock wave that the blast would produce as quickly as possible because.

no one, not even physicists responsible for creating the world's first atomic bomb, could entirely be sure what would happen when the shockwave of the blast got up and hit the aircraft because it traveled that 2 to 3 times. the speed the aircraft is. traveling 40, 41, 42.

when the brightness slowly receded from karin's eyes he came to witness what they had just done in a split second the city of hiroshima had been decimated and copilot robert louis, after watching part of the city disappear in an instant, reportedly said, quote, my god, what have we done. now on this day? back on the other side of the world in los alamos, robert oppenheimer was also troubled. the fbi, who had secretly tailing him, reported that after he learned of the successful bombing of hiroshima, he was, quote, a nervous wreck and quote, and he was heard those poor little people those poor little people, in fact, he and his wife, kitty, soon left los

alamos and escaped to their ranch for a week and near the image on your screen, is this the little cabin that oppenheimer owned up in the mountains in, new mexico and at the ranch, he started writing to his friends. in one letter, he wrote, quote, we are at the ranch now in an earnest search. sanity, there seems to be some great headaches ahead. and shortly thereafter, he wrote another friend. he said, quote, we have made a thing a most terrible that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world a thing, that by all standards of the world we grew up in is evil thing. and quote. and then robert returned to los alamos and shortly thereafter resigned as the director of the manhattan project. we'll get to that.

but this story, this of this in his own words this evil thing that oppenheimer to create the story actually begins way back in the year 1895, nine years before oppenheimer was born. and to understand, man, we first need to understand a little bit about the moment. and it begins in 1895, when a german engineer named wilhelm röntgen discovered a new type ray. and because didn't know what they were called, he named them the mathematical symbol for the unknown. he called them x rays, you know about these? you've probably had one before and what he specifically discovered was that these could go through other elements, but that their energy would burn, in an image onto a piece of photographic paper. and so he did what i suspect any good scientist would do, he

said, you know, honey, he calls his wife into the lab and, he tells her to hold her hand up right where he promptly shoots these rays at her. and he x rays her hand. you can see the image of her wedding ring there. now, the following year, another scientist in the similar field in paris announces that he had discovered that the natural element uranium was radial, that this element was so energy dense that it radiated its energy just by existing that you didn't need to charge it externally like a battery, you didn't need to combust it, react it in some way before gave off energy. it radiated it. and let me focus on this for a minute. let's do a little bit of science. it helps us understand atomic weapons, everything essentially on earth has density measured in

mega per kilogram. wood has 16 mega joules per kilogram. how do you know that it burned when you combust it and it releases its energy, the form of heat and light and some byproducts go glass has energy. 0.035, but almost nothing right by because glass burn very easily. it's hard to get it to release its energy coal has 24 mega joules per kilogram gasoline, which, you know, probably the most common thing you use 46 mega joules per kilogram. here's the thing. they discover that uranium. has 3.9 million mega joules per kilogram of energy density in or misleading powerful again unlike wood or coal or gasoline in which you have to combust before releases its energy uranium radiates it on its own.

and there were some people at the time, in the years that followed this moment in 1895, 1896, focused the research on the good that this discovery could bring. they developed medical treatments there is what, a piece of uranium looks like. so if you see this, the park, if you're out for a hike, do not pick up. it looks like a colorful little rock in certain forms, but some people focused on the good that uranium other sort of rays do x-ray technology for example to treat wounded in world war one saves countless lives. but there were others who knew almost immediately that if we could find a way to harness this energy and get uranium to release it all at once, we'd also have an enormous. but my point here is, in that last decade of the 1800s and the first decade of the 1900s, science in general is on a tear.

it initiates an absolute revolution in human life. a nation on horseback is transformed by the internal combustion engine that same generation was astonished. the advent of aircraft powered human flight in 1903, something men had dreamed of for the centuries. and then one of the most revolutionary free scientific theories of all time hits. in 1905, albert introduces his special theory of relativity equals empty square. this thing we all sort of know as this cliche, but let me put it really, really, really what einstein discovered is that when you're dealing with vast distances and time, when you're dealing across outer space for example, physics works a little bit differently than you would expect under the earth's using

newton's law. and what that revelation sparked other scientists to ask was, okay, if it's different that the laws of physics apply differently across vast spaces, what about very, very, very small things? what about things at an level the atoms, the smallest unit of matter, would that behave differently than we expect? and the answer is yes. and once you know that, once einstein theory sort of sparks this new thinking, you now have the key to unlock things that were not possible before what is born is the field of quantum physics or quantum mechanics as they called it the study of atoms and tiny things. now, why am i giving you this physics? it's because in this moment of and exciting science discovery,

robert oppenheimer palmer is born in april 1904, a year before opens. scientists and pure oppenheimer is one of those natural born geniuses. but it also is the fact that he happened to be born in the right place at the right time to put that genius to work, or rather, i might even argue for a moment that was born maybe at the right time, but maybe in the wrong place he's born in new york city. but all of this exciting science was happening in europe. the best scientific research being carried out in germany and france and england. einstein then was living in switzerland when he came up. the theory of relativity, a america is a backwater at that time. we do not care about science. we spend very little on it the

us nationwide at this has only for industrial research labs that would become over a thousand after world war one when we rely i'm sorry world war two when we realize that the science stuff is maybe kind important for society. but before the war the u.s. is just not really on the scientific stage. what oppenheimer can be credited with is he goes to and almost single handedly brings the study of quantum physics back to america because without quantum physics we don't get an atomic bomb. but if we turn away from science for a minute and start at oppenheimer's life, maybe you know, a minute ago i said he was born in the place, but maybe he actually was born in the right because he's born in new york city to an extreme, supremely wealthy family. for that era, his father owned a thriving clothing company.

and oppenheimer grew up with all the comforts of the era. they had a large apartment on riverside drive in new york. this the picture of the apartment here they lived on the 11th floor. but let me put this in context. at that time, there were just two apartments per floor. they had this building. the family had living maids. they had a nanny. they had personal, private tutors. they had a chauffeur, packard touring car, which they would take on the weekends to their 22 room summer home on allen long island. that we see here at their summer home they docked there 40 foot long sailing yacht. and when oppenheimer turned 16, his dad bought him a birthday gift of his own to six foot sailboat that he could tool around it. so needless to say young oppenheimer grows in total luxury, uncommon luxury.

but he's also very smart. he skipped ahead several grades. but what this meant is like some kids who advanced academically too quickly what had in intellectual power the absolutely lack in social skills a young oppenheimer is weird he's is he's arrogant he's self-absorbed he's mean and because this he doesn't have a lot of close in his school years growing up for college enrolls at harvard and while an undergraduate student he's weird he's is centric he's arrogant and mean and he doesn't have a lot of close friends and. so as an undergraduate, robert is bored harvard because most of all he's reading about what's happening over in europe and he

wants to do that. harvard is doing physics in that way. they're researching stuff in europe that americans haven't even heard of yet. oppenheimer really is that it's an unusual time and he wants to be part of what he can see. it's going be a great revolution in he sort of has this perception of what's coming. so he asks a harvard professor of his to write a of recommendation to go study cambridge in england. the problem is oppenheimer despite being smart he is an ultra cautious student. former professors write that his work is sloppy it's full of mistakes. he just doesn't care or that he's smart and he knows he's smart, which leads him into trouble a lot because he acts like he's he's above everyone else into trouble. such during lectures, for

example, would constantly interrupt the professor or worse, he'd go up to the and wipe off the professor's work and explain how. he thought it could be done better. his own way. and so he's just disruptive as a student. his other former classmates really talk about him as negative way that he was awful in and so because of all this is harvard professor did write him a letter of recommendation probably just to get rid of him and this is this is my favorite part. this is one of these richly ironic moments in history. he writes in his letter this. he says, quote, it appears to me that this is a bit of a gamble as to whether oppenheimer will ever make any real contributions of an important character and quote, i just i love that this guy is terrible. he'll never amount to anything. but he follows up in the next sentence by saying, quote, but if he does make any good at all,

i believe he will be a very honest success. ernest rutherford, the guy at cambridge, he really wanted to study under rejected him, but he passed him off to colleague and so oppenheimer does at cambridge studying not the thing he wanted to study. but it was still a time of excitement in the world. physics, the late 1920s, which is now an oppenheimer, is there and sees a series of extraordinary breakthroughs, some of which are young. oppenheimer helps contribute to, but he also struggles. he's really bad in laboratory settings, which is where they put him. he's clumsy, he breaks things and he most of all does not have the patience to set up a complex experiment and then see it through to the end later. those who knew said that his

work was messy and fast that he'd get interested in something die. then do it. do important calculations. and then he'd get bored and move on to something else that he never took the time to develop these ideas. he had. it took einstein. nine years of work come up with the theory of relativity. oppenheimer he doesn't have that patience, but his great talent was his ability to synthesize his massive amounts of information. do the calculations on the main factors of a new idea basically prove that was theoretically possible and as a result, he opened the door before, he got bored and left. and there were so many breakthroughs that later on, sometimes decades later, other scientists would his initial research to walk through this door.

he opened up, and more than a few of them would go on to win nobel prizes. based on the work that oppenheimer had first explored before he got bored and moved on to something else. so when he graduates or rather before he graduates, his output is unbelievable. he ends up going to germany to study there. he publishes in just four years six steam scientific papers. that is astonishing. he is a 23 year old graduate student impresses everyone around him with his intellect. and so when he graduate in 1928, he receives ten job offers and he chooses come back to berkeley to sort of launch the quantum physics lab as a professor there at as a young professor he is an experienced he's bad at it by all reports when he's teaching

he sort of terrorizes his students quite cruel his lectures are basically incomprehensible but then something changes he learned he grew he got a mentor. he got and within just a few years, his students come to love him. they adore this professor is an excellent mentor and in addition to transforming his teaching, it is at berkeley, where oppenheimer finally transforms himself, sort of creates himself. he his home he transformed from in his younger. this awkward means prodigy into a sophisticated and, charismatic intellectual, according to many he had this like vibrant life force about him. he just radiated the kind of guy

you wanted to be around. he really pulled people in. he's one of those people when he's speaking with you, you feel like you are the only in the world matters to him. later, when he was recruiting people for the manhattan project. one woman would write later. i never met a person with a magnetism. hit you so fast, so completely as did his. i didn't know him or what he did for work, but i thought that even if he was recruiting me to dig ditches, i would love to work with him, end quote. and that magnetism, that radiant magnetism especially, well with women, he's he's a handsome guy, right and but he's still a little bit awkward. he's a little bit shy and distant and reserved. he's not a womanizer by any means. but he tended to attract female

attention. and it was around this time when he started dating a woman named jean tat locke, a young woman studying psychology. and she also happened to be active in the communist party, which, to be clear, was not uncommon in the context of the great depression. it now is the political upheaval of communism and fascism in the 1930s, many progressive people of that era were drawn to the communist party. this is before. later we learn of all the horrors here as oppenheimer, and he loves jean tetlock. she is perhaps the only true love of his life, and through her he starts getting involved in political work, communist adjacent work, and this would back to haunt him. 20 years later, it will come to derail his entire life. his connection through her with

communist politics. but a counterfactual i find it really interesting to think about what might have happened if he had married gene matlock. he proposed to her but she rejected him. but if they had gotten married oppenheimer never would have been allowed to work on the manhattan project. it would have been too much of a security risk. it also would have changed gene's life because. oppenheimer it's midst of the great depression now, and he is making good money as. a professor, he's one of the people who did the pressure did not impact him. you making today's equivalent of about $80,000 a year in salary but an inheritance from his father also meant that he could supplement his salary to the tune of an addition. or $250,000 a year in just spending money. so, needless to say, he remains

extreme only wealthy and. in 1928, this wealth would allow him to buy that cabin on on the 154 acres of land in new mexico and it is that cabin that would change the course of his life gene that walk here has rejected him but in 1939 he met another woman, kati puni, at a party. she is the unhappily married wife of another professor worked adjacent to oppenheimer and robert and katie immediately began an affair that they didn't even really try to keep hidden. and in the summer of 1940, oppenheimer invites this married woman to spend two months with him. over the summer at his ranch without her and her husband. amazingly, says sure go off, spend two months with your friend oppenheimer up in the mountains. i got a lot of research to do

over the summer anyway, so the two of them went. they spent the summer horses together and the perfect bliss of the mountain summer ends. robert and kitty, come down. go to berkeley to teach in september and has to tell kitty's husband a small thing friend. i got your wife pregnant the summer. oops kitty got and robert married the very next day. now they may have been married and he stayed married to kitty his entire life, but oppenheimer also carried on extramarital affairs with other women. if you've seen the oppenheimer film, he carries on with with gene matlock, the woman he really to marry. he also has a long affair with another woman, at least one other woman that we know well, bob. so this is family side not so great. but let's zoom out for a minute here.

1939 is a very eventful year for oppenheimer. he meets his soon to be wife. he's still sleeping with gene. log on the side and earlier that year, in january, scientists figure how to success fully split the atom get it to effectively have a controlled of its energy and less than 15 minutes after oppenheimer learned they had done this he had figured out how they did. within a week, someone walking into oppenheimer's office and seeing on the blackboard that he had sketched out a diagram of how an atomic bomb could work. now, it just so happened that scientists working on nuclear technologies are german and discovery. in 1939 shook many scientists. why? because this guy, adolf is in charge of germany.

and since hitler has taken power earlier, 1933, his increasing aggression, repression and antisemitism has caused a lot of the great scientists to leave germany. most notably this guy albert einstein, who comes to the united states and vowed never to go to hitler's germany. and so hitler is how the u.s. ended up with probably the top theoretical physicist in the world, even though einstein doesn't actually end up working on the atomic bomb project. maybe we can talk a bit why in the question period hitler is how the u.s. ends up with another top scientist, leo, who also flees germany and ends up in the u.s. and the point is, these men more anyone know the potential of atomic technologies. and when word reached that the germans had discovered the

ability to release this energy, it scared them. and this fear prompted, zijlaard and einstein, to write a letter to president roosevelt explaining to him what the germans were doing and expressing concern that we need to be doing too. if hitler gets bomb, that's it. and they write this august 2nd, 1939. those of you who know your history know that world war breaks out almost exactly only one month later. problem is, the white house is not convinced that the u.s. to be researching atomic technologies. this is still just a theory no one's quite sure how or even if this could be directed explosive force. it's a theory and it would be enormously expensive and roosevelt has to contend the fact that the u.s. is still the

midst of the great depression. we don't have the money to throw around on this that scientific theory. plus, we neutral in this. but roosevelt does see the value in exploring some atomic research. so he writes back to einstein saying he set up some scientists and he's given them some funding. of $6,000, a paltry sum even then. now there are non-government scientists after the war has broken out who continue doing their research at universities and physics labs across the country. but it isn't until 39 goes by 1940 goes by 1941 goes by and the scenario changes after the u.s. sitting on the sidelines is attacked at pearl harbor. and now there is urgency. we are involved in, the war, and

we are certain that the germans are ahead of us on researching an atomic bomb. oppenheimer convinced that they're almost ready. and so with the us fully at war, the manhattan project begins in earnest around june 1942. centralize under the us army. and at first it is unclear that oppenheimer would or even should involved in this. i mentioned his his communist connections. but more than that he has no management experience. he's never won a nobel prize and that's seen as a dark mark on his resume a but ultimately through the lobbying of other scientists, he is chosen and it's because, oppenheimer, that the main lab ends up in los alamos. he recommends a that is conveniently close to the ranch he already owns out there.

and first, oppenheimer underestimates things a little bit. he's put in charge. he thinks that just six scientists joined by some engineers and some technicians, could get the job done. and he requests an initial budget of $300,000. six guy is 300 grand will will develop a bomb he's a little bit off on that because within a year this is the picture of the los alamos or at least part of the los alamos lab. within a year there are thousand 500 scientists plus. 4000 civilian assistant workers plus 2000 security guards. they lived in 300 apartment buildings, two dormitories, 200 trailers that were just stood up in the middle of the desert in this town that they had to build. and their budget swelled from

$300,000 to today's. of $1.3 billion. so oppenheimer is a bit off on his math. but these scientists they worked they six days a week they sundays off and oppenheimer encouraged everyone at los alamos to work hard but to play hard on the weekends and evenings. he hosted legion dairy parties. his wife complained that their alcohol budget was higher than their food budget and los is a hopping place. it's also interesting only a young place. the average age of the los alamos scientists was just 25 physics kind of an olympic athlete was a young man's game. oppenheimer's but the average age 25 years old that's wild so

the young man's game is also a young woman among. the 3500 scientists there were about 1600 young female scientists as well. and there are often overlooked in the oppenheimer film, only one female scientist depicted. but oppenheimer recruited and encouraged women for this research. he thought i don't care if you're a man or a woman, you've got the knowledge i want you. he did less well on diversity. there's not a single african-american at los alamos. there are about 12 that we know of total in the national system. there are two other labs, one in tennessee, one in washington. but socially, many of these scientists would later talk about how time at the lab working on the bomb project was of the best times of their life. this is when they're reflecting back on their life, both because

of the incredible camaraderie, the sense of working on the science together in this patriotic wartime effort, because of the fact that they got essentially unlimited funding and resources to explore the thing they were most interested in, but also it's the best time of their life because of the wild partying that goes on there. these young men and women effectively are locked in to this highly secured compound. and since there are so many young men, young women living together, working together and partying, it should be unsurprising that. there are also a lot of babies born at los alamos. 80 were born. the first year, 120 were born the next year. and the army actually complained to oppenheimer. army is in charge of the base,

in charge of the security, and they complain to oppenheimer about all these young women getting pregnant at what is supposed to be a strictly classified research site. like what is going on here. but apparently oppenheimer allegedly told them that his duties as the director of the scientific project did not extend to birth control. he didn't care what they were doing on their free time to oppenheimer, the only thing that mattered was getting a bomb before the nazis did. and the irony in all of this is we now know, although to clear they didn't know this at the time, we now know in hindsight that early 1942, just about a month or two before the u.s. launches, the manhattan project, because we think the germans are far ahead of us. the german military authorities decided to cancel their own

nuclear program. they give it up right around? the time we started. but they didn't know that that back to los alamos. this is, of course, the main facility where they're constructing bombs, but it's not the only one i mentioned. there's a lab in washington. there's a lab in tennessee. there are universities. and research centers across the u.s., canada, england are contributing bits of research so much so that if you include all people working on the manhattan project down to like janitors and repairmen, there aren't nearly. 600,000 thousand people involved in project it took lots of money. if you add up all of the projects that are contributing to the development of the atomic bomb, it cost today's equivalent. of $35 billion. it was the second most expensive

thing the u.s. had ever the first most expensive weapons system was developing the b-29, which was the only plane big enough to carry what was going to be about a 10,000 pounds bomb. and i could talk to you all about, nelda, the science, fake minutia, how the bomb were worked, all these issues they encountered it in developing it, how they experimented with the first nuclear chain reaction in a lab under the sports field at the university of chicago, which is if something had gone wrong, they could have blown up the entire city of chicago. but had all kinds of other i'm thinking of like which rabbit hole do i go down next year, all kinds of other things. there was if you saw the film they are worried that if detonated this bomb could create so much that it essentially

could the atmosphere on fire and they do some calculations they get some outside people to do more calculations and they're pretty sure that's not going to happen. but it's not a 0% chance that detonating a weapon this powerful could all life on earth. they go ahead with it anyway. but just to dispel the myth, although oppenheimer considered the father of the atomic bomb, he didn't actually technically on the project he was an administrator he's the director the ceo as it were sitting in the the corner office he ended up being despite no managerial experience ended up being a really good manager people he directed scientists and then he left them alone to their work

without, micromanaging them sort of just like go do the science. you want to do. even scientists who sort of pushed back and didn't want to work on a certain project, certain part of the project, he would let them explore their own intellectual interests as long as they're, you know, putting some science towards this. and so the who worked there talked about how his great talent was he'd come into a meeting, listen to the points of views and then sort of sum everything up, synthesize what he had heard. but do it in a way that made it very clear everyone what the next step needed to be that oppenheimer was the grease kept everything moving even though he's never once the in the lab doing the work he's contributing sort of his own scientist mind to the little minutia of the project. so here they are after two years of work, by july 1945, they had

done it. they have completed their research. they have built a working bomb. and you're seeing some footage here of prepping the bomb for this test and i said they built a working bomb at they've built a bomb. they think will work and this is still again just a theory they're not sure that this is going to if you a nuclear or sort of a conventional explosion to crush core it'll actually blow up into a huge nuclear explosion they're. not sure this is going to work. so now they have to test it. they cart the bomb out to the desert, lift it up into a tower and they literally just blow it up. there is an image of the bomb for its test and i'll show you the footage of the actual bomb test. and keep in mind this camera

you're about to see the footage from is placed miles away from the explosion here it goes. here is an overhead of the epicenter of the bomb. yet the fireball is so hot it the desert floor. you can see where the black part is in about a 300 meter radius into glass. it essentially the sand into glow that has this green tended to it. the shockwave, the could be felt for almost a hundred miles, but there's a problem by this point. in mid-july, 1945, the germans

have already been defeated. they had developed this bomb to beat nazi germany and now they can't. the germans are out of the war. and when that happened, when they started with first when germany surrenders in may and they start getting closer and closer to a working bomb, there starts to be a more pushback among the scientists who didn't want this bomb to be used. if it wasn't going to be against the nazis, who built it. for many of these silent tests, einstein and the others are jewish. this is about hitler. leo zijlaard drafts a petition for president truman stating that the use of an atomic bomb for attacks had to be avoided at all costs. one scientist, joseph rotblat, actually quit outright quit.

he didn't want to work on this anymore. the problem was only one scientist quit. oppenheimer didn't obviously he did think deeply about the implications of the bomb. and it's interesting how his thinking evolves over the years as he was working on the manhattan project at first he is gung ho they must beat hitler. i staunchly for that but as they get closer and as it gets closer to their awareness that hitler is going to be defeated before the bomb ready, he thinks deeply about the moral implications of the bomb. the problem is oppenheimer is deeply involved in picking targets in japan because with germany of the war it's going to be used on japan. he's picking targets, he's tweaking the bomb.

until the very last day before they send it off to be sent to the military he's tweaking it so that it with maximum effect and the interesting part that is sort of almost unthinkable from our current position comfortably looking back 70 years at this oppenheimer's reasoning this to him the worst possible outcome would be if the war without the bomb being used if war ended without the world knowing about atomic weapons. and here's his reasoning. if we do that, if the war japan ends tomorrow and we don't have the bomb ready or it's not in the field ready to be deployed yet, then the u.s. is going to keep this a secret. in fact, they might even in a sinister way, put out, you know, propaganda saying. we worked on an atomic bomb project, but it doesn't work.

we we canceled it like the germans and we figured out it just isn't going to work. but that would be a lie we'd keep the bombs secret. we keep developing them and tweaking them and making them bigger, bigger and bigger. and then when the next came, next war inevitably came. we would almost certainly use one in the next war, except it would be far more devastating than the bomb we have right now, which, to be clear is a crude prototype weapon that has a power of about 15 kilotons. it's comparative, very small compared to what, you know, bombs would get three megatons or 3000 kilotons. but oppenheimer, we have to use it now because if we use an atomic bomb i oppenheimer know how bad it's going to be and it's going to shock the world.

and because that the world community get together after the war they will be so horrified by devastating new weapon that they will get together and they will pass laws banning the use of atomic weapons. they pass laws ordering atomic bombs to be destroyed that we cannot build anymore. and we might be sitting here thinking that while that's dumb oppenheimer in his wishful thinking that was never going to happen but we got to put ourselves in his shoes. he lived experience was living through world war one. he didn't fight it. he was too young. but people of that generation would have known that. a very similar thing did happen. a new weapon was invented in war. one chemical gases. and that was so horrifying, so scary, so led to like mass

indiscriminate slaughter that when the war, the international community got together and passed the convention banning the use of chemical weapons, oppenheimer that's my model. i need to show the world how bad this bomb is so that the world together and prevents it from ever again. unfortunately, he was wrong that is not what happened. there were some at that after world war two, but they all fizzled. so here we are on august six, 1945, at 815 in the morning, when a single plane dropped, a single bomb on the japanese of hiroshima and changed the entire world ended the age that came before and entered us humanity into, the atomic age. in an instant, about a radius of

four miles of the city was complete destroyed, nearly as if someone had scraped the earth clean. all a few buildings remained around. still, not entirely sure of the numbers. around 80,000 people were killed in a split second by the searing heat of this bomb that would reach 4000 degrees fahrenheit. you've probably seen the horrifying images of the shadows of people left behind were incinerated instantly. and then another 60,000 would later die of radiation poisoning. and this is the moment where we began our story. but let me bring it to our conclusion here, because a few weeks after the bombs were dropped, oppenheimer resigns los alamos, though the lab he created, he built out the desert from scratch.

it to operate to this very it is a national research lab a research lab. so it still going but he quits and in his speech when he he came back to accept an award for his service after he had resigned he said this he said quote today pride must be tempered by profound concern if atomic bombs are to be added as new to the arsenals of a warring, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of alamos and hiroshima hiroshima. he gives this ominous warning on the shortly after he resigns, and then he returns to california. he goes back to teaching. but he quickly finds that he doesn't want to teach any. he says the charm had gone out of it after the war. he something in him changed.

maybe he snapped even he no longer gets energy teaching the next generation of physicists. but what he did love or at least came to love, is that by now in the wake of world war two, he is one of the most famous people in world near universal, though name recognition. his phone never stops ringing. calls from washington. other important people. the secretary state's calling up. and because this prestigious position start rolling in so. in 1947, he becomes chair of the atomic energy commission's advisory committee, the group, tasked with trying at least control atomic weapons. he was the president of american physical society. he becomes a member of harvard's board of directors. and then the cushy position of

all comes, he accepts the position as the director of princeton's institute of advanced study. this is where einstein worked. and if you saw the film this is you know very well detailed here this position came with a salary of $270,000 a year and role was to just and think that's it. you don't have teaching responsibilities sit and think at this institute for advanced study except even there with this cushy job and amazing salary, he doesn't really even do much think the most important physicist in the country he publishes for scientific papers in the years after the war and then after 1950. he never publishes. he never teaches again.

what he did do was he continued to speak against atomic bombs, specifically against the development of bigger atomic bombs. but he also almost reverted back his earlier years when he was a centrist, callous and mean people around. him say that something changed in oppenheimer after the war that the bomb maybe his his mental well-being either either that or the popularity and the celebrity and the power went to his head. this is a guy at the time where like if oppenheimer said something people listened but because this whatever it was either he snapped after the war or the popularity went to his head. he tended increasingly to behave foolishly, to behave bad, bully and abrasive streak would appear

with a ferociousness that startled even many of his closest friends. he seemed unable at time to contain this fierce arrogance and meanness towards some other people, especially people he thought were beneath him. one friend would write that quote. robert could make grown men feel like schoolchildren. he could make giant feel like cockroaches. end quote. the president of caltech, who worked with him, said, quote, robert was an extra ordinarily arrogant and person to be with. he was very caustic and patronizing, unquote and another that he was rude beyond belief those years after the war and these tendencies. this put him into direct conflict with.

the person who would ultimately ruin his life a named louis straus. this is the trustee at princeton who hired oppenheimer to that cushy job at the advanced and straw's very was very excited to hire most famous physicist in the world at the but very quickly came to hate oppenheimer straus also powerful he was also arrogant and skinned and vengeful. he was a man who is easily humiliated. he, they say, tended to remain to remember every single ever against him and even recorded them in a journal he kept. if you had straus in some way, he wrote your name down in his journal, oppenheimer and straus hated each other.

and one of the slights that straus would never forget was the fact that he happened to mention, you know, they hated each other, but they worked together cordially he to mention that he was about to buy a house near the institute and oppenheimer quickly arranged for the institute to swoop in and buy the first and then rent it out to someone else, just as a to stick it to straus because he didn't want him near the campus because he hated this guy and this straus never forgive him for you swooped in, bought my house out from under me but straus was especially furious at oppenheimer's continued outspokenness against developing bigger nuclear and straus would get his revenge. in 1953, after general eisenhower won, the election becomes president, returning a republican to office for the first time in 20 years, straus

is a good republican. eisenhower appoints straus as the director of the atomic energy commission, on which oppenheimer is the bull on the board and. straus took the job with the condition that oppenheimer's top secret security clearance be revoked, which they did in a farcical show in 1954, where they dredged up his past communist connections. they revealed to his wife that he sleeping with gene matlock while. he was director of the lab working at the bomb project. he would travel back to san francisco to have a little tryst with her and they knew this because the fbi had been secretly and illegal surveilling him during this. and so after four week long this group hearing where they dissected every moment of his

life, up every bit of dirt and publicly released it, they ultimately to revoke his security clearance just one day before was set to expire anyway. this was straus just turning the tables on. this man, he hated oppenheimer. this moment rushed him to see country that he loved and worked for. turn against him like that. and unfortunately, this come to define his public image in that era and after that oppenheimer would completely shrink away from public life. he was humiliated. he was never really prominent again, he sort of just became forgotten when a friend asked him, why don't you just leave? like, why don't you just move to europe and retire there where people still respect you? and he said, quote --, i

happened to love this country. but that summer he did leave at least for a little while. he bought a 72 foot boat. he sailed it to the caribbean island, saint john, and he's still very wealthy. even after all of these hardships. and he fell in love with the island he would ultimately buy a piece land there. he'd build a cottage right on the beach. the cottage isn't there anymore. it has been swept away by a hurricane the years, but finally, in. 66 he would be diagnosed with cancer, probably to the fact that through most of his life he smoked 5 to 6 packs of cigarets a day. he was a chain smoker. in addition to smoking a pipe, and he would die the following year at the age of 62.

and it was just last year to bring this to close in 2022 that i guess two years ago now that the us government signed an order. vacating the 1954, revoking of oppenheimer's security clearance, the order says this. it says, quote, the department of energy has been entrusted with responsibility to correct the historical record and honor dr. oppenheimer's profound contributions to our national defense and the scientific enterprise at large that they've tried to restore his image. and on that note, i will wrap up i could leave us on this beautiful caribbean island scene, but we'll give one last image of oppenheimer here. i do want to give credit and note. if you want to learn more, the best book this subject is actually the source material for

the oppenheimer film, a book called america american prometheus, which is what they use life of oppenheimer here, another great book by richard rhodes is back the bomb if you want to zoom out and expand just oppenheimer but also would be remiss if didn't recommend my own book i'll give a shameless plug here for the book norman cousins peacemaker in the atomic age. norman cousins, a journalist at the time is probably the first person to speak out against the use of atomic bombs. he becomes close friends. oppenheimer gives him a mouthpiece. when oppenheimer is speaking out against bombs, he's doing it through the magazine saturday review. which cousins the editor up so if you are interested learning more about this general time period of the atomic age and the people involved in it. that's book you should check

out. so on that note, i'll turn it over to our questions here. do you feel free to come in to the q&a box? we'll try to get to many as we can, but i'll turn it over to heather, who's back to moderate q&a. yes, thank you so much, alan, and thank you to everyone who has already submitted questions, you said if you have more, please put them in the q&a box on our screen. would you mind repeating what that second book was, the one that was a broader look at the atomic bomb or the project you cut out a little bit there for a second up. sorry. yeah. so the second book if yeah. if you a broader look there was a book by richard called the making of the atomic bomb. barry title we if interested those are the two books i'd recommend for for diving into this topic. it's where i got a lot of the material of course for this talk as well. so i'll give credit to that. wonderful. thank. and someone else was wondering, i'm going to ask for one more

book recommendation and then i promise we'll move on to more content questions. is there a book you would recommend which includes discussion of the physics and engineering? the project? that's richard rhodes. his book, the making the atomic bomb, that is very technical. that goes deep into yeah, if you want to know the science, it that's where you want to read. there are other ones that are more too, but they're boring. i mean, richard rhodes is is the one you want to get to read. wonderful. thank you. okay. so someone had asked really early on whether thought was the manhattan project more of an engineering rather a physics problem. well, that's an interesting question the challenge they encountered were more the engineering side. i mean, it's the easy answer. it's both. but the physics are in a way

kind of easy once you unlock the o.s, they're replicable easily. it's then the engineering to get the bomb to actually work to create this chain reaction, to build the conventional explosions, to create an implosion or to fire a projectile so that the real is once they've unlocked the science in building the thing and figuring that out. so this is partly why oppenheimer thinks like six scientia can come up with the then we need engineers and technicians to actually put this together and tweak it and tested and figure out the the triggers, all of that. and that's why they had to build, you know, a bunch of labs. the other engineering problem, i mean, this is yeah, even like less of a physics problem is so you've got the bomb then you need the fuel for bomb and that's made didn't even really talk about that. that's a whole project of coming up with uranium and and highly

enriched plutonium and that's actually what's them back coming up with the process they know how to do it they just need the physical process of, the equipment now to make enough of this fuel. and that's what they're for. those of you i keep referencing who saw the film, this is when they're putting in like the little marbles in the jar to show how much fuel they have. and that's what they're waiting on. so it's both. but it is an engineer's dream as well. i mean, speaking of movie sense, you did hint at it throughout talk today. how does the movie hold up to the actual history are there any like major glaring issues or did it generally get it pretty right generally pretty right. the the the yeah the history of it is excellent. they did a great job of converting, you know, the american prometheus book into this film. there are a couple all of issues. the one i don't want to give any

spoilers, but i tell you one because it's kind of not a spoiler there's a scene when he's young and he's studying in europe where he poisons an apple and leaves it on the desk of. his professor. right. because he's angry this guy and in the movie he has a change of heart and he runs into the room and he you know, after this tense scene, because the two men are talking and he's afraid they're going to eat the apple, he takes the apple. right. well, in real life, he didn't go back and take the apple. in real life, he allegedly poisoned the apple and never went back and then told some friends his that he sort of has a change heart. he tells some friends that he's concerned about and they rat him out and he gets into an indoor mass amount of trouble. he almost gets expelled made it so happens his wealthy father happens to be in europe visiting him and talks. the administration, you know, gets them not expel him, but they force him to go to

psychological counseling, you know, almost threatened him with arrests. but he has to go to a psychologist weeks and months afterward. so in real life, yeah, the hollywood ending of he swoops in and gets the apple. no, he tried allegedly to kill someone and there's some discussion in if you dig into it like maybe he didn't do that maybe he actually just made this up and told his friends because he was having a we now a psychological breakdown at that time but that's where one of the big glaring things in the movie kind of does the hollywood thing makes him more of a hero than he actually was. so funny. i definitely thought you were going to say that the poisoning of the apple was a lie. but i guess i wish. yeah. all right. so you had mentioned doing your talk as well that einstein, one of the greatest minds at the time, did not actually work on manhattan project. and you said you to there is a reason why could talk a little bit more why he didn't work on

the project. oh sure. two main reasons. one, he just didn't want to. and that's partly not a little bit out. moral qualms, but not even really, although he would later in 1954, whenever dies and sometime in the 1950s, in one of the last letters he writes before his death, he admits i'm going to paraphrase because i don't have the quote in front of me something to the effect of i made the biggest mistake i made in my life was in signing the letter that convinced roosevelt maybe we need to develop atomic that it was the letter from the great einstein who sort of convinces the u.s. to do this to at first. but they come back to it but mainly his concern is by that time he's all all he's too old for this he thinks not a young man anymore and as i mentioned in the talk, quantum mechanics is a young man's game for

whatever weird reason at that time, at least, people seem age out of this field pretty einstein is out. he's just too old. he doesn't want participate in this. oppenheimer is even you know on the older side compared to the other scientists but he's you know, he's not really working on the project. so yeah, it's just science. basically an old man by this point he doesn't want he doesn't have the energy to do it. all right. thank you. so we've had a few people who were curious. and i think you sort of touched on this, but i feel like there's a bigger story there. why did germany abandon its nuclear weapons research? oh, yeah. another good question, which i didn't dive into that is a couple of answers or a couple of reasons, mainly, it was the fear that the americans had at first, like, we're going to pour billions of dollars into this and we're not even sure it's going to work.

and even if it does the main concern that the germans had and they had been researching this longer than, the americans and poured enormous put their best scientific minds on it and weren't sure it was going to work even it was going to work it was going to take years before they got a working bomb that. it wouldn't be ready to be used in war. and in 1943, germany need, those resources elsewhere. and so they disband the project and, you know, send the money somewhere else, as it were. they take the scientists and send it somewhere else. and one of the places they send it is in developing another brand new technology that you know no one is sure will actually fully functional of developing rockets specifically rockets that can go up into orbit and and launch weapons and. the germans are highly at developing these rockets which they then turn into a weapon and

launch at england. they also money into developing jet engines. they're the first to come up with functional aircraft which can outperform any of the propeller driven aircraft we were working on. so it's a matter of just we're going to redeploy this massive sum money and scientific talent into weapons programs that are going to be more usable right now, rather than some theory and a bomb that might work five or six years from now. so that's the decision they make. whether it's mean it's good for us against for the world that they they did that decision and thank you and someone else was curious since the theoretically the development of the bomb was to use against nazi germany, were there certain targets that we know they were planning to hit in germany with the bomb that an answer i can't definitive least say i don't know off the top of my head.

there were debates after the fact over the question of if bomb was ready six months earlier and still like fiercely fighting in, would we have bombed berlin it for example and at the academic consensus is no we probably have for any number of reasons. you know we've taken to sort of explain the thinking back here basically like we still saw the germans as honorable soldiers. we had too many cultural connections too to germany in general know the western thought and and you know it with beethoven you know all of like sort of the key western thinkers, freud and in these scientific fare are academic, all are from germany. so was a lot of debate over whether we would have. but i just don't think because the war on the german side much

before the bomb was ready the military isn't yet ready to pick targets. we that once they've been informed that there is a working bomb in japan at least they had been thinking about this earlier they had been leaving cities on bombed because they wanted it like an intact city to test this bomb on. i just don't know what those discussions were on the german side of things. all right. thank you. okay. so as the manhattan project was super, how was the budget allocation presented to congress? was any member congress aware of what the manhattan project trying to accomplish? we have a politico in house. this is a very good question because like, yeah, super top secret, but it's a democracy we need to appropriate funding through congress. how did they do that? great question. there is an answer and it is essentially we they the army. let sort of into the fold a very

small group of congressmen because have to write the bill that appropriates this funding. so a small number of them are brought into the fold. and what they do is in an appropriations package they hide it under the heading. you know, they're appropriating millions, billions of dollars for for developing tanks and buying bombs. you know, they're these budget documents that are hundreds of pages long that no one ever actually reads. you know, if a congressman, they just look at the bottom line total. and back then. unlike our budget fights today it's like it's war. give them the money they need. well, they bury it in long budget. document under the heading of something like funding to expedite the production of war materiel. it's some innocuous sounding name. oh, of course we agree with funding. you know, more and more, you know, faster war production. so that's really how it ends, being funded without having reveal what it's actually for

they they trick people and they do it very effectively all. right. thank you. so one of the results of having everyone living at los alamos you had mentioned were a lot of children and babies were born and someone was curious, were schools or tutoring set up for the new babies and children? was there child if the women went back to the scientific work, were there marriages also also? this is great that i actually know that they set up schools. i mean, i'm sure answer is yes. they must have, because even oppenheimer had his children there. they were very, very young. and ironically, where the oppenheimer is lived so basically to set up this city to house workers, they bought out, took over a school that was existing out there, you know, sort of in the middle of

nowhere. so they had the facilities. there was medical offered on site. it is a function all sort of city marriages. i don't know that that's a good question. and but one of the arguments that was made essentially a lot of these people were young and single there were some married people. you know, oppenheimer brought his family. but one of the arguments oppenheimer makes to the army when they're the security are trying to like shut this down, ask questions and like how we prevent people from getting pregnant. he effectively tells them we shouldn't if are going to ask, like young men and women to come out to the middle of nowhere in the desert of new mexico and effectively be locked into this facility with very restricted movements in and out and you're going to ask them like not to get together and hook and party. they're going to quit because you can quit and they're going to and go back to new york or

wherever they're from. so we need to allow these young people and outwit even if that's, you know, making babies. so he's very much them and convinces them like look the only thing that matters is getting a bomb to beat hitler. and we need all of this talent. so on the weekends we've got to let them do what they're going to do. if you start restricting that, people are going to get angry and they're going to leave so that it. yeah well in there it's so i do want to say someone wrote in and said that yeah were schools and they know this because their grandfather was actually there and away because having three children there was maybe not what they wanted to do at the time. well, there we go. yeah, it's like there must been i just can't point to a specific and there were scientists who did leave too because this is a tough condition. you are in the middle of nowhere. so there's lots of coming and going and people who joined the project late and forth. so that's interesting. thanks for for sharing sharing.

thank you so you obviously this was very top. and you just mentioned that folks would sometimes leave. can you talk a little bit about what the security clearances looked like if those even existed and any information we have about potential spies that might have been there are people who turned. yes. yes, there were security clearances, same as sort of today, if you've heard of them. this is the, you know, a highly top secret, which is why they are concerned about oppenheim and his connections to this woman who has connections to, you know, the communist sympathizers, at least. so you went through a rigorous background check to get admitted. but even people who maybe wouldn't have passed the background check, but brilliant minds oppenheimer is pushing for them to to to overlook any know security issues because, again,

he doesn't take security seriously. i mean, he's literally leaving the the the the lab to go cheat on his wife back in san with a woman who's connected communists who were you know we find out trying to spy on this project but the more interesting because it is after the war and we do get evidence after war of russian agents soviet agents attempting to infiltrate the manhattan project and were a couple of successes because. well i won't get into the because but at the time so that's all and oppenheimer himself lose his clearance because he's got all these. to, you know, russian sympathizers. but at the time during, the war, the people the security services are most about are nazi spies, not soviet spies. there are allies in this war. it's the nazis we know are

working on this, but we know are working on this project. who know that we're probably working on this project. we're looking for germans, not for russians, but only in hindsight that it's like, oh, it was the russians all when it revealed in september, essentially 1945, a couple of months after the war ends, that there was a pretty robust spying operation in which, again, as a rabbit hole, i'm going to resist going down. we they did manage to steal some information to turn some people to get some that doesn't actually help the soviet bomb project that much. but that's another story. so yeah it is high security, but oppenheimer doesn't really care. all right. thank you. so we have a couple more minutes here. so i'm going to ask you, i think one more kind of general history question, and then we've got a lot of questions. oppenheimer's relationship to some other people. so i'll come back to those in a

second. but obviously, you highlighted the bombing of hiroshima. we didn't really talk about nagasaki. so how does that second bomb fit into this story? in either oppenheimer's work, the perception from the public or however you would to share it? yeah, that's a good question because know we all often talk about not the second bombing, the lab, the manhattan project had come up with a really smart actually of doing this. they had two teams. there were two theories about how you ignite a nuclear detonation. one by crushing it, one by shooting it with a projectile to it to spark. and so they set two teams on two completely different research on of these and it turns out both work and they were both ready at about the same time and so they had two working bombs deployed out to the field of these

separate designs and so one of the arguments is we had two bombs, so we bomb two cities, period. there's a whole other scholarship on. we bombed nagasaki key to scare the russians who had entered the war early. we begged them to help us join, fight the japanese. they entered the war. we wanted to get the japanese to surrender before we had to share occupation with the russians. that's a whole other story. but the question, i think, was too like, how did this affect oppenheimer? it didn't matter whether it was one bomb or two. you know, they had these they were threatening japan. if you don't surrender, we're going to drop a nuke on you every couple of days until you surrender. and that was a lie we didn't have anymore. and it was going to be september before we had one more working bomb that they were building these in those early days take a long time to build and so was a

lie that we tried scare the japanese with. but yeah i don't think it changed the story much for oppenheimer one or two. it's the fact that this happened and then what he thought would happen. we'd be so scared. everyone ban them. didn't happen happen. all right. thank you so you talked a little bit about strauss. i'm saying that where why he have it out for oppenheimer like what was the beef that happened there? and it they're just too arrogant guys who are like thin skinned and they just clash and they're both mean and they're both vengeful and they both try to undermine each other. it's not the way the film it as like oppenheimer, you know, whispered something to to to einstein and turned einstein him. that's not really what happens it's just these two guys really clash and they start, you know,

biting at each other and then because he's vengeful, gets in a position years later, you know, five years later, to be able to stab oppenheimer in the back, it is partly they're both on the abc, the atomic energy commission, strauss wants to develop super big bombs. and i oppenheimer is against that. and he sees this sort of as hypocritical you're the guy who invented these, how can you now turn against them? so it isn't one big beef. it's just growing number of beefs that they that straws manages to whack them over the head with when he gets some power. all right. thank you. we've also had quite a few people who wanted to know what you could tell us about the edward teller oppenheimer relation chip hitch. it's equally bad. you know, teller shows up in the movie and they clash little bit there. but it's after the where edward

teller, unlike oppenheimer, is. 100% pro nukes build bigger, build them more powerful and they clash over that, too. so you know, oppenheimer doesn't like that. that teller is this cavalier talking about how we should fight the next war with nuclear weapons. he thinks this like crazy i'm going to lead to destruction of everyone and so you know teller comes and testifies in the security clearance hearing kind of throws oppenheimer under the bus a little bit they oppenheimer and his wife like never forgive him for this they meet in the 1960s at the white house once. and like kitty, his wife refuses to shake teller his hand. it's a whole scene. but yeah, they remain. despite working closely sort of lifelong adversaries after this, their relationship is also not good. oppenheimer had the ability to make a lot of enemies along the

way from his positions, partly because he's his personality. all right. thank you. and so i think we have time for one more question. and again, this one was asked quite a lot. people have heard that the final meeting between oppenheimer and truman didn't so well. so can you talk a little bit about this meeting and just share whatever you got for us right? yeah. so this happens shortly, the bombings, oppenheimer, is this huge celebrity, gets invited to e white house to meet with the president. he wants to essentially congratulate him and thank him for for this war ending weapon. truman's very much of the mindset that, like we dropped the bomb, it scared the japanese. they surrendered the war ended. it saved a whole bunch of lives. this is a moment where oppenheimer is troubled, really grappling with this. this is really soon after he

also despite being incredibly intelligent and charming and suave when he met sometimes other powerful people, he would just launch it for whatever reason. he overestimate abilities. so he goes into the oval and truman's all gung about nukes and like celebrating them. and oppenheimer is something to the effect of like, i feel like i have blood on my hands. know from doing this and truman is sort of taken by this and does and this comes through in the film say like, you know, i don't ever want to see that again in my office. basically that they they just to you know, truman doesn't want to hear this he wants to celebrate this. partly it's truman who, you know, there's talk at the time of like, well, you know, america is the only country that has a nuke. it was so expensive, so difficult to develop, going to be safe forever. and there are scientists like

oppenheimer. so there are scientists say yes, but it'll take 30 years. 20 years for the russians to get a nuke oppenheimer pegs it five years is what it'll take them they're smart they've got good scientists now that we've proven it works, they're going to do this. truman's responses, you know, when the russians will get a nuke never right like he's just so cavalier and so it is this really unpleasant meeting between the two men that oppenheimer partly, you know, has an audience of the president. and he's just like introspective mumbly does not get point across, talks about having blood on his hands and then like sulks out of the oval office where he could have been much more impactful but just botched the whole thing and truman truman is kind of mean, but yeah. well, on that note, i think we'll go ahead and wrap it up there since we are just over time here. so first of all, thank you everyone for joining and for your great questions and you, alan, for taking us through this

really complicated history. thanks. i wish i had all night. it is complicated and fascinating. i've been you know, this has been a delight for me to be able to share this with