You can always count on PBS for timely programming that informs viewers on important issues. Here are a couple well worth your time.
What makes them especially apropos are the recent nuclear discussions with Iran and the ensuing deal that proponents say will rein in that country's nuclear program.
Opponents are skeptical. Not mincing words is U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who was all over the morning talk shows before the ink was dry.
"This proposed deal is a terrible, dangerous mistake that's going to pave the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon," Cotton said, predicting the GOP-controlled Congress will "kill the deal."
The prospect of Iran with the bomb is the stuff of nightmares. This would be a good time to revisit the beginning of the nuclear age.
The Bomb airs at 7 p.m. Tuesday on AETN and PBS. The two-hour special is not only meaningful for those of us old enough to recall our "duck and cover" drills in grade school, but for anyone who wants to understand how we got where we are today.
The documentary comes on the 70th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age and explores the most powerful and destructive weapon in human history and the challenges we have faced living with the bomb.
The Bomb "shows how America developed the nuclear bomb, how the bomb changed the world and how it continues to loom large in our lives. It focuses on the choices society has made -- and continues to make -- to live with an invention that could destroy the planet."
The special features recently declassified films of test detonations and their aftermath. State-of-the-art restoration techniques have turned those faded images into crisp, vivid footage. Viewers will witness the bomb tests through the 1950s and '60s and the power and strangely compelling beauty of nuclear explosions.
The documentary includes interviews with historians Richard Rhodes, Martin Sherwin, Robert Norris, Sergei Khrushchev, along with men and women who helped build the weapon piece by piece.
Khrushchev is a familiar name to baby boomers. Cold War Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was the boogeyman of our childhood due in large part to his 1956 rant where he stated, "We will bury you."
Sergei Khrushchev is his son. He is a naturalized American citizen and a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
The documentary also presents interviews with former Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense William Perry, who reveal how the bomb was viewed inside government circles, as well as scientists, weapons designers, pilots, witnesses and ordinary men and women who have lived and worked with the bomb.
For the record, the first atom bomb was successfully tested in Alamogordo, N.M., at 5:29:45 a.m., July 16, 1945.
The Manhattan Project scientists and a few VIPs had stationed themselves 5.7 miles away and observed the first mushroom cloud climb 40,000 feet into the air. The bomb generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The bomb tower was vaporized.
The nuclear bomb Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, instantly killing an estimated 80,000 people. The final death toll may have reached 166,000. A second bomb, Fat Man, leveled Nagasaki Aug. 9. Between 40,000 and 80,000 eventually died.
"The arc of this story is filled with fascinating breakthroughs, agonizing human dilemmas, and unintended consequences," said Bill Margol, senior director of programming and development for PBS. "The Bomb provides a comprehensive look at the nuclear age and offers a chance for current generations to understand the indelible impact this discovery and invention had, and continues to have, on all of us."
• The uranium story. As a companion to The Bomb, PBS premieres Uranium: Twisting the Dragon's Tail, a two-part program that provides "a fascinating journey through the complex history of the most wondrous and terrifying substance on Earth."
The series airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday on AETN and reveals the cultural, scientific and natural history of uranium and its many uses -- from weaponry to medicine.
Host of the series is noted physicist Derek Muller, creator of the popular educational science YouTube channel Veritasium. Popular? With 2.8 million subscribers, Veritasium has 400,000 more than pop princess Ariana Grande.
Part science and part history, the story of uranium follows Muller down mineshafts and across deserts, and through the vast silence of Chernobyl, an abandoned city in Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
Muller relates how uranium "crackles with the violence of creation and shapes life on Earth."
"We are who we are because of uranium," Muller says. "It unlocks the secrets of the universe and reveals the nature of reality. It's both a dream of clean limitless power and a nightmare of a silent, poisoned Earth."
Style on 07/26/2015