Episode #216: Sarah Scoles

In Episode #216, science journalist Sarah Scoles joins Osi to discuss why nuclear weapons are still a big deal today and question whether they really keep us safe or prevent wars. They explore what she learned from visiting U.S. nuclear weapons labs, explaining how modern nuclear technology works, what the people who maintain these weapons think about them, and why the risk of a nuclear disaster is still very real. Sarah Scoles is a Colorado-based science journalist, a contributing writer at Popular Science, and a senior contributor at Undark. Her work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, and others. She is also the author of the books Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, and Astronomical Mindfulness. Her forthcoming book is called Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons. Her articles have won the American Geophysical Union's David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Writing (2021) and the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division's Popular Media Award (2019, 2020). Previously, she was an associate editor at Astronomy and a public education officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.