Nuclear Testing: How Humanity Learned to Destroy Itself (Ep. 71)

At 5:29 AM on July 16, 1945, in a patch of New Mexico desert called Jornada del Muerto—the Journey of Death—Georgia Green was driving to work when the world turned white. She had been blind since birth. For an instant, she could see. This episode opens with the Trinity test, the moment humanity first split the atom in anger, and traces the Manhattan Project from Einstein's famous letter to Roosevelt through the secret cities of Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. We follow Oppenheimer and his team of geniuses as they race against time and conscience to build the most destructive weapon ever conceived—knowing that if they succeeded, the world would never be the same. From the physics laboratories of prewar Europe to the fireball over the desert, discover how the atomic age was born in secrecy, fear, and a flash of light bright enough to give sight to the blind.