What happens if human beings can't handle the power of their own weaponry? This show examines the dangerous early years of the Nuclear Age and humankind's efforts to avoid self-destruction at the hands of its own creation.
It's been a long time since we've done a blitz edition.
And as a friend pointed out to me, when I explained that this latest program of ours was going to be a six hour long show that we were going to classify as a blitz edition, we said, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not sure you know the meaning of the word.
And I laughed because he's right.
These started off this idea of a blitz show was going to be something to help us get more shows out and some nice quick ones, right?
In other words, in addition to these great epics that took forever and half killed us and half killed you to listen to them, we'd have things in between, and they grew, too.
Because I'm obviously, I have a problem.
I'm addicted to context.
As one of you said, a firm believer in the past is prologue and that there's no good natural place to start any story, right?
Everything's connected.
It's arbitrary where you decide to begin things.
Thats how I, you know, had a show I wanted to do about Cleopatra that stretched into a six part series on Rome.
Because where do you start the Cleopatra story?
The reason I chose the topic that I originally chose for todays program was because I thought it artificially constrained me.
Its two weeks long.
How could you possibly do a really long show on a two week long event?
Well, 6 hours later, here we are.
And it's also a blitz edition, which now doesn't have anything to do with the length of the show.
It's turned out through evolution to be a different kind of show that focuses on different things instead of being about people or events or eras specifically.
Usually they focus on an idea or a question and then, you know, weave history around the question somehow.
And usually the recipe has slightly less drama than the historical epics, but slightly more twists, as we call those musings and weird Twilight zone things that sort of come with the territory with these programs.