Good morning, Keeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with me your girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Both Happy Monday. It is a good day. I will say this. Headed it to the weekend feeling really great following Joe Biden's State of the Union, So I wanted to start out today with giving you my thoughts on how the State of the Union shaped up. So first off, you know, I will say that Joe Biden fucking delivered.
And you know that I am somebody who does not mince words when it comes to my critique of the Biden administration of Joe Biden, and I will tell you that the State of the Union was a slam fucking dunk one because the expectations are set so low. The Right has done such a great job of creating this false narrative around sleepy Joe and unprepared Joe and stumbling Joe that all he has to do is, you know, come with some fire, and he came with so much fire.
Now these motherfuckers are out here talking about, oh, he's on adderall, Oh he's on some cocktail of drugs. Nah, my friends, because the only person that was doing a bunch of cocktails and drugs was in the Trump administration, and that is by reporting from inside of that administration about how you know, the adderall the coke, and all of those other things just flowed like a river. Nonetheless, Joe Biden came with it. He started out talking about democracy,
talking about freedoms. He came for the Supreme Court directly, which no president has ever done, and rightfully fucking sew because their numbers not like they give a shit because they have a job for life, so what do they care what people think about them? But their poll numbers are in the fucking garbage right, just like the decisions
that they have made. And he came for them directly and said that you overturned Roe v. Wade, But you know what, the women who have political power and are more than half of this electorate, they will have their voices heard. He came directly for Republicans. And I loved
the fact. I love the fact that he kept referring to Donald Trump throughout his entire speech as his predecessor and said that his predecessor and people inside of this chamber right with everything that he said, because no, let's not get it twisted. It is not just Donald Trump
that is trump Ism. It is all of them that are inside of that chamber that could not possibly find a moment within them to cheer for clean water, to cheer for lower drug prescription prices, to cheer for lower taxes for the working class right, to cheer for vaccinations that you know, had Americans stop dropping dead from COVID,
like when you looked at the split screen. In terms of what Joe Biden was delivering, the applause that was coming out of the Democrats, and the things that Republicans were sitting on their hands about, I mean, democracy progress. They couldn't even clap for fucking shrinkflation right and ending that. And you know, there are some folks that will say, you know, oh, they think that this is something small for Joe Biden to have been paying attention to the
amount of chips in a bag. It is not small for the average American person that is trying to feed themselves in their fucking families. When you're going into stores and you're paying the same exact price but you were
getting less, you are getting cheated, right. So, whether it's with the junk fies that everyone deals with with credit cards, whether it's with strinflation in terms of the packaging, right, This administration gives a shit about whether or not you're being cheated by corporations that are making record fucking profits. So it was very clear that Joe Biden was laying out the stark binary contrast between him and Democrats and
Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And if you are a person that cares about bodily autonomy, about immigration, about the plight of the people in Palestine, about you know, the plight of the people in Ukraine, and whether or not Putin is going to be given a fucking red carpet and say do whatever the hell you want. Right, you have nations joining NATO because of the actions that Putin has taken and because of the fear that they have of another Trump administration and losing the United States
is an ally. So for me, Joe Biden delivered on every single point that he needed to deliver on, and he did it with fire. And he also did it in a way that wasn't scripted, because he went off script a number of times. And that was also brilliant because you know what that shows mental agility, which is what we know Donald Trump does not fucking have. So bravo to Biden to the team, because it gave me the energy that I have been missing, the ability to go out right not only on these shows but on
TV to say this is the candidate that we need. Look, folks, I know where we are in terms of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I also know that if Donald Trump becomes president, they will bulldoze what is left of God and what is left of the Palestinian people, and there
will be no hope for them whatsoever. So while the situation is absolutely bleak and you will never hear me minimize it, and I speak out on it all the time, the situation as it pertains to our democracy and holding on to it right just got a renewed vitality that it has needed. I think that the American people know what is at stake and are ready right to exercise
their power and their vote. Now, let me take a moment and talk about the Stepford fucking wife that they put up to give the rebuttal Dear God, this is what the Republican people think about women. And I don't want folks to get all caught up in like the joking about this Stepford wife Katie Britt. But the reality is is that this is what the feminization of white
supremacy looks like. Like they offer up their toxic strong man, right, and then they offer up their small soft right like meager woman, and this is the destructive pair in America. She was giving off a clarion call to white suburban women and say, don't you want this nice kitchen, this diamond cross, right, Just stand by your man and be
a good wife. Right, don't seek too much, don't do too much, even though she is a senator, right, So I want folks to not get it lost on them what it is that the Republican Party is presenting and how it was that Joe Biden was able to respond. Coming up next in UH Today's episode is my interview with science journalists and the author of Countdown The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons, Sarah's Skulls. You know, often when we talk about nuclear weapons, we are talking about them
in the past tense, right. We are talking about them as it pertains to the Cold War and World War. But we're not talking about what is being done right now in this country and in other countries, as we are still in the midst of an arms race, and so my conversation with Sarah, while terrifying, was also incredibly eye opening. And her book, Countdown the Blinding Future of
Nuclear Weapons is out now, folks. I am very excited to welcome to WOKF Daily for the very first time the author of the book Countdown the Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons, Sarah Skulls, who is a science journalist. And in this book, you are talking, Sarah about nuclear weapons. And I think that what is interesting is that oftentimes when we talk about nuclear weapons, we go back in time. Right, we're talking about the Cold War, We're talking about dropping
the bomb in World War Two. We're talking about these historic events. What we don't often talk about is the nuclear proliferation that is still happening today and how that is affecting our day to day lives. So, can you talk to us about why you decided to write this book and why it's important for us to pay attention? I mean, are we in the midst of a countdown like the title of your book suggest.
Yeah. I mean those are all great questions, and they are the questions that ultimately led me to write the book. You know, I think I largely grew up or was mostly a conscious being after the Cold War, and so I think people who are a little bit older, you know, were part of that nuclear past and thought about the threat of nuclear war a lot more. And then nuclear weapons seem to kind of just recede into the background in our minds and in terms of like the kinds
of policies that we talk about. But you know, they never went away. We still have thousands of them in the United States, and there are thousands more across the world. And yeah, I just thought, you know, we don't talk about them, but they still kind of underlie every interaction that any nuclear country has with each other, like they're still a part of the negotiations, whether we're talking about
them or not. And in my early reporting, I found out that the US is embarking on a very large and very expensive modernization of nuclear weapons, and so I thought, you know, if we're doing all of that buy into nuclear weapons, they're probably not going anywhere. They're probably only going to become more important, and we should probably start talking about them in the present tense and not just the past tense, like you were saying.
I think that what makes me really nervous, And I think that why your book is important. What makes me nervous is that in some way, nuclear weapons have been the kind of I don't know, horror movie scare tactic type of you know, they'll drop the bomb on us finger on the red button, that it almost seems kind of talked about in almost a very cartoon villain type
of way. And yet we don't really in this country, for instance, talk about our history of destroying an entire city, right like of the lives lost, and like the people of Japan have a very different relationship and ship with nuclear history and how that is still very much a
part of their present right again, Chernobyl nuclear plant. Like we talk about these things in these horrific kind of accidents or intentional damage that is caused, But I don't feel like in this country in particular, that we have a necessary grip on what it means to continue in arms race, but do so kind of under the radar. So like, I guess my question for you is talk to me about the investments that are being made by this country and what that signals to you, Right.
Yeah, I think in this country they have become kind of, like like you said, an abstract kind of nightmare boogeyman, even though we the US, are the only ones who have ever dropped one on other people in anger and killed a lot of them and harmed a lot more people for a long time. And so I think, you know, the investment that we're making right now is between one and two trillion dollars probably closer to two over the course of thirty years to update these weapons that are,
you know, on the scale of decades old. And what that says to me, I think is they are not going to be decreasing in importance. I think after the Cold War people thought, you know, we had this one on one conflict with the Soviet Union, and now that that has gone, they will kind of go into the background. But you don't update something that you don't plan to, you know, have be an important partner of your country,
especially not to the tune of two trillion dollars. And I think we are doing that in part because the weapons are old, and also in part because other countries are doing it too, and so it does seem to me like a resurgence of the importance of nuclear weapons in the world. And so then of course when they're more important, there's more of a threat there is this sort of countdown doomsday clock sort of thing that you were mentioning.
Yeah, because I mean, you know, it was the and I forget I believe it's like the atomic researchers who created this doomsday clock and said that we are the closest to midnight that we have ever been, you know, in this point in our history. And you know, and what that means is this idea that the world is in such a place of unease and instability and that we're seeing these powers that we thought were long gone return in a way that we haven't seen since the
Cold War. And so you know, when I look at the Russian president Vladimir Putin the invasion of Ukraine and one of the first things that they did was seize the nuclear power plant there right, Like that to me is like you're making it very clear and known what
you're going after. This is the largest nuclear power plant in that part of the world, right, And so when you saw that happen, and like the rest of us, again, do you think that we are talking about it in the media, talking about it in a way that makes it readily understandable and also the consequences readily digestible.
I think, you know, I think that you know, regarding the attack on the power plant, that you know, nuclear things have this kind of cultural fear that other weapons and things don't be, you know, because they are worse in different ways. There's radiation, it's more long lasting. You know, you drop a regular bomb and there's a lot of devastation there, but it doesn't last in the same way, and its effects aren't kind of invisible in the way that you know, the radiation and fallow from a bomb are.
And so I think that doing something like attacking a nuclear power plant, even if that's not dropping a nuclear weapon, does call up those like very reasonable fears you know that I also have. But at the same time, you're right, we kind of talk about it at a high level, talk about it in abstractions, and don't really get down to the human cost of what happens if there is, you know, another nuclear accident, in nuclear attack or a
straight up dropping of a nuclear weapon. And I think that you know, so much information about nuclear weapons and what's going on is classified or at least not you know, talked about out in the open, that it's really hard for people who are not a part of that world to even get a sense of what's going on at all.
What surprised you the most in your research for this book.
Yeah, I think what surprised me the most was kind of on the human side of the people who actually work within the nuclear world in the United States, and this is that a lot of them are actually pretty peaceful people who would prefer that there were no nuclear weapons on the planet, and in various ways see their
own work as working towards that goal. Like maybe some of them work on, you know, maintaining the nuclear weapons in the United States so that you know, they don't have an accident, or they don't degrade in a dangerous way, or they deter conflict in some way. And then there are other people who work on you know, non non proliferation, the flip side of proliferation, of making sure there are fewer nuclear weapons as we go forward and you know,
no new nuclear tests and things like that. And so it surprised me that there were people working within the nuclear weapons complex who you know, want to move the direction of eventually you know, eliminating that complex altogether.
Yeah, I guess that is incredibly surprising because but you know, at the same time, I think that people that are that are scientists. Their whole work is about discovery, right and testing hypotheses. Like I don't think that that they're you know, like they're not like kill amongers that are a part of you know what I'm saying, that are a part of that field, like in that way, like you know, you know, let me not say that everybody
is like a peacemaker. But I think that what we believe, like the people that create these things are not the people that are creating the strategy of how to use them. And I think that that is kind of the differentiator, is that you need scientists and chemists and all of these things in order to create something like this, but it is actually the military and the folks that are
creating the strategy that causes the devastation. Right, If the United States, though in your opinion, were not to invest two trillion dollars over thirty years that you know, could go to a myriad of things that are actually helpful. If they decided to lay down their you know, their
nuclear weapons. Do you think that other countries would, like we have tried, you know, or maybe they haven't really tried actually, you know, over the decades to have a reverse proliferation where we're having serious conversations about trying to deter this type of creation.
Right, Yeah, I mean, there have been some success in decreasing the total number of nuclear weapons in the world,
like there used to be. I believe the number is seventy thousand, which is an incredible number of nuclear weapons, and now there's around thirteen thousand, so that's a lot lower, still quite a few, still more than most people would like, I think, And those agreements in those decreases in the number of weapons have usually come because the countries that have them both agree at the same time, like, we will decrease our number of weapons or our capabilities in
the same way so that no one's like got a one up on somebody else. And so I think I think it's unlikely that the US would ever kind of unilaterally say we're going to put these things away. And if they did, I you know, I can't see the future, but I would guess that at least at least one or two countries would see that as an opportunity to be on top rather than an opportunity to you know,
disarm themselves. But there are paths forward that people like the Global Zero organization, which is a nuclear like get rid of them all organization have proposed? Are those kinds of things, like we all agree at the same time, here's how we're going to decrease things. These are the agreements we're going to make to not use them until eventually you get to zero. And so I think that's the more likely path forward in that direction.
I mean, I wonder, do you ever think that we will live inside of a world that has zero nuclear weapons.
I've been so steeped in the world of nuclear weapons for the past few years that they now just seem like such an integral part of modern life that it's hard for me to see a way that that works in the near future. But I think that is probably or definitely a better and safer direction for the world to go eventually. But I think there's a lot of steps and time on the way there that are unclear, probably to the leaders of every country.
Let me ask you this too, you know, just as this thought came into my mind, which is that kind of going back to the Hollywood cartoon type of ideas around nuclear weapons, is that World War three has been said to be the end of civilization as we know it. If everyone were to just drop their bombs. What are your thoughts about that? And also like the reality of something like that happening.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the experts I talked to. You know, usually when you talk to experts in a topic, they'll kind of take the hype down a notch and make you maybe a little a little less scared of some than you were before. But it was interesting talking to nuclear weapons policy experts who are as much or if not more afraid of, you know, a nuclear conflict than the average person who doesn't work
in that field is, which is kind of disturbing. And so I think, I mean, I like to think that like let's say, you know, one country drops a nuclear weapon, another retaliates, that we could kind of come together as a world and be like, we don't want this to escalate further, like we did it and we need to stop it, and it's tracks now before you know, everyone is dead or you know, yeah, we set civilization back to zero. But yeah, I don't know how, yeah you
go about that. It's a much more complicated nuclear world than it was in the Cold War, when you know, there were fewer countries with weapons. Yeah, lots of fewer motivations, fewer superpowers really, and so I think, yeah, I think it's just really complicated. And so I think the experts I've spoken to say that, you know, the nuclear danger we're in right now is the same, if not higher, than it was during the height of the Cold War,
and it is a much more complicated world. So I don't know that anyone knows what that looks like, but I would personally not like to have a World War three. I imagine you wouldn't either.
Yeah, I just I guess what just scared this shit out of me is the fact that the experts that you talked to you, we're not trying to take you off the cliff. They were not trying to talk you down. So that doesn't feel comforting at all. Actually, that feels really alarming.
You know.
Sometimes I feel like having so much information can just keep you absolutely on edge all the time. But I do honestly believe that people are not on edge enough right about the stakes at which we're playing with, you know what I'm saying, Like, I feel like, to your point about the Cold War, that the stakes are so much higher and the world is so much more complicated than it was then, and so to really have an understanding of what is going on and the risk of
ignorance around it, I think is also really high. You know, last question for you, Sarah is that you know, you write this book and you cover these issues. What are your hopes for this book, for the information that you put out for people to walk away with after reading the Countdown?
Yeah? I mean, I think my first hope was just to bring a lot of this information into a more public place than it was before, like that you know, the scientists who work at nuclear weapons labs, that the people working on policy, you know, they're not on soapboxes in general, out talking to to regular people. But this is stuff that affects all of us, and so I think all of us should have access to it. And
so that was my first goal. And even though you know we're talking a lot about scary doomsday scenarios right now, I actually do hope that the book gives people some hope that there are people working to figure out how to make the world more stable, keep it stable, whether there are weapons or not, and like they definitely don't have it figured out yet, but they're very smart, very dedicated people trying to work in that direction, so hopefully it's a mix, a mix of nightmares and good dreams
in the book.
I think it's really extraordinary one to bring the concept and the reality of nuclear weapons into our present day reality.
I think that, you know, again, the stakes are so extraordinarily high right now that people often are compartmentalizing what is happening and not really connecting the dots and really thinking about this is not the worst that things can be, do you know, And that that type of level of war, world War three, I think in a lot of ways would be the end, both you know, figuratively and literally just kind of people losing their minds. So I'm really
appreciative to you for writing this book, folks. The book is called Countdown the Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons. That is out now and I encourage everyone to get it and we will link to it in the show notes. But thank you so much, Sarah for making the time for WOKF but for honestly for writing this book and kind of raising an alarm that I don't think this alarm in particular that people are listening to. So really appreciate you.
Yeah, thank you for having me and for helping share the messages.
That is it for me today. Dear friends on wok f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.