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Radio War Nerd EP #188 — Science in the Cold War, with Audra Wolfe (Patreon)

Published:
2019-06-30 22:03:31
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Audra Wolfe, writer & historian 

Recorded: June 28, 2019

On this show we've looked at the Cold War from many angles: counterinsurgencies, propaganda campaigns, Italy's Years of Lead, highbrow culture wars  — and in this episode, science historian Audra Wolfe tells us the little-known story about how science & scientists were instrumentalized to fight the cultural Cold War. We discuss her fascinating new book, "Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science". Like so many Cold War stories, this one has a lot of relevance to current events & xenophobic panics going on today. . . .

Buy Audra Wolfe's book "Freedom's Laboratory". Read her articles here & here. Follow Audra on Twitter here.

Total time: 2:12:53

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Some Guy

A topic close to my heart...

HKT

"your listeners probably don't care about science, only wars" why not both? I listened to this episode while doing real life science in a lab!

dave from outer space

Audra J. Wolfe Verified account @ColdWarScience: "Oh jesus the white guy says the most important thing is to appeal to the forgotten white guy"..."all white guys gonna shout"... Never mind climate change, when you two start down the rabbit hole, maybe it's time to get a horse and a big black hat and convert to Amish.

mark

I'm liking the frequency those episodes are coming at.

r

Have you tries Thomas Mountain? He's a writer for Counterpunch that lives in Eritrea and writes about the Horn of Africa. I think his email is in the Counterpunch bio.

Troll Ascetic

I haven't finished listening to the whole episode, so perhaps you mention it later, but for another example of the Feds going after Chinese scientists with baseless claims of espionage, from my own field of solid state physics, look up the story of Xi Xiaoxing. Arrested by a dozen FBI agents for relaying secrets to China only to have the charges unceremoniously dropped once the feds bothered to have some actual scientists look at their evidence.

Bart Peeters

As for Ethiopia, have you tried asking Mohamed Hassan? He used to be the Ethiopian ambassador in Belgium but lost his accreditation because he is actually Somalian (real story). He is a walking encyclopedia and speaks about 7 languages fluently...

radiowarnerd

Good idea! I'm looking up his family now. Incredible! Three brothers representing three different countries.

radiowarnerd

Thanks. I'm looking up the case now and it's pretty gross.

Smutticus

Chomsky has largely been dethroned as the linguistic immortal of yesteryear. See the work done by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They started the process with Metaphors We Live By in 1977 and they've been followed by gobs of empirical research on the subject of embodied cognition. All of it largely disproving any kind of theory of universal grammar.

Ellen Harold

Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers (1959 [?]), a very good book, i thought.

xnfec

For those who know nothing about Ethiopia, the youtube channel, Rare Earth, is currently doing a series videos from there. Everything from Tef to coffee (and Qat). Also donkeys. I'm not suggesting the author as a guest but if you want a look at the scenery what the people get up to, it's a good place to start.

Mark Ames

meh, who cares what's in a twitter feed. Audra gave a great interview & knows the material well.

Kylian MacLeod

it's so weird for people to be talking about the Pugwash movement or how Pugwash won a Nobel prize. I'm from Nova Scotia where the town Pugwash is and what the movement is named after. And, it's like this extremely poor, rundown rural nothing. I learned about the Nobel prize thing awhile ago, but listening to this and it's even more wild than I thought. Nova Scotians only really know Pugwash as this poor rural area that is what everything its name implies it is. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone here who knew that Pugwash won a Nobel prize and lots of people just thought I was bullshitting.

Karl Knight

Radio War Nerd is a TOTALLY distinctive podcast. I listen to Media Roots Radio, UnAuthorized Disclosure, Moderate Rebels, Status Coup and Jimmy Dore. But RWN provides stimulating content grounded in an historical analysis that's superior to the other content creators I subscribe to. Every episode is very interesting and I'm always learning from Mark, John, and their guests. Thank you so much!

Karl Knight

I'll be in New York the week of August 12th, and so will Jimmy Dore! Let's go his show! Tickets are still available for August 14th.

Joseph Klemke

re: Mohamed Hasan, the link above is part of a 7 part lecture series. My first impression is that it gives a fantastic overview of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia et al over the last century.

Bart Peeters

By the way, John, if you ever intend to do that episode on Red Arabia/Arabia Without Sultans (the communist revolutionary movements of the Gulf countries) I have been suggesting, Mohamed would be a good speaker on that too, although Fawwaz Traboulsi would be the first choice. Toby Matthiesen is a younger researcher who has been working on that too.

radiowarnerd

Our pleasure! RWN has been a gift to us too. Our culture made it clear it had no use for us until this podcast came along.

radiowarnerd

Yeah, it's true they didn't pick the most euphonious name. Does Pugwash mean anything, or did they go for maximal ugliness? I guess they might have borrowed it from a local language and what sounds ugly in one language can be very mellifluous in another. I learned that in Arabic when they talked about the beauty of velar fricatives.

radiowarnerd

Thanks! I definitely want to see the Qat episode. Never got to try that, in spite of being only a few miles from Yemen. Damn Wahhabi Puritans.

xnfec

He packs a lot into 5 minutes. Previous seasons include Ngorno Karabak, Albanian ponzi schemes, Nazis and human sacrifice in Chile. the beginings of Japanese colonialism, Japanese untouchables and the Fascist hotel chain. Cambridge Analytica even gets a mention.

xnfec

Pugwash to me is the British kids cartoon from the 60's (and apparently the double entendres are a hoax).

xnfec

I thought so too. It was one of the two books from our universities recommended reading list that I managed to read. It still remember Kepler's story.

MS

You should post selected highlights to your YouTube channel to increase exposure.

Kylian MacLeod

that's actually a good question. I looked it up and it's actually and now I feel very silly and a bit embarrassed. It takes its name from our local indigenous peoples the mi'kmaq name for the land, "pagwaek" meaning shallow water. I had wrongly assumed it borrowed its name from somewhere in the UK, especially since we've erased most of the indigenous people's names for lands.

Jim Vail

I have been watching PBS the public station on space documentaries. Really interesting! I did not know that Walt Disney worked with Von Braun to make the space race into a kids amusement park so that the Cold War space race would be acceptable to the people. It is also interesting to note that while Von Braun was brought here despite being in the Nazi party and developing the rocket that terrorized London during the war, at the same time the US deported one of the top Chinese scientists on space exploration who then became Mao´s top rocket scientist. They also deported many other scientists during the Red Scare accused of communist sympathies, one going to France to become a painter. They also said how the US used the central planning model based on the Soviets to build up the space program while denouncing it.

Mark Ames

That's frickin nuts. Not just idiots, but demented idiots. The part about Von Braun that's rarely discussed is how absolutely savage his slave labor rocket factory camp was, as I recall he oversaw the deaths of about 20,000 inmates/slaves deliberately working them to death, holding regular public executions as examples to the others. He ran a death camp.

Jim Vail

He said he surrendered to the Americans because they follow the Bible.

David Andrews

Mark is a great interviewer. He asks good background questions and politely interrupts the interviewee to request a clearer explanation before I get lost.