18 Minutes From Nuclear Annihilation
A House of Dynamite screenwriter Noah Oppenheim and staff writer Tom Nichols explain why the threat of nukes is as frightening as ever.
October 23, 2025
34 min
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Episode 152 · October 23, 2025
18 Minutes From Nuclear Annihilation
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34:51This episode18 Minutes From Nuclear Annihilation
Summary
In Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie, A House of Dynamite, the clock is ticking. The film’s fictional president of the United States has less than 20 minutes and very little information to decide whether or not to retaliate against a nuclear missile, launched at the United States, from an unknown source. As with Bigelow’s other war movies, the story is disturbingly plausible. During the Cold War, the likely scenario was a war with the Soviet Union. Now there are nine nuclear powers, which makes the possibility of error, rogue actors, or a total information vacuum more likely. We talk with “A House of Dynamite” screenwriter Noah Oppenheim and Tom Nichols, a national-security writer at the Atlantic, who consulted on the movie.
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