Month: April 2021

In 1962 the world teetered on the edge of nuclear destruction as the Presidents of the USA and the Soviet Union fought over Soviet warheads installed on the islands of Cuba. In Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the historian Serhii Plokhy retells the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. He tells Amol Rajan it was ultimately fear that saved the planet, and it’s time to draw lessons from the many mistakes that were made at the time.

The Cold War era did produce a nuclear arms-control agreement – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – signed in 1987. But the nuclear physicist and former director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research Patricia Lewis says that in 2019 the United States and Russia withdrew their support. Lewis, who now leads the International Security programme at Chatham House, asks whether we are now entering a second nuclear age.

The BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford visited the sites of the Soviet Union's nuclear stations in Cuba when she was posted there in 2011. She wrote about her experiences and the end of the Castro era in Our Woman in Havana. Rainsford is now the BBC’s Moscow correspondent and explores how far Khrushchev’s political scheming and disinformation compare to the strategy of President Putin.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Dr. Bob calls up University of Florida biostatistician Natalie Dean to ask whether or not we've hit the fourth wave. They discuss where cases are surging, why it's regional as opposed to national, and what role the vaccines will play in keeping this wave smaller than the previous three. Plus, how she's using Legos to help the masses better understand vaccine efficacy.

Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @Bob_Wachter and check out In the Bubble’s new Twitter account @inthebubblepod.

Follow Natalie Dean on Twitter @nataliexdean. 

Keep up with Andy in D.C. on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.

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Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

• Check out this Washington Post article debating whether or not we’re entering a fourth wave: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/04/covid-fourth-wave/ 
• Learn more about the COVID-19 situation in Michigan, and what it means for a fourth wave: https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/covid-michigan-infection-surge-fourth-wave.html 
• Don’t miss Natalie’s tweet explaining vaccine efficacy with Legos: https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1360701856616493060 
• Read more about herd immunity, and why it’s so difficult to achieve: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/health/herd-immunity-covid-shifts/index.html 
• Keep up the vaccine rollout in the United States: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations 
• Learn more about Dr. Bob Wachter and the UCSF Department of Medicine here: https://medicine.ucsf.edu/ 

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