Brian Klaas
speaker
544 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 7 Feb
Brian Klaas’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And I think now I'm more open to the idea of alternative possibilities, alternative ways of solving problems, even in trying new restaurants, trying, exploring, not using Google Maps to get to a destination.
And I think that's the way that we're supposed to live.
I mean, I think it's something that actually gives us serendipity.
It gives us an enjoyment of life and it actually produces better solutions to problems because the Google Maps way is not always the right way for every single person.
And the modern world solves problems
For the average person, not for you, right?
That's what Google Maps is.
And I think that's something where we have to remember that some of the technological solutions we're being given are for the median person.
They're not tailored to each individual.
Hey, thanks so much for having me on the show.
I appreciate it.
Yeah. So there's this couple, this American couple that goes on this sightseeing mission to Kyoto, Japan in 1926 in the autumn. And they do what everybody does when they go on vacation. They sort of see the city. They stay at this place called the Miyako Hotel. And Stimson records in his diary that they have a, quote, beautiful day of sightseeing.
And, you know, anyone who's been to Kyoto has seen these incredible colors in the autumn, the incredible temples, the sort of charm of this unbelievable city. And the Stimsons, like everybody else, sort of fall in love with it and they get a soft spot for it.
Yeah, so this is the summer of 1945 when they're on the cusp of having the first successful test of the world's first atomic bomb. And they have a choice to make, one of the most difficult and macabre choices that any American government official has ever made, where to use it.
And so they have this group of scientists and generals that get together called the Target Committee, and they draft their choices for where they think would be the most effective use of the bomb. And Kyoto is consistently rated as the top choice. It had cultural significance because it was a former imperial capital.
It also had an airplane factory that was churning out parts of the Japanese military force. And so it had military significance. You have the fact that it's relatively undamaged by previous American bombing.
And on top of it, they even discuss how there's a university there, and therefore they'll have the educated people of Kyoto will understand that a new chapter in human history has been opened with the dropping of this extraordinarily powerful weapon.
Yeah, so 19 years after he goes on vacation to Kyoto, Stimson has risen through the ranks of the U.S. government, and he is now the Secretary of War in 1945. And that means he's the chief civilian who oversees the target committee, who oversees the decision of where to drop the atomic bomb. And he gets this memo, and we have all these memos preserved through historical records.
And the memo basically says, we agree, Kyoto must be destroyed. That's where we're going to drop the first atomic bomb.
Well, we don't know exactly what happened the moment he saw the memo, but we know that he sprung to action because the generals began to refer to Kyoto as Stimson's pet city because he had gone to such extraordinary lengths to try to save it. And that involved sending messages.
Showing 341–360 of 544 · page 18 of 28
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