Francis Foster

We should talk about some of the conversations.

And some of the conversation we've had in private is actually about...

geopolitics, and particularly how all of that is informed by the invention of first nuclear weapons and then thermonuclear weapons.

It's interesting that as we sit down to record this, this episode might not go out for a few weeks, but as we sit down to record this, the Trump administration has just announced that it wants to do nuclear testing, again, on par with other countries is the language.

We don't know the detail of that.

But this seems to be a thing that we've talked about in the past.

So just take us through it.

Take it away, Professor.

So first of all, you said a lot of things there I want to pick up on.

But the first one is you said there's no peace dividend.

Is that really true, Eric?

I mean, we had historic historian Dominic Sambrocon, one of the rest of history guys.

We had a great, it's one of our most popular conversations.

And one of the things we talked about is the reason there has been, has not been another world war is because of nuclear weapons.

They are sufficient deterrent for major powers to get direct conflict between them.

Is that not true?

Surely, though, as those weapons become more and more powerful, and one of the things you've talked about is the transition from nuclear weapons to thermonuclear weapons and the impact of that.

But beyond that, I mean, Russia is developing what they call a tsunami bomb, which is basically a giant nuclear torpedo.

It explodes in the water outside Los Angeles and, you know, the entire western seaboard basically gets swept off the map.

Same on the eastern side, eastern seaboard.