More of Kate Brown's fascinating history of two utopian factory towns created in the 1940s: Richland, WA; and Ozersk, Russia.
Both factories made plutonium. To ensure obedient workers, each government built a wonderful town, restricted freedom, controlled the press, kept out minorities, spied --and gave workers an amazingly high standard of living.
(Continued in "Credits," below.)
(Contiued:) Through radioative poisoning of the environment, both factories also destroyed the lives of their workers and many other people in the region. Over four decades, each factory polluted the environment with twice the radiation released at Chernobyl.
Its quite a story. And its still going on. And maybe Richland is not just a place but also a metaphor for our whole consumer culture--and our willingness to give up liberty and even health in exchange for a luxurious lifestyle.
Kate Brown spoke in Seattle on July 22, 2013. Original recording (video) courtesy of Pirate TV. Audio (here lightly edited by KD) courtesy of unwelcomeguests.net.
New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "counter") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.
Kate Brown is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
***** If you have trouble downloading this program from radio4all.net, you can download it from The Internet Archive (www.archive.org). The Program Information page at archive.org is here: https://archive.org/details/NewWorldNotes349-Plutopiapart2 . To download from that page, right-click on the link that read "39.7 MB" or "13.2 MB". The page also has players for online listening. *****
More details, photos, great links, & other good stuff on the show's Web site: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com
SERIES OVERVIEW -- Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for. "Date recorded," below, = date of first scheduled broadcast.
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