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Podcast: Let's Get To The Bottom of That
Episode: The Manhattan Project | Was It Necessary?
Description: The Manhattan Project’s inception can be traced to a single, pivotal alarm bell: a 1939 letter signed by Albert Einstein and co-drafted by physicist Leo Szilard, delivered directly into the hands of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This letter warned of a terrifying possibility: Nazi Germany, under the direction of scientists like Werner Heisenberg, might be racing to develop a nuclear bomb. The implications were unthinkable—a totalitarian regime wielding the ultimate destructive power. In the American corridors of power, what started as cautious concern soon escalated into frantic action.By 1942, Roosevelt had quietly green-lit a top-secret research program. Officially know...