This episode examines how the United States’ use of the atomic bomb in 1945 marked more than the end of a war. It marked the beginning of a system—a geopolitical structure in which the right to possess and deploy ultimate violence became concentrated, controlled, and enforced through silence, spectacle, and selective legitimacy.

Drawing on two historical texts—The New York Times front page from August 7, 1945, and Mary Turfah’s essay “You’ll See” (The Baffler, August 6, 2025)—the episode traces the continuity between Hiroshima and the present logic used to discipline Iran. It explores how the bomb became less a weapon and more a structure of permission, defining who may live with deterrence and who must be punished for imagining it.

This is not a story about proliferation. It is a story about exclusion, power, and the architecture of global control.

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