Podcast: On a Road Called Oppenheimer at Lawyers, Guns & Money

One of the nice things about Oppenheimer is that it's spurred so much conversation on so many different topics. It's been a while since we had a movie that, while being a popular entertainment with a very large audience, encouraged people to talk about history, accountability, art, and the limits of biography. On top of my review of the film at Lawyers, Guns & Money, I also posted there about the issue of political criticism, in the context of the conversation that has sprung up around its choice to center the story of the atomic bomb and its first wartime deployment on the (white) man who made it rather than the people it killed and sickened. Fellow LGM blogger Cheryl Rofer, a scientist with roots in the nuclear community who worked with Manhattan Project alumni and is a self-described member of the "cult of Oppenheimer" has also contributed several discussions of the film's historical accuracy (or lack of same) and is, to my knowledge, planning more.

All of which meant that the LGM gang was primed for a podcast discussion of the movie, which is also my debut appearance on the blog's podcast series. Hosted by Robert Farley, its contributors include Cheryl, Scott Lemieux, and myself. On top of the issues mentioned above, we discussed Christopher Nolan's career and our differing attitudes towards it, the choice to focus the final third of the film on Lewis Strauss, the various performances in the movie, and the film's Oscar prospects. Tune in to hear me call the film (and Nolan in general) "middlebrow", but in a good way.

The podcast in full, as well as links to various podcasting platforms, can be found here, where there is also a transcript. This will probably be the last thing I have to say about Oppenheimer, but hopefully there will continue to be interesting discussions of it from other sources.

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