With Chuck Todd Interview: "Oppenheimer" Comes Full Circle, and Much More

Going nuclear today with the longtime NBC newsman.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” “Atomic Cover-up,” and the recent award-winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He has directed three documentary films since 2021 for PBS (including “Atomic Cover-up”) . He has written about the atomic bombings for over forty years. You can subscribe to this newsletter for free.

This newsletter kicked off in July a few hours after I attended a preview screening of the Oppenheimer movie in NYC, which included a panel with director Christopher Nolan, my friend Kai Bird (co-author of the source book), and three notables from fields of science. Chuck Todd of NBC hosted the panel.

I’ve known Chuck a bit going back to an appearance on his 9 a.m. weekday MSNBC show (before his afternoon show and Meet the Press) when he interviewed me re: a new edition of my award-winning book on Upton Sinclair’s race for governor of California in 1934. He called it one of the great books ever about an American political campaign (the Wall St. Journal would later concur). I recently directed a film about it for PBS.

In any case: Chuck now has an NBC podcast via Apple, Pandora, Audible, Spotify etc. called….wait for it…The Chuck Toddcast and I was a guest this morning for a lengthy segment that touched on the Oppenheimer film, the atomic bombings, my PBS film Atomic Cover-up (watch it here) and companion book of the same title, plus: my Sinclair book, the death of Kissinger, my latest film Memorial Day Massacre, and even Crawdaddy and what music I am listening to today.

It’s just been posted and you can listen to the segment here via Apple. Or Spotify. Or very simply via NBC online, or any of those other places. It comprises most of the 45-minute show, starts nine minutes in, after Todd’s intro on current events from D.C.