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Curated by: Soup Emporium (8 videos)
Yes, I do watch a lot of Adam Curtis documentaries. How could you tell? Today we're talking about Chernobyl! Its death toll, the confusion around the number, how Chernobyl helped cause the fall of the USSR, how it helped create the conditions for the modern day situation Ukraine finds itself in, general political intrigue, and how a lot of these conversations have to be had in the context of nuclear power's crucial role in avoiding catastrophic climate change. This'll be a fun one at parties! UPDATE - 24th May 2026: So a Patreon messaged me and pointed out that the introduction to the section "Secrets of the Peaceful Atom" is taken verbatim from a New Yorker article. You can read that here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/adam-curtiss-essential-counterhistories This is a sloppy mistake on my part which was a by-product of the way I used to make videos and scripts where research notes and my writings would be dumped into the same document and then sorted out before recording. When researching Chernobyl and the Soviet response, it reminded me of HyperNormalisation, which I learned about through Adam Curtis who uses the concept to discuss why the political managerialism of Blair/Clinton is so pervasive, despite being so unable to solve anything. That lead me to the New Yorker article. In older versions of the script I can see on my Google Docs, I originally quoted the New Yorker article directly, with an accompanying explanation about Adam Curtis. That later got cut because it was a detour that didn't add anything, but the fact it was originally a quote got lost and then I missed it in cleanups. My fuck-up here. I'll add in the reference to the Google sheet as well, because it's not in there as far as I can tell Funnily enough, the reason I'm more careful segregating notes from scripts now is because I realised after upload there was a section of the video which was also taken verbatim from a different source which I didn't catch. Its the segment that starts "In contrast with...", and was caused by the same reason when I was collating notes on how you can't separate uncertainty around Chernobyl's impacts from neoliberal shock doctrine I recognise that "I am sloppy when writing so I put notes and words into the same document and then sort it out in the end" is basically asking for this sort of mistake to happen. And, yeah, it's shitty to plagarise. Even when unintended. Appreciate that Patreon for catching that and letting me know. I value transparency and I value people being able to trust me, and part of that is saying "Yeah I fucked up here sorry". So, sorry New Yorker that I stole your intro and didn't cite it properly. If you're reading this, Harry, please don't Somerton me Reference Sheet (I promise it's more intuitive than first impressions give): https://tinyurl.com/Chernobyl-References Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SoupEmporium Twitter: haha still no! TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - I. Intro 2:04 - II. How To Solve A Problem Like Chernobyl 24:49 - III. I wish I knew, because no-one seems interested in trying (because politics ruins everything) 30:28 - IV. Our Friend, The Atom 54:20 - V. Chernobyl's Forgotten 1:11:37 - VI. Secrets of the Peaceful Atom 1:28:00 - VII. The New Climate War 1:37:24 - VIII. Tomorrow's Ghosts 1:45:32 - Credits The Podcast I was shilling: https://youtu.be/TLl0DV6JCQk BIG CREDITS: Huge thanks to Tordmule who reached out and offered their music from their album white; heat. The video really wouldn't have been the same without their music. Show them some love at their bandcamp here: https://tordmule.bandcamp.com/ Atumnmnmn - as always - for their wonderful music: https://autumnmnmn.bandcamp.com/ Kevin MacLeod - the OG: https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/musicEXPalt.html RBMK-5000 for uploading high quality archival footage around the accident and wider Soviet Nuclear Power sector; as well as translations: https://youtube.com/c/RBMK5000official Студія Peredova who made the really cool KGB classification video: https://youtube.com/c/peredova Ukrainian Historian Eduard Andryushchenko (KGB Files on YouTube) for their video highlighting some of the things in the KGB archives, and their exhaustive work translating some of them into English as well as linking the full dossier of declassified KGB material. Their channel is here: https://youtube.com/channel/UCZqIDYYURLSDJLTsw58u24w Art3mis 444 - this video is so damn funny and it deserved to take off years ago. Go and watch it! https://youtu.be/IRzrTww61GI Everyone who read a section from "Voices From Chernobyl" The factcheckers who took time to review the video so I wasn't entirely off base, and people at British Library who were able to get access to and translate the Ukrainian/Russian documents, as well as old news articles from the time And, of course, my lovely Patreons who believe in what I do enough to give me money to occassionaly put these kindsa things out.