# The Merchants Of Death

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-merchants-of-death
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-merchants-of-death.md
Podcast: [Disturbing History](https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005)
Published: 2026-09-04T17:15:02+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-merchants-of-death--74902877
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74902877/dh_mic_final.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/the-merchants-of-death
Duration seconds: 4793

## Resource

On the evening of January 17, 1961, with just three days left in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a 16-minute farewell address containing one warning that would outlive nearly everything else he said in public office: America must guard against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. This episode of Disturbing History examines what Eisenhower was really describing, because he was not predicting the future. He had spent eight years inside the system himself.Brian King-Sharp traces the rise of that system from the 1934 Nye Committee hearings, which investigated major American arms manufacturers, through the enormous industrial mobilization of World War II. The episode examines wartime cost-plus contracts, corporate executives embedded inside government, falsified inspections involving defective aircraft engines and substandard steel, and a 1944 proposal by General Electric president Charles E. Wilson to make the wartime partnership between industry and the military permanent.The Cold War did exactly that. From Operation Paperclip and the recruitment of roughly 1,600 German scientists, to secret human radiation experiments involving plutonium injections, radioactive iron given to pregnant women, and radioactive oatmeal fed to children at the Fernald State School, the episode follows what happened when national security programs operated behind layers of classification and limited oversight. The story then moves through Castle Bravo, the 15-megaton nuclear test that produced roughly 2.5 times its predicted yield, radioactive fallout across the Marshall Islands, nuclear testing in Nevada, and government efforts to minimize or conceal the consequences. From there, the episode opens up the machinery itself: defense contractors, congressio…

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## Transcript

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