S01E05 — Oppenheimer / American Prometheus

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Oppenheimer and the biography that inspired it, American Prometheus.

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

2023’s major biopic hit, Oppenheimer, was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus. Our family reviews the difficulties of translating a biographical tale into a powerful on-screen narrative.

And it’s been wildly successful — it made just under $1 billion during its theater run!

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

While the film was a runaway success — and for good reason — the four of us unanimously agreed that the book was, at best, a tough read.

Our verdict is that the film was a wildly more fascinating and engaging experience than the book, particularly because of the jarring effect of how the book interrupted itself when introducing a new character.

Tim: The film is better

Donna: The film is better

Rebekah: The film is better

Josiah: The film is better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Donna: Name something you invented or created and expound on how that object might deter global

[00:00:07] Tim: war. I invented, but only in my mind, a car visor that would move, that would slide on the bar, or that would expand so that you Oh

[00:00:20] Donna: my gosh.

[00:00:21] Tim: Many, many years ago, in my brain, I did that. Now, someone else actually invented it and put it on paper and sold it to the car dealers and different things like that.

[00:00:34] Rebekah: And had an inheritance for their children.

[00:00:38] Tim: And here’s how I think that could have deterred global war. If we can keep the sun out of our eyes when we’re driving, we’re less angry people and we’re more willing to listen to others.

[00:00:52] Rebekah: I literally thought, do you know what would be really great? Would be when you’re in the back seat, if there’s a little thing you could pull down that would be a cover over the back windows so that when the sun is shining through and I’m a little kid who’s angry because the sun is shining in my eyes that I could pull that down.

But that is the funniest thing because that is the only thing I thought of. Also, we make jokes that dad and I are the same person. And I feel like this is just a really good example of that.

[00:01:18] Donna: You are your dad with girl parts. So

[00:01:37] Rebekah: well, hi, and welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a family friendly podcast of a mom, dad, brother, and sister reviewing book to film adaptations. So I will give a quick spoiler alert. This. The podcast episode will contain major, huge, massive spoilers for all of Oppenheimer, the movie. Excuse me? Oh, well, yes.

I mean, of course, we’re going to spoil history. Listen, if you don’t know what’s going on in this in history, like I did not for 90%, you will learn history. I don’t think that’s called a spoiler. I think that’s called education. So we’re going to spoil history for you. Ruin it. Just forever. And the the.

Movie Oppenheimer will be spoiled as will the book which it is based on which is the biography American Prometheus Also, this is not an episode that you should listen to with like little kids Probably because we’re gonna talk about some more adult themes And this is also probably not an episode you want to listen to if you have like super strong political leanings and don’t want to hear any of what we may think, cause I’m sure a little bit of that will bleed through.

It’s a highly political novel and book. So just be aware. Feel free to go to the more fun episodes if we if you would rather do that. So I hope that’s all okay to say. I got weird looks when I said that everybody looked at me funny.

[00:03:08] Donna: What if they’d been contemplating describing some tin foil? I mean, hey, this might be the opening for them.

Tinfoil. It

[00:03:15] Rebekah: could. I doubt, I doubt we’ll talk about it enough to get you to put your tinfoil hat on, but yeah. All right. So we’ll introduce ourselves. And as with every episode, we like to share a little fun fact. And today’s fun fact is share your favorite. and least favorite literary slash movie genre and just tell us why you love or hate them and how they impact your habits.

And I am Rebecca. I am the sister slash daughter on the podcast. My most favorite genre is young adult fiction. I am 35, so I’m not really in that category anymore, but I really love reading stupid love stories, and I specifically focus on fantasy and sci fi. I don’t like romance novels, but I like sci fi and like Fantasy that has some romance involved and I really like fiction.

My least favorite genre I now know is biographies.

[00:04:15] Donna: I

[00:04:15] Rebekah: hate reading biographies. I have never liked nonfiction. I really struggle even to read books that are like Self help or like personal, I guess personal development is what you call them now. And so I’ve never really enjoyed that kind of thing, but this is my first time trying to read a biography.

And let me tell you, I am normally the one on the podcast who will fight to the death that the book is always better. And I’m, I’m no spoilers, but I mean, kind of spoiler, you might find that I don’t necessarily feel the exact same.

[00:04:44] Josiah: So that’s me. Hi, I’m Josiah. I am the brother and son of the podcast.

And I know that my least favorite movie genres are sports and war.

[00:05:00] Rebekah: Oh, fair. I also do not like watching war movies. No, it’s on your turn. Like, really hate them. Oh, I’m so sorry.

[00:05:06] Josiah: I forgive you. No, but I think that what bothers me about sports and war Is that the outcome is often just determined by whatever the writer says, you know, or history instead of I’m so sorry.

[00:05:23] Rebekah: You said the most thing that bothers me. I immediately thought the thing that bothers you most is that you can’t do either of them.

[00:05:32] Donna: I can

[00:05:33] Josiah: figure it out. Wow.

[00:05:35] Tim: I

[00:05:35] Josiah: can do ping pong very well. No one beats me. That’s right. But yeah, instead of being, instead of the climaxes being inspired by the character motivations, character development, character choices, it’s usually just whatever the author decides in the moment.

I don’t know what my favorite one is. I do really like sci fi and fantasy. Nice.

[00:06:02] Donna: So the wife, mom, Donna. And

[00:06:09] Rebekah: we’ll let you guess which one of those is her actual name.

[00:06:14] Donna: My, the late, my least favorite are, I mean, I, I’ve not read nonfiction before, honestly. So I guess I can’t really say it’s my least favorite because I had, I just had never tried it.

But I’ll also say of the four of us, I, I’m not a huge book reader. Like, I’m, I’m more into audiobooks now, so I have increased my, my book reading exponentially in the last 10 years. But before that, I just was not one to pick up a book. I just, I didn’t. So, um, literary, I mean, it’s sappy, but I like the teen drama stuff, the Twilight stuff, and the Hunger Games.

Like, stuff that… Young adult stuff, and that’s, I do, but I will say I do, I like those only because they had something else in them besides a love story. I don’t like nasty, sappy love stories, and you’re welcome to watch, tell us how you really feel. You’re welcome to watch The Notebook every day, just please don’t invite me to your house.

I’ve not seen it. I don’t plan to see it. And I just love when people are like, you would love it. And I’ll go, I would not love it. My favorite genre. I love dystopian stuff that thinks about what could be out there, even dark, even if it’s a dark thing. But as far as like a movie, I want to see a good guy demolish the bad guy.

Like, I want, I want to see that. I love action adventure and I’m sure at some point I’ll be able to tell you some things that I watch, rewatch, just to get the satisfaction to see that sometimes bad, bad people do get their comeuppance or an old, nice old timey word. Nice. So that’s kind of my thing.

[00:08:22] Tim: My name is Tim. I am the husband and dad of these wonderful adult children and I am not the one who came up with the idea for this podcast, but I really love being a part of it for me, the one of the worst book. Movie type genres for me are romance. I really don’t care for those kinds of things because they’re so sappy and, you know, they always, they love each other, then they don’t love each other.

Then suddenly they find they really do love each other. And it, it’s, it’s very formulaic and I don’t, I don’t care for that. I love science fiction. I do have some types of science fiction that I like more than others. I like spaceships and things like that more than I do the science fiction that moves into dystopia and stuff like that.

Those are, those are the things that I prefer that I like. Unlike Josiah, I actually do like some sports movies and things like that because I like the overcoming odds, overcoming the odds kinds of things. Those are, those are fun for me. There are a number, we go to the movies, and there are a number of types of movies that we just simply do not ever even consider going to see.

Horror is one of those. I watched horror movies when I was in college, and one time, the last time, I really felt I was sitting in the midst of evil and decided I really didn’t need that in my life. And so

[00:10:03] Rebekah: that’s, so I’m sure it was really fun. It was really fun when the awful demonic horrifying exorcist to trailer came right before Oppenheimer.

[00:10:13] Tim: That’s the one that’s attached to the Oppenheimer thing. It’s one of the trailers. And that was the one that the second time we watched the movie I’d realized. And so I just hit my face, stuck my fingers in my ears. I just didn’t want to have anything to do with

[00:10:28] Donna: it. It was

[00:10:29] Rebekah: craziness. I mean, we were in the theater together, except for Josiah and you were, mom, you were holding my hand and praying while I looked at Josh.

It was very

[00:10:39] Donna: disturbing.

[00:10:42] Josiah: Oh, for the record, when I went to see Oppenheimer in IMAX, I was about 18 minutes late. And I thought, surely there’s at least 20 minutes of previews, but the movie had started and that never happens. It’s always at least 20, it’s 20 to 30 minutes. So you did

[00:10:59] Rebekah: not. You did not have to be subjected to that trailer,

[00:11:03] Josiah: but I’m wondering out of curiosity.

What was the very beginning of the movie because I think I sat down when he was About to poison the apple when he was in the classroom.

[00:11:16] Tim: Oh goodness So you see you’re a few minutes past the movie opens and if we want to I can go ahead and do the oh Yeah,

[00:11:25] Donna: let’s get into it

[00:11:25] Tim: if I give you the short version of the movie Oppenheimer is about a man who was born in the 20s Lived in the thirties during depression era.

Although his family was wealthy. He went to school and learned learned physics and other sciences. In the thirties, he and the world were. We’re pulled in World War two he developed the atomic bomb and the rest of the movie is about what happened after World War two and the communist scare and the cold, the beginning of the cold war era.

The movie, the movie opens with Oppenheimer in the fifties after World War two. And he is testifying. Before a small hearing in a little room where they’re considering whether or not to renew his his security clearance and we find in the movie that there’s a reason why that’s going on, but he that’s where the movie begins.

And he says, in order to understand me, I need to go back and help you to understand. And then he starts talking about where he went to school in Cambridge and some of the very famous names that he came across. Yeah. He had a lot of a lot of problems with homesickness while he was over there. And he also did some stupid things just things he can’t quite explain.

He poisoned the apple of his Tudor, and when someone asked, said, you, did you not like him? He said, oh, no, I loved him. He was, he was wonderful as a Tudor. But he said something that just bothered him at the moment. And so after class, he poisoned an apple. to talk about his upbringing, his parents his family’s Jewish, though they were never religious Jews.

They were part of what is called the Ethical Culture Society. And it is a church that’s not religious. People that gather because we should do ethical things in society. The book is 28 hours on Audible. That’s a long yes. Yes, it is. You get all those kinds of details, but he ends up working, working at the University of California in Berkeley as an adult.

And he’s, he’s in physics, but he’s considered a polymath, which means he’s versed in lots of different disciplines. Which Einstein is considered a polymath. Oppenheimer and a lot of a lot of the scientists, the teachers that he worked with, were asked by the government to become part of a project for for making an atom bomb.

And these things had been theorized but nobody had ever actually done it. And they weren’t sure exactly how to do it. And so the, the largest part of of his story, Is how he became the director of that and they set up a whole a whole town in Los Alamos New Mexico. I believe that’s correct. Yeah.

And he is the director and he gathers scientists and lots of his students and people to work on all the different parts of that problem. Under his direction, the United States develops the first atomic weapon. There’s, there’s a lot of stuff in the, in the book, in the movie about secrecy. At the time the war was going on, the Soviet Union were our allies.

And so scientists thought we should be sharing the science with them since they’re our allies. And in the media of the time, they were, they were being touted as our wonderful ally and how they had come to the rescue of. Of Britain and things like that, but in reality, they the government was very concerned about communism.

The scientists are thinking, you know, Hitler was so bad, that’s why we wanted to develop this. But Japan is getting weaker and probably won’t last a lot longer in the war. Should we really drop it? And the government said, you know, now that you’ve developed it, we’ll be the ones to decide to do that. They did drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

And I learned something in the book and in the movie four days later, they dropped the second one on Nagasaki. I always thought they had done them the same day. It was just, you know, two different locations, but no, we saw the devastation and then four days later did, did it again. And Colonel Groves in the movie explains what was, what that was to be one.

To let the world know we can do it. And the second one was to let them know that we can continue to do it as long as we want. They want to continue developing the weapons. And so Oppenheimer becomes part of the commission. There’s this controversy about the hydrogen bomb, which is supposed to be, I think it was ten times or a hundred times greater than, I can’t remember which was.

His primary. antagonist in the, in the movie and in the latter part of the book is a man named straws. He is also a Jew, but he is a religious Jew. And Oppenheimer embarrassed him in a hearing straws, however, was a politician and he. He was able to work things together, so that opening scene where Oppenheimer is trying to get them to renew his clearance takes place well after the war, and it was initiated and orchestrated by Strauss completely in the background.

He had, he had leftist ideals but he was never really a communist. He thought some of the things they talked about were great. I didn’t say anything about his, his wife and all of those things. We can talk about some of those here in a moment. Yeah, his lover and his wives, lovers and his wife Oppenheimer because, because of his morals, his morals actually got him into the kind of trouble that he was in with straws and, and the public because he was married, but he had lovers on ongoing affairs.

And they thought those kinds of things made him a security risk. His, his wife was a, was a powerful woman in her own right. The woman, the primary woman in the book and the movie that he was having an affair with is someone that he met through communist channels. She was a communist and she was…

She was a woman that was very troubled and either committed suicide or was assisted in committing suicide. But those were actually. People that, that caused him to be a little bit more susceptible to the claims that he couldn’t be trusted.

[00:19:00] Rebekah: So let’s talk about how the movie and book differ. Obviously, I think that’s the primary goal here.

So I will say I am. Glad to have read. I was actually in the middle of the book when we saw the film. I know mom and dad, you’ve seen it twice, but I believe me and Josiah both were. And so I was actually kind of as much as I might complain about biographies, I was grateful for some of the context because the entire like what first two sections of the book were almost completely omitted other than that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The apple incident. And I think the apple incident was only there so that you could kind of get some of the feel for like his very, uh, I would say reactive nature. Like that was kind of the impression I got from a lot of people or from a lot of like

[00:19:50] Josiah: the book,

[00:19:51] Tim: I think in the movie that goes back into the first and second sections of the book about his family.

Was when he was first first talking to, to someone and now I don’t remember who it was and they said, Well, I’m just a working man. I think it was straws. And he said, Well, then we have something in common. And he said. You know, does that mean you’re a self made man? That’s what he said. A self made man.

He said, no, my father was. And in that line, you got the entire first and half of the second sections of the book.

[00:20:26] Rebekah: So many hours.

[00:20:28] Tim: That was masterful the way that, the way that it was done. My father was a self made man. That’s really pretty much the story of all of that, but

[00:20:39] Donna: I think, too, that the very at the very beginning of the movie when he was being in bed at college, I’m assuming at Berkeley or Cambridge, Cambridge, it would show him like laying on his back looking up and you would have like these neutron wave for these like waveforms and different things.

He was visualizing, but it also of they also gave yo of where he would be pick a lot. And then as you mo quickly, I think no one t much quicker than the boo maybe not actually really He thinks on a different level than other people. He’s his mind does not work like a normal person’s mind. And that doesn’t make him bad or good.

That’s just the, his mental capacity. And he, he sees and visualizes things that are just.

[00:21:53] Josiah: I think in all of those visualizations of what’s happening inside of his mind, I’m pretty sure I saw a tiny bit of string theory in there, which was not a thing till the 1960s, but maybe he’s that much of a big brain.

[00:22:09] Tim: Well, a lot of a lot of the things that they were talking about were theories and beginnings of theories. Before they became big, before they became more popular which is what had happened with Einstein. Einstein is the one who posited that a nuclear weapon was possible. And in the book and in the movie Oppenheimer says Einstein was the leading scientist for his day which was, you know, decades ago, which is weird, right?

[00:22:40] Donna: Because you think of Einstein as this, this, whatever. But he had a time and then science moved on. He was, he built

[00:22:48] Tim: this part. He initiated something that others ran with, which is probably the true for Oppenheimer as well. He initiated some things that others ran with.

[00:23:01] Rebekah: And to Josiah’s point, the discovery of black hole theory was noted in the movie, which is again to that, like that they were discovering things really early on.

I actually wrote that down in my notes of the movie was that they did cover that really briefly. They didn’t cover it in as much detail though, which was that Oppenheimer and I believe the coauthor of the paper they wrote about that when they first were talking about black hole theory, which was a quantum physics theory based on nothing practical.

It was, you know, their research. It was. Like thought to be kind of insane at the time and then later on, it was like a decade later that the first black hole was actually found because it’s just, and he was very

[00:23:37] Tim: much beyond his time position. It had to be that way mathematically.

[00:23:41] Josiah: And by the time that it became popular, I think I was reading something that Oppenheimer was asked about it.

Hey, you did basically the first paper on this. Yeah. What do you think? And he’s like, yeah, that’s very interesting, but I have no interest in pursuing any more about it. I did my part

[00:24:01] Rebekah: He didn’t like to finish projects like he didn’t like to finish things when he discovered something once what he discovered was there He didn’t want to be part of the practical Follow through which is interesting that he ended up being the director at Los Alamos.

But anyway that goes

[00:24:14] Josiah: before we move on from his early life I wanted to point out that in the movie they had the poison apple incident, but he kind of just solved it by throwing it in the trash can. But in real life in the book, it talks about how the university found out about the poisoned apple incident

[00:24:29] Tim: and his father had to pull some strings.

[00:24:32] Josiah: He was just put on probation and sentenced to mandatory psychiatric counseling instead of expulsion.

[00:24:41] Tim: And they all started his lifetime. Problem with psychiatrists and psychiatry.

[00:24:47] Donna: anD they also know, I mean, there’s so many nods to other, other scientific branches because you know, what I learned from the greatest history class in the world, the big bang theory is that Richard Feynman besides playing bongos, Richard Feynman is in part, he’s particle theory, right.

And stuff like that. And he, that’s, that’s one of his. That’s a strong main fielder where what he brought a lot of what he brought the scientific community and you see Feynman in and I love that I love that Nolan tried to pull that in with Feynman and his bongos because that’s what he was, that was his thing and how he didn’t do that with all of them.

Some of them you just heard names and a few of them. I mean, Einstein, he did a great job of the dude that did that was Einstein. I just,

[00:25:44] Rebekah: I’m pretty sure they resurrected actual

[00:25:45] Donna: Einstein, but the guy that portrayed him, what a great job that they did with that crazy white hair and things that, you know, know, um, And there were several remarks, too, about how much Murphy looked like Oppenheimer.

Yeah. I would also say that a difference for me was in the book, they focused a good bit of, a good bit of time, a big chunk of time on the fact that, I mean, he’s really kind of a womanizer. Women found him super attractive. They were so drawn, I mean, there were several places in the book where they talked like, women just kind of fell over him.

And, I’m glad they didn’t go that deep into it in the movie. You saw he had affairs. You know, he was physically with Jean. He was married to Katherine before Kitty, or he was no, I’m sorry. He was with

[00:26:50] Tim: he was with Kitty before she was, he was

[00:26:53] Donna: with Kitty before she was divorced. Yeah. And also there was a blonde lady and now I can’t remember, uh, her last, their, her name, but later in the movie.

So you, he showed you that he’s sexually active with multiple people. But in the book, they did use a take a chunk of time to, to really flesh out Ian Kinney were soulmates and she was probably aware of what he did, well, it didn’t matter. They will never

[00:27:24] Tim: be apart. He

[00:27:25] Donna: told her what, right. I mean, he, what, he didn’t lie about it, but my point being they, they, it was open marriage.

I mean, that’s, yeah.

[00:27:38] Rebekah: To answer your question, it was Ruth Tolman that he had an affair with later on the blonde in the movie.

[00:27:43] Josiah: Well, let’s talk about Gene Tatlock because there’s a few differences from book to movie concerning Gene. One of the things I noticed was that in the book, Gene Tatlock was crueller to Oppenheimer than what was portrayed in the film.

You know, she said, Oh, you know, I don’t like your flowers or whatever. But she was, she was pretty emotionally abusive if it seemed in the book.

[00:28:10] Tim: She was. In one of those instances, she she had her friend answer the door and she said, does he have flowers with him? She said, yes. And she said, tell him I’m not coming.

Yeah. Throw them in the trash. I’m not cutting it. In the

[00:28:24] Rebekah: movie it was just kind of a quirky, in the movie it was a quirky thing that he just brought her flowers kind of as a joke that she threw them away, but in the book it was clear that it was it was really

[00:28:32] Tim: cool. She either hated flowers or she was just, she was just emotionally abusive to him.

[00:28:39] Josiah: Yeah. I mean, I think it had to. It’s seen, and you know, we’ve seen, we’ve read the book and we’ve seen the movie, so these are not necessarily from her point of view, but it, it was, it suggested that she knew that Oppie loved her, and so it felt good for her from whatever trauma she carried from earlier in life to be able to be cruel, but still have that person Come back like a kick puppy is

[00:29:09] Tim: how I think of it.

And she was a psychiatrist, was she not? I don’t remember

[00:29:15] Josiah: that.

[00:29:15] Tim: I believe she, that was what she studied, psychiatry.

[00:29:21] Josiah: Gotcha. Another thing about Jean was the intimate details of Oppie and Jean’s final engagement are not really recorded anywhere. In, so

[00:29:33] Rebekah: the closest is that the FBI was following him and he did in fact spend the night with her.

Yeah. They, we know that they spent the night together, but like their conversation, I believe is what is.

[00:29:45] Josiah: Yeah. They didn’t see each other afterward though. And also the, I am death I’m become death destroyer of worlds. Almost certainly he didn’t say that during one of their carnal sessions. ,

[00:29:59] Tim: right? All the, all those, he did

[00:30:01] Rebekah: say it, it at a different point in a hearing or something about

[00:30:03] Tim: the fact that, that he he loved that book.

That was such an important part to him. That the Bava Gita, the b

[00:30:13] Rebekah: Bava Gita, it’s the Hindu

[00:30:14] Tim: scripture. I knew Hindu, I just can’t ever pronounce the name. But yeah, he talked a lot about that and he did say those kinds of things several times, but you’re right that was not part of his. conversation that we’re aware of with Gene Tatlock.

[00:30:30] Rebekah: I also thought it was interesting that they added a scene with Oppy and Kitty after Gene’s death. That I, I think when I was watching the movie I hadn’t gotten to that point in the book and so I thought, oh, I wonder if that’s something they talked about. And that was a complete fabrication as far as I’m aware.

[00:30:48] Josiah: I get the impression that Emily Blunt and Chris Nolan had a conversation about how to make Kitty the meatiest role possible. But almost all of the scenes Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer had were pretty much from the book. But there were, she was added in places where I thought, I don’t know how necessary that is, but I guess that is true to reality.

[00:31:18] Donna: The thing that she said to him though, after Gene’s death, and he’s out there crumbled and he thinks that he caused it, and she said, let me, help me get this right, you don’t get to sin, and then, what was it, and

[00:31:36] Tim: then us feel guilty about it, and then everybody else feel guilty, and everybody

[00:31:41] Donna: else feel guilty.

To me, I agree with you, I don’t think that was an actual occurrence, but it was super profound. You

[00:31:48] Rebekah: don’t get, you don’t get to commit sin and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences. When there are

[00:31:55] Donna: consequences. And I felt like that was massively profound at that moment in the, in the film, because it’s not just about Jane and the consequences, it’s about the possibility of ending the world.

[00:32:09] Tim: Oppenheimer, who most people refer to as Oppie. Which was an Americanized version of Swedish name. I think, I think it was Swedish. Someone had nicknamed him. But Oppenheimer was, was pro nuclear weapons, but he was pro tactical nuclear weapons. Not just wanton destruction weapons that were so big that you couldn’t decide we’re going to blow up this military facility.

Instead, we’re going to blow up, you know, 20, 30 square miles of everything. So he was… Which in modern

[00:32:46] Josiah: vernacular is terrifying to think that anyone was anti hydrogen but pro tactical atomic bombs.

[00:32:55] Tim: Still terrifying. Well, for a long time, a lot of people thought that we could use the atom bomb tactically.

But… As the years have gone on, we’ve discovered that there’s so much fallout, so much radioactive fallout. Yeah, we did not expect a lot of that. And it is a continuing thing. You know, people, people that climbed out of the wreckage they make mention of in the book and in the movie thought that they were safe and they died weeks later.

What, what we’ve discovered since then is that people many miles away Also, got cancer and this, that, and the other from that fallout. Oh, and

[00:33:32] Josiah: something that people are upset about for the movie is that, and I, a little bit of the book, but I think the book, They’re upset about the nuclear fallout from the Trinity test going downwind and impacting local villages, including Native American Indian villages.

[00:33:53] Rebekah: Well The thing I was going to say is much less impactful than that, because that’s obviously very tragic. But, one thing I was very annoyed about changed from book to movie, which I thought would have helped me a lot keeping things more straight, is that Oppie had long curly hair for like, a long time. He didn’t cut it until he went to Los Alamos because he got a buzzcutter or whatever for the, because he originally like, was planning on joining the military and, you know, the, they do, Right.

They do include him in his uniform. And then I think, was it Lawrence maybe that told him to take off the uniform or whatever to look like a scientist? Somebody told him, but I thought it would have been very helpful telling him to eat. Yeah. I think it would have been very helpful for him to have had the long hair in pre Los Alamos stuff when they went back to those because pre Los Alamos and then during Los Alamos was where I had the most difficulty really understanding the differences.

It’s like what’s happening because when he was in the later stuff, he was obviously much older. Like he was very he had a lot more like freckling and like skin stuff, but

[00:34:56] Donna: one, one huge Nolan created difference. I mean specifically big Tom Nolan is he uses Tom, he manipulates Tom in his stuff, which is fantastic.

but where the book is taking you through a chronological as best it can, it it’s chronological. The movie jumps back and forth. So when I read a little bit about that to try to make sure I was separating things I read that anything black and white is related to Strauss’s par, like Strauss is the main.

P. O. V. For that. Anything that’s in color. Now that could there there. I think there was maybe an exception at some point. One little something he did. No, I think it was. It went from Oppenheimer point of view in color and Strauss in black and white, which

[00:36:00] Tim: it’s also a choice for Strauss head. Strauss had a had a black and white view of things.

Right and wrong. Obviously, Oppy doesn’t like me, so I’m gonna try to destroy him.

[00:36:14] Josiah: Was it a twist for anyone else? And maybe I’m just a gullible viewer of things, but was it a twist for anyone else, where I was assuming for like the first hour and a half of the movie that the black and white stuff was after the atomic bomb?

Or something like that. And then, whenever we got past the atomic bomb, or around the atomic bomb part, I realized, Oh, this is Strauss point of view, versus Oppie’s. I realized that in the movie, and it functioned as a surprise twist for me. And I don’t know if I’m just silly, dumb. Or if that was the same case, I was

[00:36:51] Tim: trying to figure that out to time before I realized that

[00:36:54] Rebekah: I will also say, and I didn’t, I was trying to figure out the black and white color and what I saw and I thought this, I think this is from a Nolan thing was that the Color was Oppenheimer’s point of view, but that he defined the color parts as subjective.

And anything you saw in black and white was supposed to be the objective part, where it was displayed not from Oppenheimer’s perspective with his bent on it, but from an outsider’s perspective. Yeah, I,

[00:37:24] Donna: I thought that it was effective. The thing and the thing about Strauss Strauss. He did not want to emphasize the fact that he was a Jew.

He didn’t want it to temper what people thought about him as he moved forward in either, like, his political

[00:37:39] Josiah: career. I just want to talk about the near zero possibility. of Igniting the Earth’s Atmosphere, which I think was an excellent moment from the trailer. I think that that was such a succinct way to get the right reaction from the audience in a short amount of time.

The scientists reassuring themselves of the near zero possibility of igniting the atmosphere comes from a real life fear, first raised by Teller, as it is in the film. In reality, Oppenheimer… sought reassurance, not from Albert Einstein, but from Carl Compton, who was at MIT at the time, who Compton later wrote better to accept the slavery of the Nazis.

He wasn’t

[00:38:32] Rebekah: like totally wrong. Like that’s a, that was, I think today, obviously so much of this wouldn’t happen in the way that it did, but I think that like, In 2020, whatever, like if you knew that the government was doing tests, 2023, 20, I mean, like if you’re listening to this in 2025, my whole point is in the current day, if you, if you knew that the government was doing tests where they could literally destroy the world by something that they were testing just for the purposes of being able to one up an enemy.

Like, I mean, I would hope that there would be massive outrage, but it was like kind of an almost an afterthought in this whole process. Like, well, we have the right, we’re doing this, we’re just doing it so we can do it. Be careful.

[00:39:19] Tim: This is tinfoil hat

[00:39:21] Donna: territory. Okay, wait, what you just said though is a very important thing to recognize.

Like I did not recognize this until I was an adult, many, many adult years. If you, if you look at their perspectives, the scientists, they said, we need to share the information because if you share the information and you say, this is out here, we can work this out, you could, you could have peace from this preventable war, prevent a

[00:39:56] Tim: cold

[00:39:57] Donna: war, but a scientist, a science, a scientist’s focus, is on creation and the exploration of what can happen.

A military, the military, the military industrial complex, their focus is to protect

[00:40:17] Josiah: their citizens. I have two things, I don’t know which is more interesting, but the first one is that, Rebecca, you were talking about You know, pre atomic age, what scientists were thinking, what the military was thinking, and I was, I thought a clear sign of changing times now that we’re in the atomic age was in 1947, two years after World War II ended, the position, the cabinet position for the U.

S. President of Secretary of War changed to Secretary of Defense. Wow. In 1947, 1949, somewhere in the late 40s was when it transitioned because we no longer want to make war. This is now about defense. Yeah.

[00:41:10] Tim: Yeah. And then Abraham Lincoln had a secretary of war.

[00:41:14] Josiah: Yes. I was just going to pose a very philosophical question to you.

So I think Oppenheimer said something along the lines of, to the scientists who were like, don’t drop the bomb. He said, you know, it’s our job to make the bomb. It is the politicians, the diplomats, the military’s decision what to do with that tool.

[00:41:40] Donna: But it definitely showed that he could think in both of those, he could think from both of those perspectives, even if he didn’t fully agree with what the military was going to do, it showed, you know, he had said, I’ve never led anything.

I can’t head up this. And that’s book and movie. They don’t play on it as much in the movie. I don’t think so to say, you know, I couldn’t direct this, but to see by the end of it. That he really was the person to do it because he could pull people together and work with them and encourage them and resource them and still be able to look at Groves and say, I think, I think it’s wrong, but I see, I can respect your perspective.

[00:42:28] Josiah: Oppenheimer was in the room when they decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. And I think also Nagasaki, but definitely Hiroshima. And, you know, he gave his consent instead of simply being there as a scientist who built the bomb. You know, on one hand he says, Yeah, we, we don’t have any say because we’re just the scientists who make it.

And on the other hand, he’s in the room and he does… Yeah, okay, that plan works. And I I think that that speaks to a broader point. You know, these biopics, these biographies usually make broad statements about the person, the real life person. I think one of those things it says about Oppenheimer was he created the atomic bomb and it wasn’t the perfect circumstance.

But it… He, you know, never publicly regretted creating the bomb. But at the same time, he didn’t like what was being done with it. And it’s, it’s this very conciliatory, he’s very… I, I, was it in the book and or movie, if you remember which one, where someone described, maybe it was Oppenheimer who said, I like to be fluid.

I like to be able to be fluid in these things. I think it might have been at the

[00:43:46] Tim: 1954 hearing. One of the things that I think is always important when you’re, when you’re watching a biopic or a reading is you have to understand that, that these people are people of their time. The the development of the nuclear bomb.

It was theoretical when Oppenheimer before Los Alamos. It was all theory. Could it could it be done? And that’s why we have the well, there’s a near zero chance that it won’t ignite the atmosphere, but it’s not zero. Well, can we do it in our own day and time? And I’ll be very brief with this part, but in our own day and time we have scientists working on viruses that are common in a particular animal or group of animals, finding out what it would take to get that in to the human population.

And in our minds, in my mind, at least, I look at that and say, why would you consider that? Why would you even think about that? But as a, as a product of your time, you scientists are trying to find out things and Oppenheimer was no different. Even if we can look back and kind of judge him. To some degree, we really need to put him in the context of his

[00:45:08] Rebekah: time.

I think another thing as we’re talking about kind of these decisions being made and the time, all those kinds of stuff. Oppenheimer in the movie is publicly regretful of his… His play the part he played in the creation of the atomic bomb, not necessarily the creation of it so much as the fact that it was used against people and people died, you know, both the day that the bomb was dropped and far after and it wasn’t, For the enemy he intended.

It was, you know, we thought we were bombing the Germans and he had a very obviously personal reason to oppose Hitler and the Nazis as a Jew. They were killing his people. Right. And so the fact that it was used to bomb the Japanese cities and things like that, but he did not actually publicly express regret in real life.

Nolan decided to show that because it seemed clear that privately and personally he did have regret over that. It is true that in his meeting with, I believe, President Truman, he did say that he had blood on his hands. And I will say another very small change that I thought was interesting is that He, President Truman in the movie said, get that cry baby out of my office or out of here or something like that.

And it actually, he did dismiss him from the meeting, but he didn’t call him a cry baby until months later when it was brought up again and Truman was annoyed that Oppenheimer had said that he had blood on his hands. And so I think that it’s, I think it’s better filmmaking that he was portrayed as having that regret.

[00:46:43] Josiah: Yeah, and I think Nolan was on the record saying that he combined those incidents, the cry baby, the cry baby incident to take the audience from the high, high of the Trinity test to the low, low of Oppenheimer feeling dejected and bad about everything in the least screen time possible. So to the filmmaking, I do think that works really well.

The, that

[00:47:07] Donna: whole scene and then James F. Burns. They’re in the room with them, and he takes him out, and you hear him say it, and I thought, wow, I mean, for knowing, knowing that we knew that Truman said it at some point, how, how horrible a light that sheds on Truman to think that he can’t see the, the personal issue there, even if he disagrees with it, that he can’t see it, and he would, you know, He would relegate this beyond genius man to the, to the notion of a

[00:47:51] Rebekah: crybaby.

One small note because you said James F. Burns that I will say that I, this is an embarrassing thing for myself. I remember listening to the audio book and they said, I think Secretary of State, right? They said James F. Burns a couple of times and I was like, Oh, that’s so weird. He has the same name as that high school near my parents.

And as it turns out, that is actually a high school named after him because he’s from Spartanburg, which is where you guys are located, which I just thought

[00:48:19] Donna: was really funny. And I kind of, as a mom, didn’t like him because of it.

[00:48:24] Josiah: Should, should we Josh, should we cut where my parents live for a public podcast?

[00:48:31] Rebekah: I think they said that they lived in that area when we first started out,

[00:48:34] Donna: but I could be wrong. We don’t live, I mean, we’re not close to James F. Burns,

[00:48:37] Josiah: so. Did you know that James F. Burns is one of the only people in history to have served in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the federal government?

[00:48:50] Rebekah: No I did not. I did not. That’s super

[00:48:51] Josiah: interesting though. aNother change that I wanted to mention just because I had about seven hours left in the audio book when I saw the movie five or six days ago, and I’ve read the rest since, but I, I watched the movie and I remember that, Oppenheimer’s counsel in the 1954 hearings, the security clearance hearings.

Garrison was like a well meaning lawyer. They literally describe him as, oh, he’s the best. And it seems to be that he’s fighting against the injustices of this… Security clearance hearing, and he’s just powerless. And in the book, the book’s authors, multiple times, emphasize Garrison as an ill prepared lawyer who should have advised Oppie to stay quiet, which was well within his rights, as well as a few other things the authors of the biography say that Garrison should have done.

And I read that after I saw the film, so I thought that that, it jumped out at

[00:49:52] Tim: me. That was definitely a change. I also like the fact that the difference with between the book and the movie with Strauss’s commerce secretary confirmation hearing the black part of the black and white section of the movie was a very small, almost a foot footnote in the book, but it was utilized as as the way to, For Strauss to get his comeuppance, which is not exactly historically accurate, he, he was denied and, and that’s true, but his, his feud with Oppenheimer continued until Oppenheimer’s death, and even after Oppenheimer’s death, Strauss had said a lot of things against him, but I like the way that it is, that it is framed in the movie, but I like the way Because one of the things for me that I, I dislike in movies is a dissatisfying ending.

Now that doesn’t mean it has to be a happy ending. I, that’s okay if it’s not a happy ending. But a satisfying ending, a satisfying conclusion is important to me. And real life isn’t like that very often. Strauss and Oppenheimer were, were antagonists for life for the rest of their life. And so this moment didn’t end all of that.

But for the movie viewer, it, it gave a satisfying conclusion to, to the things that had happened to Oppenheimer that he was so powerless to do anything about. Huh.

[00:51:34] Donna: Okay. So what do you think should, oh, go

[00:51:37] Josiah: ahead. Okay. I may have to leave real soon, so I thought that I should probably give my determination.

[00:51:47] Donna: Oh, okay. I’m so sorry. Sure.

[00:51:50] Josiah: Yeah, I need to leave in the next five minutes, and that includes getting ready a little. Is that okay?

[00:51:58] Donna: Alright, so look down two things you have to answer. The mini game and your verdict.

[00:52:05] Josiah: Okay. Name something you invented

[00:52:09] Rebekah: or created.

It’s a ridiculous question, not a serious one.

[00:52:19] Josiah: Okay, here’s a callback. What about the Babblefish? From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so that we can all understand each other. And I do think in the book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it says that the Babblefish caused more wars than anything else in all of history, but I hope that that wouldn’t be the case in reality.

[00:52:41] Rebekah: Amazing. Another thing I noticed and you know, I was generally trying to wrap up listening to the audio book today. I’ve been like, this has been a very difficult book for me to get through just because of how long it is. I’ll call them side plots, but like a lot of the things that happened with side characters that are described in the book that I think are actually pretty interesting or cut out.

One of which hit me was Kitty’s alcoholism and just her. Utter awful humanness. She was awful. Like she was just not a good person.

[00:53:12] Tim: You could see bits and pieces of that in Nolan’s version. She was always, she always had a drink in her hand in the morning. But a lot of people had said in the book that she never looked like she was drunk.

Some, you know, some people said she never did. Other people said she seemed to always be drunk. But it seemed like he made choices to show you in very subtle ways. Some of those things instead of talking about them and anytime she walked into the room with Oppenheimer and she had one of the kids, she immediately handed the kid off to Oppenheimer, which was part of the she really didn’t like being around the kids.

[00:53:53] Rebekah: It’s good filmmaking. I don’t think that it was a problem that it was changed, but we are noting a lot of those changes. And I think the just how bad of parents they were. Like you definitely got that sense in the film, but in the book it is like, it’s so much more pronounced. I didn’t read anything about it.

Children. Yeah. Oh my word. I mean, oof. After watching the movie, I will say that I, I get what he was going for. I don’t think that the Trinity test was particularly impressive. On the screen compared to what I felt like it could have been so much of the movie was obviously cinematically amazing. The sound design was phenomenal, whatever.

And all those things are true, but the way that they did the, the bomb recreation, they did not set off an actual nuclear bomb, which some people thought that they did at one point. But they used much smaller, they use kind of the, perspective. They got really close to something and made it as big as they could.

And then increase the perspective. But I love they didn’t watch that

[00:54:54] Tim: when I watched it. That’s the one part of the movie that I was unimpressed with because I, I grew up with pictures of the mushroom clouds because after, after the Trinity test and as the hydrogen bomb became, became the tactical nuclear weapon.

There were lots and lots of tests done in the, in the water, out in the desert, different things like that, underground, to see what the effects would be, and the mushroom cloud is a very distinctive type of cloud, and it is, it’s not a chemical fire or explosion, it’s not those kinds of things, and so I was disappointed with that, I was disappointed with that visual, but wondered, Because what I grew up with was the testing of the hydrogen bomb.

I wondered if perhaps the actual atom bomb, the first one was actually different, was slightly different in that not just smaller, but, but a little bit different. So maybe what I was expecting the mushroom cloud wasn’t, wasn’t actually part of that first test. I’m not sure. I’d have to look that up.

[00:56:13] Rebekah: Donna, do you want to give us a lightning round of some of the other trivia that you found?

[00:56:17] Donna: Oh, gosh. There’s some really fun, little fun things. They decided not to use he says felt using sound typically associated with the military would be inauthentic to musically capture the character of Oppenheimer.

So the film has no drums in it,

[00:56:36] Rebekah: which is astounding thinking back to it. I never would have known that. Like I want to see it again just to like hear that because the sound design was like, like breathtaking and like it was in your bones and like they didn’t use drums. Like that’s pretty wild. Another fact I

[00:56:53] Donna: found incredibly interesting and, and a little sad on December 16th, 2022 Oppenheimer security clearance.

And this was posthumously reinstated by the U. S. Department of Energy. Almost 70 years after it was first revoked by the Atomic Energy Commission. I have mixed emotions about that. There are no CGI effects. And I think Rebecca noted that a minute ago, which I still have to think that one through to just like the drums.

It is no one’s longest running film at three hours. There are three. Oscar nominees and five Oscar winners in the cast.

[00:57:35] Rebekah: Oh, casting was, yeah, phenomenal. The casting was on the

[00:57:38] Donna: ball. I mean, he was there. Everyone that I heard in every interview said, this basically is about Cillian Murphy and all the other people.

I mean, the, the respect he’s won now in the acting community, which not about the book, obviously, but. hE has severely vaulted himself above in his career. The last one I had for a trivia was, this is the first Nolan film since Memento in 2000 that did not include Michael Caine. And Rebecca, what were you saying about Strauss?

You

[00:58:13] Rebekah: said something about Strauss. I, okay, so I remember, like, Strauss, Strauss, Strauss was, In the movie, obviously the whole time in the book, much less. But Josiah said a long time ago when he, you know, started getting into theater and different things like that talked about suspending your disbelief. And so he’s like, when you sit down to watch a movie or whatever, watch a play or a film or whatever, sit down and suspend your disbelief.

Don’t try to see who these people are outside of the story. Focus on just believing that this is happening right in front of you. Right? And so I try to do that with movies now. And I remember seeing straws and going in the back of my mind going, Oh, I recognize that actor. I wonder why I recognize him.

And it was the end of the movie that I literally go, Oh my gosh, that’s Iron Man. I literally like, did not, I did not process it. And I, you know, I kept seeing people when I saw Kitty, Oh my gosh, what’s her name? The actress. Emily Blunt. I saw Emily Blunt, but I didn’t see Emily Blunt. I saw Kitty. Like I thought that that was really fantastic.

[00:59:14] Tim: That’s exactly what they want you to see. It’s not themselves, but

[00:59:20] Rebekah: as a note, as a note to anyone listening, the best way to enjoy film is to suspend your disbelief to literally believe that despite the fact that you are sitting in a seat and despite the fact that sound is coming from speakers and not people in front of you.

And despite the fact that there’s soundtracks to things going on that aren’t in real life, just believe that you’re there. That is the best way to enjoy a movie. And it really did change the way that I enjoy entertainment. So,

[00:59:44] Donna: I think at this point, we’re going to start to wrap up, get in our last sections and I love doing this so much.

I’m so stoked. I think it’s probably a way. I like that word. You can leave it. You can take it or leave it.

[00:59:58] Rebekah: Okay. So, let’s briefly give our final verdicts. I will go first. I always thought that I thought the book was better. I have been proven wrong. I, I absolutely like cannot handle like the, the biography.

It’s just not a format that I like. It’s not, it was really difficult. So I preferred the movie significantly. I don’t necessarily think it’s a movie that I, want to watch a lot. I want to watch it one more time, I think. And that’s probably it. I think my final like feeling about it was primarily like the word I came up with was unsettled.

And I think that Nolan wanted you to feel the way you felt and that was how I felt. I felt unsettled. I was uncomfortable at the end of it. I was uncomfortable with the global implications of what the scientists did, what the politicians did, what the military did. I was unsettled by The way that Oppenheimer was treated.

I was unsettled by the fact that you never truly knew if Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party. I was even more unsettled by the fact that that became such a witch hunt for people who generally were just politically active, not necessarily people that wanted bad things to happen to you, to the country, like the way that they were kind of.

Treated and, and all sorts of things like that. So I think that in the verdict of book being better, I actually don’t think it was, but that is more a testament to my preferences than anything else. Cause I genuinely, I just don’t like that format. I like narrative. I like, I like things being told from the perspective of like feeling and hearing about the emotion someone was feeling.

I don’t like reading a biography that’s like just telling me what happens. And so that is my take

[01:01:50] Donna: for me, for sure. I think the movie was better. I felt like it wasn’t just better because of what I said about the book. I think Nolan pulled out the right things that I think that he, the combination of things he pulled out didn’t show him to be without fault, but didn’t show him to be fully a faulty man.

You know, even with all the damage in his own spirit and. him doubting and in the bullying, he went through all those things. He was still a very loyal man in the ways that were critical, really critical at that point. I wish he’d been loyal in his marriage, but apparently his partners didn’t mind. So yeah, we’re looking at all things, you know, Yes, final verdict.

Yes, I did like the movie better. All

[01:02:41] Tim: right, that brings us to me. I thought the book was good at giving us a lot of background for Oppenheimer and telling us a lot of details. I was not a fan of the way that the book ran. We would, we would be in 1942 and he would introduce a person and go back four or five years to tell us about their background and things like that.

I was, I was displeased with that. It made it more difficult and I am used to actually listening to biographies and things. But I did like the fact that it, that it was so well researched and, and covered all of those things, but I think Nolan did an excellent job of taking a massive work from a period of history that we don’t know a lot about today, we don’t pay attention to, or a lot of people in our day and age don’t have a lot of Knowledge about it, and he made it very relevant while being faithful to keeping it within the time in which it was actually being lived.

He helped us to see the real, legitimate threat that, that the public and, and scientists and politicians and the military really felt. With world war two and Hitler, but also the questions about what what a communist Russia in a post world war two world would be like and what that relationship would be.

So, and I appreciated that. So I felt, I felt like the movie. did a really good job of taking that all together and whenever you watch a movie, you have to be cautious. It’s not historical. They’re not documentaries when, you know, so it’s based on or inspired by this one was based on which means he really tried to, to be in line with the book and with the facts.

But I really appreciated how he did it and made it very interesting for another generation to really think deeply about those things. How can we live as a world with all of these nuclear weapons? For me, the movie was definitely better. I like biographies, but this, this was not as clearly written as some biographies are.

Extremely well researched, and I applaud them for that. But I think the, I think the movie was better for me.

[01:05:16] Josiah: My final verdict is that the movie is better than the book. Surprise, surprise. It’s a very good biography. You know, non fiction is not always my favorite, but I do like history. And I do think the latter two thirds of the book were a lot better than the first third.

It was well researched, but the movie takes… All of these different aspects combines them in a wonky timeline from different perspectives. Very nuanced. I was reading something about how Oppenheimer… One of the most interesting things at near the end of the biography is when Oppenheimer is reacting to stories about the atomic bomb and Oppenheimer’s life while he was still alive.

And one of the things he hated… was when h how almost all of the m media, the plays, the television, sh short films or whatever were all about how he regretted… Making the bomb, and it’s gonna end the world, or something like that. When, and he was angry, and he threatened a lawsuit at one point, because he want, he was like, it’s more nuanced than that.

That’s not the only thing that matters. Nolan set out to make a nuanced, ambiguous tale, and I think he did that, like you were saying, Rebecca, with the color sections in particular. So I think that the acting, the script writing, The music, the cinematography, the pacing of the film are all amazing. And although the biography is pretty amazing for a biography uh, it’s, I mean, it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner for autobiography but as far as entertainment, as far as dramatization, It was just a great film.

I thought, I thought it was breakneck pace. It didn’t feel like three hours to me. It felt like 26 hours of information were crammed into three hours. It was, I was never bored. Well,

[01:07:29] Rebekah: if you are a faithful listener still at the end of this monster episode, thanks for listening. We can be found on most places, social media wise, et cetera, @bookisbetterpod.

If you have ideas or want us to cover a book to film adaptation that you really like, you can email us at bookisbetterpod@gmail.com. Please leave us a rating and review. Those really help a lot to get the podcast discovered, but if you’re going to leave a bad rating, you know, don’t cause why we’re nice people.

Just don’t listen anymore. If you don’t like us, you know what I’m saying? And until next time, thanks for listening.

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