Emily Strasser, Half-Life of a Secret, Part 2

Not too long ago, Anne Marie had the opportunity to talk to Emily Strasser. Emily has written a book about a little-known community built in secret by the United States government in rural western Knoxville, Tennessee. Oak Ridge was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project. 

Emily Strasser is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her MFA in nonfiction from the University of Minnesota. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Ploughshares, Guernica, Colorado Review, The Bitter Southerner, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gulf Coast, and Tricycle, among others, and she was the presenter of the BBC podcast “The Bomb.” Her essays have been named notable in Best American Essays 2016 and 2017 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was a winner of the 2015 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, a 2016 AWP Intro Award, a 2016 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist’s Initiative Grant, and the 2016 W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College. She served as a 2018-19 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and a 2019 McKnight Writing Fellow. Her first book, Half-Life of a Secret, a memoir on the intersection of family and national secrets in the nuclear city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is forthcoming in April 2023. Pre-order here.

In this episode, Emily talks about her book, Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, part history, part memoir, and part biography.

Resources:

Emily Strasser: https://emilystrasser.com
Half-Life of a Secret: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813197197/half-life-of-a-secret/
Oak-Ridge, Tennessee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee
Anna Rosenberg Episode: https://armchairhistorians.buzzsprout.com/1020073/12009142

Follow us on Social Media:
Instagram: @armchairhistorians
Twitter: @ArmchairHistor1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/armchairhistorians

Support Armchair Historians:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/armchairhistorians
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/belgiumrabbitproductions

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 1:18

Hello fellow armchair historians, Anne Marie here. Before we get into part two of my interview with Emily Strasser, I'd like to take a moment to thank all of our COFI and Patreon supporters. I'm truly humbled by all of the people who think that what I'm doing is worthwhile enough to support the show. To find out more about how you can support the show, you can go to www dot armchair historians.com. Or you can go to any of our episode pages from your podcast platform of choice. Also, don't forget, there's other ways that you can support the show by following us on social media and joining the conversation or leaving us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. In today's episode, we pick up where we left off last week with Emily Strasser, author of half life of a sacred reckoning with a hidden history. Emily is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she received her MFA in nonfiction from the University of Minnesota. Her work has appeared in multiple publications, including catapult plowshares, the bitter Southerner, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Gulf Coast, among others.

Emily Strasser: 2:38

And change the patterns that allowed what happened in the past that was harmful to happen.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:45

Do you think that's possible?

Emily Strasser: 2:48

I mean, I think collective resistance is possible. And we see it, you know, we see it in the fight for racial justice, we see it in fights for women's rights, we see it in any small way that somebody is like working towards a more just world I have to believe in collective resistance. See it in the climate movement, you know, whether it can win, you know, that's what I don't know. Right?

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:10

I guess that was my question. Yeah. Look into the crystal ball.

Emily Strasser: 3:14

Yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah, I wish I wish I could tell you, you know, but I think maybe my attitude has shifted a little bit in that, like, what if the point isn't winning, but like, creating spaces of like, meaning and beauty wherever we can? And maybe that is a win itself? You know, maybe we don't, maybe none of us are gonna save the whole world. But like, if we can do some good or push back, in our small way, create communities that like our, our upholding some kind of justice and goodness, and meaning. That's beautiful, too. You know, we just have one life to live. So like, let's, let's live it up.

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:53

Yeah, that's, that's lovely. That's beautiful. I didn't know we were gonna get so deep. I

Emily Strasser: 4:01

mean, either I didn't remember this.

Anne Marie Cannon: 4:05

So this is an interesting, I didn't know about Oakridge. So this is kind of new to me. It's, you know, I love it when somebody focuses in on a part of history that we know about, but we don't know about that exact piece of it. So does this community still exist?

Emily Strasser: 4:25

It does, yeah, it's not in its heyday anymore. It's a lot smaller than it was during the height of the Cold War. But it's still why 12 The weapons plant where my grandfather worked is still an operating nuclear weapons plant, they still have what is probably it's still classified, right, the single largest stockpile of enriched uranium in the world, they still make a crucial component for hydrogen bombs. And they one of the nuclear weapons laboratories, that was called x 10, and is now called Oak Ridge National Laboratory actually does a lot of really important like Medical Research and Environmental Research. So they've moved in a different direction. They're no longer a weapons laboratory. So it's a complicated, it's a really complicated place, that they're really complicated history. And I want to add something else about what you said, you know, this is a this is an aspect of this history that a lot of people don't know about, right? Most people know, I think, if they know about the Manhattan Project, they might know about Los Alamos, which is where kind of the scientific luminaries we have like Oppenheimer and Fermi, and you know, a bunch of other like, big names are working there to create the to build the atomic bomb. And, you know, that's in a New Mexico desert secret desert town outside of Albuquerque. So that's a famous place, Oak Ridge was more of an industrial operation. It was more of the people living in Oak Ridge didn't know what they were doing. And so this circles back to my my interest in like living a good life, but it's like most of us are not the scientific luminaries. Most of us are not, you know, deciding, we're going to drop these bombs. We're going to make these bombs. Most of us maybe don't even like know exactly like what we're doing or what we're involved in. But I was interested in that aspect of like, what about the ordinary people? What effect does it have on them to work on something like This, you know, what about the the janitors who are sweeping up? What about the people like my grandfather who know a little bit but not all that much. So the the story of like the, the every day. And what's interesting too is like the vast majority of I'm not remembering the numbers off the top of my head there in the book somewhere. But there were way more workers at Oak Ridge than they were at Los Alamos, and way more of the project's budget, went towards this industrial operation to enrich uranium, then went towards the more famous parts of the project, and yet, we don't know as much about it.

Anne Marie Cannon: 6:58

Wow, those are the kinds of histories I tried to highlight on my show. They're hidden. I just talked to somebody about a woman named Ana Rosenberg, who I had never heard of before. He wrote a book called The confidant, and she was really involved in a lot of important decisions that were made during the Roosevelt era. She was the confidant. People could trust her to keep their secrets. And it's a it's a hidden history. And it's like this is I love when historians dig into these pieces, like what you're doing, and how did it affect me, because that's what it comes back to most of us are just the common person, right? But But So my next question is, where do we see this history in pop culture? And I'm just going to interject my own thing in here, because I just saw this series with Harry Styles. Okay. And I cannot think of the name of it, but it's about it. It's about this community that reminds me of Oh, grades, like what you're talking about. It's like a secret community. And, I mean, there's a bigger story and a bigger picture, but it feels like this. I was just trying to give me a second. I'm gonna figure out what it's called.

Emily Strasser: 8:17

I'm curious. I don't actually know this. And now I want to watch it.

Anne Marie Cannon: 8:20

This, it seems like this perfect, ideal community. The wife is waiting at the door with a cocktail when the husband gets home. Don't worry, darling. It's called Don't worry, darlin.

Emily Strasser: 8:31

Okay. Yeah, I think I've heard of it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 8:38

A 1950s housewife living with her husband and a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.

Emily Strasser: 8:49

Anyway, that's my damn disturbing secrets.

Anne Marie Cannon: 8:53

Right. So it's, that that is definitely a pop culture thing that seems to be semi related to this. But can you think of other? Where do we see this in pop culture?

Emily Strasser: 9:05

Yeah. Well, so I guess the first thing I'd say is there, I think there's been a shift in that, you know, during the Cold War, and you know, 1950s 60s you have a lot of pop culture, atomic bomb stuff, you know, in a kind of like jovial way, you know, you have songs and you have in Las Vegas where, you know, outside the, about a test site, you have atomic tourism, people coming to like, watch, they would go to atomic bomb themed, like cocktail parties on rooftop hotels in Vegas. And like watch the test blasts from there, they had Miss atomic bomb beauty pageants where people would dress up as mushroom clouds, stuff that feels really cringy now, right? From Archbishops active, this kind of glorification of violence. And so I don't see that much of that. Now, with the exception of there's a flavor of it in places like Oak Ridge, you know, that still based their history on a pride in this work. And there's a lot of reasons for that. So there is a kind of light Ness, sometimes that still surprises me. Because even even whatever you think of I don't think the bombing on Hiroshima was a good thing. But however you come down on like that decision in the messiness of a very brutal war. It's not something to be taken lightly. I don't think it was horrible, no matter how you cut it. So that said, Now, the most direct pop cultural link I can think of is Manhattan, was a TV show about Los Alamos, and that came out five years ago, I could be wrong about that. It was fun to watch, because, you know, there's dramatization of this history that I've been really immersed in, and some of the details that I loved or dislike seeing really nerdy details, right, like, I've done a lot of archival research, so seeing the actual, like, folders, period folders, where they're like, and the memos, you know, the type script that they used, and I was like, Oh, wow, look, it's real people using those things, you know, that I have touched in the archives. Yeah. So that was that was really fun. And that show, I think, was thinking about some of the questions that I'm thinking that I was thinking about, you know, around like, what is it? What's the human toll on the people who are doing this work? What kind of moral dilemmas do people have? Okay, another example, this may not quite be pop culture, but it is current and maybe a little plug for my own work. But I was in 2020 presented a BBC podcast on the saw that yeah, it was really it was really cool opportunity. On Leo's Dillard, who was a Hungarian Jewish scientist who is involved in the Manhattan Project, too. And he's a really interesting character, because he's, you know, arguably, it's right complicated, no one person is responsible for the atomic bomb, one of his scientific discoveries sort of directly led to people realizing that it was actually possible to build this, instead of theoretically possible. And he kind of pushed for it, initially, because he, you know, there was the fear of what if the Nazis are able to make this and so we need one first, and he, you know, he's the person who got Einstein to write the letter to Roosevelt that ultimately led to the Manhattan Project being started. And then later on, for a variety of reasons, like, thought that it shouldn't be used, you know, Germany, it's clear that Germany is going to be defeated. Before the bomb, it's even ready to be used, it's clear that they don't have a bomb. And he doesn't think it's right to use it on the Japanese, who don't, you know, who don't have a bomb and advocates for it to be tested on an uninhabited island first, so that people can see what it will cause and kind of threaten? So he's a really, you know, really complicated, interesting figure. So I think there is still current, like, interest in this history. And that was one example of that.

Anne Marie Cannon: 13:10

There's still a lot to uncover, too. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wanted to share?

Emily Strasser: 13:20

I always ask this question in interviews, too. It's a good one. I have I've so enjoyed this conversation and went places I didn't completely expect. Oh, good.

Anne Marie Cannon: 13:32

What one thing would you want my audience to know, and or remember about this history?

Emily Strasser: 13:42

Maybe it's what we talked about earlier that like, this is a history that involves many, many ordinary people, at many levels of power, and not having power. And and that it? You know, I guess another, maybe an argument in the book that, that we haven't really covered is, or only obliquely, is that being involved in something like this, not only, you know, beats, to violence, say against the people who are bombed, or the people who are exposed to fallout from nuclear tests, you know, the external victims, or the people who are exposed to environmental contaminants in the site, but it actually, like, hurts the people who are working on it, too, you know, like a lot of workers have, you know, gotten sick from their work and exposure to chemicals and radiation. And, and that's not even to contend with. How does it deadness emotionally to accept violence on this scale, like what happens to us, when we what happens when we normalize something like nuclear weapons, you know, something like saying that that's it's acceptable to possess and potentially use weapons that are capable of violence on such a cruel and massive scale, that devaluing of human life, I think is, is bad for everyone, and keeps us from being fully like human and alive. And I think that's true of many histories. You know, I think of many harmful histories. Racism, like is bad for white people, too. Which is not to say that white people are victims of it, but that we should give it up. Not for others, not just for others, but for ourselves.

Anne Marie Cannon: 15:33

Yeah. Where can we find you?

Emily Strasser: 15:37

So I am I have a website? It's my name.com Emily strasser.com. And I'm on Twitter. I'm not super active on Twitter. And who knows what's happening with Twitter these days?

Anne Marie Cannon: 15:51

Oh, right, right. Creepy.

Emily Strasser: 15:53

Yeah, right. I don't know how much longer by the time you air this will it? Will it still be going on? Am I gonna still be on Twitter? I don't know. Yeah,

Anne Marie Cannon: 16:02

that's the question every day right?

Emily Strasser: 16:04

Yeah. I'm not currently on Instagram. I may get back on soon in the run up to the book. But my website is the best place I'll you know, I'll keep links up to date. About what

Anne Marie Cannon: 16:15

when does what the name With the book, what's the name of the book again?

Emily Strasser: 16:19

HalfLife for secret, and then the subtitle is reckoning with a hidden history. And it comes out April 4.

Anne Marie Cannon: 16:27

So it comes out in April. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure when this episode is going to come out. It'll be before April probably. Is that okay?

Emily Strasser: 16:35

Yeah, that's great. I mean, I would love for people to preorder, if they're interested pre orders really help. Help writers, you know, help presses like anticipate how many books to print, it's a really great way to support writers, you can pre order it through the University Press of Kentucky, and you should be able to order it from any bookshop or anywhere that sells books.

Anne Marie Cannon: 16:55

There was one thing that I wanted to say, that you reminded me of, or made me think about, and I. So I sell vintage clothing and fashion and that type of thing. I'm really into that. And I never thought about the word atomic, as it correlates to a tie. It's weird. I'm like, embarrassed to say that, but reading about your book and reading about you. It's like, I realized that connection, and it now it's completely changed the way I feel about that word, and how it's related to the atomic bomb.

Emily Strasser: 17:33

I'm really glad. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. Because actually, that does relate to your question about pop culture, too, that it is embedded into our language in ways that we don't think about that much radioactive too. You know, it's kind of like, you know, there's songs about being radioactive. And I think people know that that's dangerous, but it's sort of it's in a light hearted way. Now, of course, atomic isn't only a bomb it also, you know, the atomic level of, you know, atoms are, are the thing that make up our whole world. But certainly one of the ways that that word came, I think into the common lingo is through the atomic bomb, so it definitely has that. Yeah. Association. I

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:15

think that what it is related to with regard to style and fashion design, it's connected to no other. Yeah, the atomic bomb and atomic energy.

Emily Strasser: 18:30

Okay, maybe I don't know a lot about this particular. I'd love to hear more about the particular context of how it's related to fashion.

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:38

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's kind of like DECO, atomic, you know,

Emily Strasser: 18:44

so it's like the the era, like, related to like, inist algebra for the atomic era. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's so yeah. Right.

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:55

Mid Century Modern. Atomic,

Emily Strasser: 18:57

right, right. Right, right. Yeah. Gosh, yeah, we have nostalgia for a lot of things that are

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:04

that we don't think about. Yeah, this definitely made me think about that. Anyways,

Emily Strasser: 19:08

I don't think so. I wasn't so happy with the way I answered your first question. But maybe that's just how it is. So

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:15

I'm always amazed at how historians think about that question. So literally, and it's really just kind of like a segue into whatever your you project is, right?

Emily Strasser: 19:27

Yeah. So what's what's interesting about that question, and I've been thinking about it is I'm someone I'm not interested in war, I'm not really interested in weapons. I don't like war movies, you know. So for me to write a book that's about World War Two, it's about the cold war that's about nuclear weapons is kind of a big surprise to me as, as much as any one else. You know, I'm interested in women's history. I'm interested in stories of resistance. I'm interested in European medieval history, all kinds of different histories that are not this one. And so, and yet, I became obsessed, right. And so I guess, for me, the weigh in was very personal. And we'll get more into this, but it was a family history. And it was it really came about with me trying to understand something about where my family comes from, how we got to be the way we are, what is the ground that I stand on, you know, and so, as a writer and a researcher, I really come from a creative nonfiction background, which like, intimately ties, often the personal with the researched and use the personal as a lens through which to explore a larger context. And so, for me, this was driven from this personal angle, and I can get interested in almost anything, you know, give me any topic. And if I do enough research, I'm going to find a way to be interested in it. So that's a way to not answer the favorite history, but

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:59

Well, I know so like one of my idols is Terry Gross, fresh air.

Emily Strasser: 21:05

Oh, yeah. She's amazing.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:06

I adore her. I always think what would Terry Gross do in this situation?

Emily Strasser: 21:11

We have learned a lot from that.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:14

But I remember that she interviewed a guy who wrote a book about banana blights. Like, talk about boring on the surface. It was one of the best interviews I've ever listened to, I don't know, it was the passion of which the person approached the subject matter in the past the, you know, intrigue that Terry Gross had, I think you can make. You know, if you look beneath the surface enough, you'll find a reason to be interested. I love that.

Emily Strasser: 21:46

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's like so much about how things are interrelated. And sometimes I have trouble focusing, because you pick up one tiny thing, and it's connected to everything else. And that's just how my brain works. Right? You know, I literally have this essay, I want to write about dust, you know, how boring can you think about dust, but it's like, it's about housekeeping. It's about like, the cells in our bodies that decay, it's about the satisfaction of cleaning. It's about like, women's work. It's, you know, I think I have all these ideas about how an essay about dusk could be interesting and nice thoughts about death? So I don't know, it's like, sometimes those are the most fun kind of things to write or read or things that seem so mundane, you know? And yeah, and you can take the leap to, to see how they connect to big questions.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:36

Fascinating. See, I don't think about those things. Unless somebody thinks about them for me, and then, like what you do, like you wrote this book about this, I wouldn't have thought of it in that way. But when it's presented to me in a certain light, then I can think about it in that way. I'm not as creative, imaginative, maybe I don't know or I don't think in that way.

Emily Strasser: 22:57

So well, you creative in a lot of ways. I mean, this is asking these questions, having these conversations is hugely creative. You're to

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:04

that you're right, they do. I'm gonna say thank you to that. That's true. Well, Emily, I really enjoyed talking to you today. Thank you so much for showing up on Sunday.

Emily Strasser: 23:15

Oh, thank you for working me in on a weekend it was I know my schedule is challenging works.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:21

Yeah, mine is kinda too lately, so but I'm glad we got to do this. There you have it fellow armchair historians, be sure to check out our episode notes. To find out more about pre ordering the book about Emily and about the history that we talked about today. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.