The story of the man who developed the atomic bomb and later tried to discourage its use is being explored in a new podcast.
US journalist Emily Strasser examines her own connection with the creation of the weapons as the host of a new BBC podcast called 'The Bomb'.
Her grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project which was the covert programme to develop the atomic bomb in the United States.
Stasser told Moncrieff on Newstalk that the podcast tells the story of Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard who developed the use of atoms for nuclear change reactions in 1933.
Szilard feared that the Nazis would learn how to use an atomic bomb first and so he went to Albert Einstein.
Einstein then signed a letter of petition written by Szilard and endorsed by 70 other scientists which was sent to the US President Harry Truman explaining that an atomic weapon was possible and asking him not to use it.
Strasser said Szilard was "a bit arrogant" about the amount of control he could have on world events with regard to governments using atomic weapons.
She added: "By the time he got to circulating the petition, I think he knew that that probably wouldn't change the outcome but he thought it was important that scientists go on the record against the use of the bomb."
After the war, Szilard went on to have a career in molecular biology but continued to fight for arms control.
"He tried to do what he could to control the use of the thing he had brought into the world.
There is a familial link between the podcast host and the story given that Strasser's grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project.
She said: "He was a chemist who worked at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, one of three secret cities built by the Manhattan Project to build the bomb.
"He wasn't somebody famous or in the leadership the way Szilard was, he didn't actually know what he was doing because the way secrecy worked they wanted people to know as little as possible.
"Everbody in Oak Ridge discovered what they had been doing when the world found out when Truman announced the bombing of Hiroshima over the radio."
Stasser says that although her grandfather died before she was born, she has "spent a lot of time wondering and researching about his life and work".
