BOULDER.- On Friday, October 10, 2008 at 6:30pm, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Center for Energy and Environmental Security (CEES) at the University of Colorado invites the community-at-large to enjoy a talk with internationally recognized authors and journalists, Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge, who in the past year have been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and Talk of the Nation. This talk begins a series of programs that highlight the current exhibition by Erika Wanenmacher, “The Science Club: The Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1” featured in the museum, exploring US Atomic History.

In their book A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, published this year, husband-and-wife journalists Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge hit the open road in 2005 to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Along the way, they answer the questions most nuclear tourists don’t get to ask: Are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there such a thing as a suitcase nuke? Is Iran really building the bomb? Together, Weinberger and Hodge eventually traveled to 10 US states and four countries. From the deserts of Iran to a distant U.S. military outpost in the Pacific, they attempted to find out what purpose nuclear weapons serve. Weaving together travel writing with world-changing events, A Nuclear Family Vacation unearths unknown—and often quite entertaining—stories about the nuclear world.

In this lecture, they will discuss their travels for the book and how nuclear weaponry has shaped the landscape of large swathes of the United States, from the bunker at Cheyenne Mountain to the still-active missile launch sites in Wyoming and Montana. Finally, they’ll talk about whether nuclear tourism—a growing hobby for many Americans—can serve as something more than a Cold War nostalgia trip.

Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer for Jane's Defense Weekly. A frequent contributor to Slate, he has reported widely from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Details, among many other newspapers and magazines.

Sharon Weinberger is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow during the 2008/9 academic year and a senior reporter for Wired's national security blog, Danger Room. Her writing on science and national security has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, Wired Magazine, Slate, Discover, and Nature, among other publications. She is also the author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld.