September 6, 2025
Zia Mian, SGS co-director was in conversation with acclaimed American artist and musician Laurie Anderson at an event on September 6, 2025, hosted by the Poster House, a gallery and educational space in New York, in conjunction with the closing of the gallery exhibit Fallout: Atoms For War & Peace. The exhibit, which ran from March 13–September 7, 2025, counterposed the civilian and military uses of nuclear technology after the invention and use of nuclear weapons and public opposition to them and the demand for nuclear disarmament.
The event was part of the Sing for Science podcast series created and produced by musician and activist Matt Whyte bringing together musicians and scientists to talk about scientific ideas. The conversation started with Anderson’s 1980 recording O Superman and its album Big Science. It focused on the history, technology, culture, and politics of the nuclear age and the struggle for disarmament. Topics included the logic and practices of nuclear deterrence, how nuclear weapons work, and the harms of nuclear testing and nuclear war. Mian and Anderson considered how change might come from new more open transnational network structures rather than traditional nation-state institutions.
The full episode of the podcast is available here.
The event included a screening of an SGS short animated video Plan A, a simulation for a plausible escalating war between the United States and Russia, which has garnered almost 5 million views on YouTube.
The Sing for Science event at Poster House included a special appearance by musician and producer Elia Einhorn to introduce a new release by the Kronos Quartet + The Hard Rain Collective of two versions of Bob Dylan's classic 1962 anti-nuclear song A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall. The release features Anderson and other leading musicians who teamed up in support of the Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War and recorded this music to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the first atomic explosion. The spoken word version of the new release was played at the end of the Poster House discussion
For more on the event, see the story by Tom Durso, Director of Communications at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.