An early nuclear power plant that used atomic energy to generate electricity.

The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is a phrase typically used to delineate the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, Trinity, on July 16, 1945. Although nuclear science existed before this event, the following bombing of Hiroshima, Japan represented the first large-scale, practical use of nuclear technology and ushered in profound changes in socio-political thinking and the course of technology development. Nuclear power was seen to be the epitome of progress and modernity.^[1]

However, the Atomic Age fell far short of what was promised because nuclear technology has produced a range of social problems, from the arms race, to the Chernobyl disaster and Three Mile Island accident, and the unresolved difficulties of bomb plant cleanup and civilian plant waste disposal and decommissioning. The "nuclear dream" has also resulted in the marginalization of democratic forms of governance.^[2]

Early years[link]

In 1901, Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving the release of energy. Soddy wrote in popular magazines that radioactivity was a potentially “inexhaustible” source of energy, and offered a vision of an atomic future where it would be possible to “transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole earth one smiling Garden of Eden.” The promise of an “atomic age,” with nuclear energy as the global, utopian technology for the satisfaction of human needs, has been a recurring theme ever since. But "Soddy also saw that atomic energy could possibly be used to create terrible new weapons".^[3]

World War II[link]

The phrase "Atomic Age" was coined by William L. Laurence, a New York Times journalist who became the official journalist for the U.S. Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear weapons.^[4] He witnessed both the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki and went on to write a series of articles extolling the virtues of the new weapon. His reporting before and after the bombings helped to spur public awareness of the potential of nuclear technology and in part motivated development of the technology in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union.^[5] The Soviet Union would go on to test its first nuclear weapon in 1949.

In 1949, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chairman, David Lilienthal stated that "atomic energy is not simply a search for new energy, but more significantly a beginning of human history in which faith in knowledge can vitalize man's whole life".^[6]

1950s[link]

The phrase gained popularity as a feeling of nuclear optimism emerged in the 1950s in which it was believed that all power generators in the future would be atomic in nature. The atomic bomb would render all conventional explosives obsolete and nuclear power plants would do the same for power sources such as coal and oil. There was a general feeling that everything would use a nuclear power source of some sort, in a positive and productive way, from irradiating food to preserve it, to the development of nuclear medicine. There would be an age of peace and plenty in which atomic energy would "provide the power needed to desalinate water for the thristy, irrigate the deserts for the hungry, and fuel interstellar travel deep into outer space".^[1] This use would render the Atomic Age as significant a step in technological progress as the first smelting of Bronze, of Iron, or the commencement of the Industrial Revolution.

This included even cars, leading Ford to display the Ford Nucleon concept car to the public in 1958. There was also the promise of golf balls which could always be found and nuclear-powered airplanes, which the US federal government even spent US $1.5 billion researching.^[1] Nuclear policymaking became almost a collective technocratic fantasy, or at least was driven by fantasy:^[7]

The very idea of splitting the atom had an almost magical grip on the imaginations of inventors and policymakers. As soon as someone said – in an even mildly credible way – that these things could be done, then people quickly convinced themselves ... that they would be done.^[7]

In the USA, military planners "believed that demonstrating the civilian applications of the atom would also affirm the American system of private enterprise, showcase the expertise of scientists, increase personal living standards, and defend the democratic lifestyle against communism".^[8]

Some media reports predicted that thanks to the giant nuclear power stations of the near future electricity would soon become much cheaper and that electricity meters would be removed, because power would be "too cheap to meter."^[9]

The reality was that the Shippingport reactor went online in 1957 producing electricity at a cost roughly ten times that of coal-fired generation. Scientists at the AEC's own Brookhaven Laboratory "wrote a 1958 report describing accident scenarios in which 3,000 people would die immediately, with another 40,000 injured".^[10]

1960s[link]

At the peak of the Atomic Age, the US Federal government initiated Project Plowshare, a program for using nuclear weapons for “peaceful nuclear explosions”. The Project “was named directly from the Bible itself, specifically Micah 4:3, which states that God will beat swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks, so that no country could lift up weapons against another”.^[11] Proposed uses included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems. Other proposals involved blasting underground caverns for water, natural gas, and petroleum storage. Serious consideration was also given to using these explosives for various mining operations. One proposal suggested using nuclear blasts to connect underground aquifers in Arizona. Another plan involved surface blasting on the western slope of California's Sacramento Valley for a water transport project.^[11] However, there were many negative impacts from Project Plowshare’s 27 nuclear explosions.^[11] Consequences included blighted land, relocated communities, tritium-contaminated water, radioactivity, and fallout from debris being hurled high into the atmosphere. These were ignored and downplayed until the program was terminated in 1977, due in large part to public opposition, after $770 million had been spent on the project.^[11]

In the Thunderbirds TV series, a set of vehicles was presented that were imagined to be completely nuclear, as shown in cutaways presented in their comic-books.

The term "atomic age" was initially used in a positive, futuristic sense, but by the 1960s the threats posed by nuclear weapons had begun to edge out nuclear power as the dominant motif of the atom.

1970 to 2000[link]

The abandoned city of Pripyat with Chernobyl plant in the distance

French advocates of nuclear power developed an aesthetic vision of nuclear technology as art to bolster support for the technology. Leclerq compares the nuclear cooling tower to some of the grandest architectural monuments of western culture:^[12]

The age in which we live has, for the public, been marked by the nuclear engineer and the gigantic edifices he has created. For builders and visitors alike, nuclear power plants will be considered the cathedrals of the 20th century. Their syncretism mingles the conscious and the unconscious, religious fulfilment and industrial achievement, the limitations of uses of materials and boundless artistic inspiration, utopia come true and the continued search for harmony.^[12]

In 1973, the United States Atomic Energy Commission predicted that, by the turn of the 21st century, one thousand reactors would be producing electricity for homes and businesses across the USA. But after 1973, reactor orders declined sharply as electricity demand fell and construction costs rose. Many orders and partially completed plants were cancelled.^[13]

By the late 1970s, nuclear power was faced with economic difficulties and widespread public unease, coming to a head in the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, both of which affected the nuclear power industry for decades thereafter. A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes magazine commented on the overall management of the nuclear power program in the United States:

The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.^[14]

After 2000[link]

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, the worst nuclear accident in 25 years, displaced 50,000 households after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea.^[15]

In the 21st century, the label of the "Atomic Age" connotes either a sense of nostalgia or naïveté, and is considered by many to have ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, though the term continues to be used by some historians to describe the era following the conclusion of the Second World War. The term is used by some science fiction fans to describe not only the era following the conclusion of the Second World War but also contemporary history up to the present day.

Some environmentalists such as Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, have suggested, in fact, that nuclear technology could be a solution to global warming as well as the looming oil crisis that threatens the world's supply of energy.

The nuclear power industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors, and has proposed new safer (but generally untested) reactor designs but there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built and operated correctly.^[16] Mistakes do occur and the designers of reactors at Fukushima in Japan did not anticipate that a tsunami generated by an earthquake would disable the backup systems that were supposed to stabilize the reactor after the earthquake.^[17] According to UBS AG, the Fukushima I nuclear accidents have cast doubt on whether even an advanced economy like Japan can master nuclear safety.^[18] Catastrophic scenarios involving terrorist attacks are also conceivable.^[16] An interdisciplinary team from MIT have estimated that given the expected growth of nuclear power from 2005–2055, at least four serious nuclear accidents would be expected in that period.^[19][20]

Chronology of the Atomic Age[link]

• 1896 — Henri Becquerel notices that uranium gives off an unknown radiation which fogs photographic film.^[21]
• 1898 — Marie Curie discovers thorium gives off a similar radiation. She calls it radioactivity.^[21]
• 1903 — Ernest Rutherford begins to speak of the possibility of atomic energy.^[22]
• 1905 — Albert Einstein formulates the special theory of relativity which explains the phenomenon of radioactivity as mass-energy equivalence.^[22]
• 1911 — Ernest Rutherford formulates a theory about the structure of the atomic nucleus based on his experiments with alpha particles.^[23]
• 1932 — James Chadwick discovers the neutron.^[24]
• 1934 — Enrico Fermi begins bombarding uranium with slow neutrons; Ida Noddack predicts that uranium nuclei will break up under bombardment by fast neutrons (Fermi does not pursue this because his theoretical mathematical predictions do not predict this result.).
• 17 December 1938 – Based on detailed theoretical predictions by Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann experimentally confirm nuclear fission (a term coined by Meitner’s associate Otto Robert Frisch) by bombarding uranium with fast neutrons.
• 11 October 1939 — The Einstein–Szilárd letter, suggesting that the United States construct an atomic bomb, is delivered to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt signs the order to build an atomic bomb on 6 December 1941.^[25]
• 26 February 1941 — Discovery of plutonium by Glenn Seaborg and Arthur Wahl.
• September 1942 — General Leslie Groves takes charge of the Manhattan Project.
• 2 December 1942 — The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction takes place in Chicago, United States, at the Chicago pile - 1.
• 16 July 1945 — The first atomic bomb is tested near Alamogordo, New Mexico, United States in the successful Trinity test.
• 6 August 1945 — The atomic bomb is first deployed as a military weapon (by the United States) in the bombing of Hiroshima, Empire of Japan.
• 5 September 1951 — The U.S. Air Force announces the awarding of a contract for the development of an "atomic-powered airplane".
• 1 November 1952 — The first hydrogen bomb, largely designed by Edward Teller, is tested at Eniwetok Atoll.
• 8 December 1953 — U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech before the UN General Assembly, announces the Atoms for Peace program to provide nuclear power to developing countries.
• 21 January 1954 — The first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), is launched into the Thames River near New London, Connecticut, United States.
• 27 June 1954 — The first nuclear power plant begins operation near Obninsk, USSR.
• 17 September 1954 — Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, states that nuclear energy will be “too cheap to meter”.^[26]
• 29 September 1957 — 200+ people die as a result of the Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion in Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union. 270,000 people were exposed to dangerous radiation levels.^[27]
• 1957 to 1959 — The Soviet Union and the United States both begin deployment of ICBMs.
• 1958 — The neutron bomb, a special type of tactical nuclear weapon developed specifically to release a relatively large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation, is invented by Samuel Cohen of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
• 1960 — Herman Kahn publishes the book On Thermonuclear War.
• November 1961 — In Fortune magazine, an article by Gilbert Burck appears outlining the plans of Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Teller, Herman Kahn, and Chet Holifield for the construction of an enormous network of concrete lined underground fallout shelters throughout the United States sufficient to shelter millions of people to serve as a refuge in case of nuclear war.^[28]
• 12 October 1962 to 28 October 1962 — The Cuban Missile Crisis brings Earth to the brink of nuclear war.
• 10 October 1963 — The Partial Test Ban Treaty goes into effect, banning above ground nuclear testing.
• 26 August 1966 — The first pebble bed reactor goes on line in Julich, West Germany (some nuclear engineers think that the pebble bed reactor design can be adapted for atomic powered vehicles).
• 28 March 1979 — The Three Mile Island accident occurs at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, dampening the enthusiasm of many in the United States for nuclear power.
• 26 April 1986 — The Chernobyl disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, USSR, reducing the enthusiasm for nuclear power among many people in the world.
• 8 December 1987 — The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed in Washington 1987. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed after negotiations following the October 11–12, 1986 Reykjavík Summit to go farther than a nuclear freeze — they agreed to reduce nuclear arsenals. IRBMs and SRBMs were eliminated.
• 1990–Present — Nuclear power is the primary source of electricity in France. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s (decade), France produces over three quarters of its power from nuclear sources (78.8%), the highest percentage in the world during these 2 decades.^[29][30]
• 31 July 1991 — As the Cold War ends, the Start I treaty is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union, reducing the deployed nuclear warheads of each side to no more than 6,000 each.
• 2006 — Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace and other environmentalists such as Stewart Brand^[31] suggest the deployment of more advanced nuclear power technology for electric power generation such as pebble bed reactors, to combat global warming.
• 21 November 2006 — Implementation of the ITER fusion power reactor project near Cadarache, France is begun. Construction is to be completed in 2016 with the hope that the research conducted there will allow the introduction of practical commercial fusion power plants by 2050.
• 2006-2009 — A number of nuclear engineers begin to suggest that, to combat global warming, it would be more efficient to build nuclear reactors that operate on the thorium cycle.^[32][33]
• 11 March 2011 — A tsunami resulting from the Tōhoku earthquake causes severe damage to the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, causing partial nuclear meltdowns in several of the reactors. Many international leaders express concerns about the accidents and some countries re-evaluate existing nuclear energy programs. On 11 April 2011 this event was rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale by the Japanese government's nuclear safety agency.^[34][35] Other than the Chernobyl disaster, it is the only nuclear accident to be rated at level 7, the highest level on the scale.

The Atomic Age in pop culture[link]

• 1913 — C.W. Leadbeater published Man: How, Whence, and Whither? . This book describes the future society of the world in the 28th century (which, as a clairvoyant, Leadbeater claimed to have gotten information about from consulting the akashic records) as being powered by what he called atomic energy.^[36]
• 1914 — H. G. Wells publishes science fiction novel The World Set Free, describing how scientists discover potentially limitless energy locked inside of atoms, and describes the deployment of atomic bombs.
• October 1939 — Amazing Stories published a painting of an atomic power plant by science fiction artist Howard M. Duffin on its back cover.^[37]
• 1940 — Robert A. Heinlein published the science fiction short story "Blowups Happen" about an accident at an atomic power plant.
• 1940 — Robert A. Heinlein published the short story "Solution Unsatisfactory" which posits radioactive dust as a weapon that the US develops in a crash program to end World War II.
• 1945 – The Atomaton chapter of Sweet Adelines was formed by Edna Mae Anderson after she and her sister singers decided, “We have an atom of an idea and a ton of energy.” The name also recognized the Atomic Age — just three days after Sweet Adelines was founded (July 13, 1945), the first nuclear bomb, Trinity, was detonated.
• 5 July 1946 — The bikini swimsuit, named after Bikini Atoll, where an atomic bomb test called Operation Crossroads had taken place a few days earlier on 1 July 1946, was introduced at a fashion show in Paris.^[38]
• 1946 - Virgil Jordan published: "Manifesto for atomic age" Rutgers University Press.
• 1948- Voltolino Fontani published : Manifesto of Eaismo, Società Editrice Italiana, Livorno.
• 1951 — Isaac Asimov's science fiction novel Foundation (consisting mostly of stories originally published between 1942 and 1944) is published. In this novel, the first novel of the Foundation series, the Foundation on Terminus, guided by Psychohistory, invents a religion called Scientism which has an atomic priesthood based on the scientific use of atomic energy to pacify, impress, and control the masses of the barbarian inhabitants of the stellar kingdoms surrounding Terminus as the Galactic Empire breaks up.
• 1954 — Them!, a science fiction film about humanity's battle with a nest of giant mutant ants, was one of the first of the "nuclear monster" movies.
• 1954 — The science fiction film Godzilla was released, about an iconic fictional monster that is gigantic irradiated dinosaur, transformed from the fallout of an H-Bomb test.
• 23 January 1957 — Walt Disney Productions released the film Our Friend the Atom describing the marvelous benefits of atomic power. As well as being presented on the TV Show Disneyland, this film was also shown to almost all baby boomers in their public school auditoriums or their science classes and was instrumental in creating within that generation a mostly favorable attitude toward nuclear power.^[39]
• 1957—The current leader of the Nizari sect of Ismaili Shia Islam, Shah Karim al-Husayni, the Aga Khan IV, acceded to the Imamship at age 20. One of the titles bestowed on him by his followers was his designation as The Imam of the Atomic Age.^[40]
• 1958 — The Atomium was constructed for the Brussels World's Fair.
• 1958—The Peace Symbol was designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement by Gerald Holtom.^[41]
• 1959 — The popular film On the Beach shows the last remnants of humanity in Australia awaiting the end of the human race after a nuclear war.
• 23 September 1962 — The Jetsons animated TV series began on ABC, attempting to humorously depict life in the fully developed Atomic Age of 2062.
• 1964 — The film Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (aka Dr. Strangelove), a black comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick about an accidentally triggered nuclear war, was released.
• 1982 — The documentary film The Atomic Cafe, detailing society's attitudes toward the atomic bomb in the early Atomic Age, debuted to widespread acclaim.
• 1982 - Jonathan Schell’s book Fate of the Earth, about the consequences of nuclear war, is published. The book "forces even the most reluctant person to confront the unthinkable: the destruction of humanity and possibly most life on Earth". The best-selling book instigated the nuclear freeze movement.
• 1983 - The cartoon book The End by cartoonist Skip Morrow, about the lighter side of nuclear apocalypse, is published.^[42]
• 20 November 1983 — The Day After, an American television movie was aired on the ABC Television Network, and also in the Soviet Union. The film portrays a fictional nuclear war between the United States/NATO and the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact. After the film, a panel discussion is presented in which Carl Sagan suggested that we need to reduce the number of nuclear weapons as a matter of "planetary hygiene". This film was seen by over 100,000,000 people and was instrumental in greatly increasing public support for the nuclear freeze movement.
• 1985 - 1990 in the Film series Back to The Future, references to the Atomic Age and uses of Nuclear Energy are broadly exploded; for example the use of Plutonium in the time machine, the concept of "Mr. Fusion" (a futuristic nuclear reactor for domestic use that can use garbage as fuel) and references to the common 1950s conceptions of the Atomic Age.
• 17 December 1989 — The animated cartoon series The Simpsons debuted on television on the Fox Network, providing a humorous look at the Atomic Age, since the main protagonist, Homer Simpson, is employed as an operator at a nuclear power plant.
• Beginning in the 1990s, nostalgia stores that specialize in selling modern furniture or artifacts from the 1950s often have included the words Atomic Age as part of the name of, or advertising for the store.
• 1997 - The first installment of the Fallout series, a video game series set in an alternate earth post-apocalyptic world, is released by Black Isle Studios/Interplay. Both the visual style and many Inseries references deal with the atomic age optimism towards nuclear power and the stark contrast it creates to the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
• 1999 — Blast from the Past was released. It is a romantic comedy film about a nuclear physicist, his wife, and son that enter a well-equipped spacious fallout shelter during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. They do not emerge until 35 years later, in 1997. The film shows their reaction to contemporary society.
• 1999 — Larry Niven published the science fiction novel Rainbow Mars. In this novel, in the 31st century, Earth uses a dating system based on what is called the Atomic Era, in which the year one is 1945. Thus, what we call the year 3053 A.D. (the year the novel begins) is in the novel the year 1108 A.E.
• Autumn 2007 — Bachelor Pad magazine, "The New Digest of Atomic Age Culture" began publication.^[43]

See also[link]

• Atomic Age (comics)
• Eaismo
• Googie architecture
• Information Age
• Machine Age
• Nuclear art
• Nuclear electric rocket
• Nuclear power debate
• Nuclear program of Iran
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Retro-futurism
• Space Age
• Space age pop

References[link]

External links[link]

• Annotated bibliography on the Nuclear Age from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Atomic Age Alliance - Volunteer group dedicated to preserving Atomic Age culture and architecture
• The Nation in the Nuclear Age - slideshow by The Nation

This article contains Japanese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji and kana.

Michio Kaku (加来 道雄, Kaku Michio^?, born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, a co-founder of string field theory,^[1] a futurist, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books about physics and related topics; he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film; and he writes extensive online blogs and articles. He has written two New York Times best sellers, Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2011). He has hosted several TV specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Science Channel.

Early life and education[link]

Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake^{[citation needed]}. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his two brothers were born.

At Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Kaku assembled an atom smasher in his parents' garage for a science fair project.^[2] At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and in 1972 he held a lectureship at Princeton University.

During the Vietnam War, Kaku completed his U.S. Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and his advanced individual training at Fort Lewis, Washington.^[3] However, the Vietnam War ended before he was deployed as an infantryman.

Academic career[link]

Kaku became a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,^[4] and New York University.^[5] He currently holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.^[6]

Kaku has had over 70 articles published in physics journals such as Physical Review, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics.^[7] In 1974, along with Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University, he authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form.^[8][9]

Kaku is the author of several textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory.

Popular science[link]

Kaku is most widely known as a popularizer of science.^[10] He has written books and appeared on many television programs as well as film. He also hosts a weekly radio program.

Books[link]

Kaku is the author of various popular science books.

• Hyperspace (1994)
• Beyond Einstein (with Jennifer Thompson) (1995)
• Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century^[11] (1998)
• Einstein's Cosmos (2004)
• Parallel Worlds (2004)
• Physics of the Impossible (2008)
• Physics of the Future (2011)

Hyperspace was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both The New York Times^[10] and The Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in the UK.^[12]

Radio[link]

Kaku is the host of the weekly, one-hour radio program Explorations, produced by the Pacifica Foundation's WBAI in New York. "Explorations" is syndicated to community and independent radio stations and makes previous broadcasts available on the program's website. Kaku defines the show as dealing with the general topics of science, war, peace, and the environment.

In April 2006, Kaku began broadcasting Science Fantastic on 90 commercial radio stations, the only nationally syndicated science program on commercial radio in the United States. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and now reaches 130 radio stations and America's Talk on XM. The program is formatted as a live listener call-in show, focusing on "futurology," which he defines as the future of science.^{[citation needed]} Featured guests include Nobel laureates and top researchers on the topics of string theory, time travel, black holes, gene therapy, aging, space travel, artificial intelligence, and SETI. When Kaku is busy filming for television, Science Fantastic goes on hiatus, sometimes for several months. Kaku is also a frequent guest on many programs, where he is outspoken in all areas and issues he considers of importance, such as the program Coast to Coast AM, where on 30 November 2007, he reaffirmed his belief that there is a 100% probability of extraterrestrial life in the universe.^[13]

Kaku has appeared on The Opie and Anthony Show a number of times, discussing popular fiction such as Back to The Future, Lost, and the theories behind time-travel that these and other fictional entertainment focus on.

Television and film[link]

Kaku has appeared in many forms of media and on many programs and networks, including Good Morning America, The Screen Savers, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, Nightline, 20/20, Naked Science, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera English, Fox News Channel, The History Channel, Conan, The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Colbert Report, The Art Bell Show and its successor, Coast To Coast AM, BBC World News America, The Opie & Anthony Show, The Covino & Rich Show, Head Rush, The Late Show with David Letterman, and Real Time with Bill Maher.

In 1999, Kaku was one of the scientists profiled in the feature-length film Me and Isaac Newton, directed by Michael Apted. It played theatrically in the United States, was later broadcast on national TV, and won several film awards.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Kaku appeared in the short documentary Obsessed & Scientific. The film is about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It screened at the Montreal World Film Festival and a feature film expansion is in development talks. Kaku also appeared in the ABC documentary UFOs: Seeing Is Believing, in which he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.

In February 2006, Kaku appeared as presenter in the BBC-TV four-part documentary Time which seeks to explore the mysterious nature of time. Part one of the series concerns personal time, and how we perceive and measure the passing of time. The second in the series deals with cheating time, exploring possibilities of extending the lifespan of organisms. The geological time covered in part three explores the ages of the earth and the sun. Part four covers the topics of cosmological time, the beginning of time and the events that occurred at the instant of the big bang.

On January 28, 2007, Kaku hosted the Discovery Channel series 2057. This three-hour program discussed how medicine, the city, and energy could change over the next 50 years.

In 2008, Kaku hosted the three-hour BBC-TV documentary Visions of the Future, on the future of computers, medicine, and quantum physics, and he appeared in several episodes of the History Channel's Universe series.

On December 1, 2009, he began hosting a 12-episode weekly TV series for the Science Channel at 10 pm, called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, based on his best-selling book. Each 30-minute episode discusses the scientific basis behind imaginative schemes, such as time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers. Each episode includes interviews with the world's top scientists working on prototypes of these technologies, interviews with science fiction fans, clips from science fiction movies, and special effects and computer graphics. Although these inventions are impossible today, the series discusses when these technologies might become feasible in the future.^[14]

In 2010, he began to appear in a series on the website Gametrailers.com called Science of Games, discussing the scientific aspects of various popular video games such as Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Kaku is popular in mainstream media because of his knowledge and his accessible approach to presenting complex subjects in science. While his technical writings are confined to theoretical physics, his public speaking and media appearances cover a broad range of topics, from the Kardashev scale to more esoteric subjects such as wormholes and time travel. In January 2007, Kaku visited Oman. While there, he talked at length to select members of that country's decision makers. In an interview with local media, Dr Kaku elaborated on his vision of mankind's future. Kaku considers climate change and terrorism as serious threats in man's evolution from a Type 0 civilization to Type 1.^[15]

He is pictured in Symphony of Science's newest song (as of September 6, 2011), 'The Quantum World.'

On October 11, 2010, Michio Kaku appeared in the BBC program "What Happened Before the Big Bang" (along with Laura Mersini-Houghton, Andrei Linde, Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neil Turok, and other notable cosmologists and physicists), where he propounded his theory of the universe created out of nothing.^[16]

Social policy advocacy[link]

Kaku has publicly stated his concerns over matters including the anthropogenic cause of global warming, nuclear armament, nuclear power and the general misuse of science.^[17] He was critical of the Cassini–Huygens space probe because of the 72 pounds (33 kg) of plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Conscious of the possibility of casualties if the probe's fuel were dispersed into the environment during a malfunction and crash as the probe was making a 'sling-shot' maneuver around earth, Kaku publicly criticized NASA's risk assessment.^[18] He has also spoken on the dangers of space junk and called for more and better monitoring. Kaku is generally a vigorous supporter of the exploration of outer space, believing that the ultimate destiny of the human race may lie in extrasolar planets; but he is critical of some of the cost-ineffective missions and methods of NASA.

Kaku credits his anti-nuclear war position to programs he heard on the Pacifica Radio network, during his student years in California. It was during this period that he made the decision to turn away from a career developing the next generation of nuclear weapons in association with Edward Teller and focused on research, teaching, writing and media.^{[citation needed]} Kaku joined with others such as Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, Peace Action and was instrumental in building a global anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in the 1980s, during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Kaku was a board member of Peace Action and on the board of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City where he originated his long running program, Explorations, that focused on the issues of science, war, peace and the environment.

His remark from an interview in support of SETI, "We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even know.", is used in the third Symphony of Science installment "Our Place in the Cosmos".

Personal life[link]

Kaku is married to Shizue Kaku and has two daughters.^[19]

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michio Kaku

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• Getting Physical: Dr. Michio Kaku Explains Einstein's Genius
• Russia Takes Aim at Asteroids, op-ed on asteroid defense, Wall St. Journal, Jan. 5, 2010
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Oliver Stone
Stone at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, 2009
Born	William Oliver Stone (1946-09-15) September 15, 1946 (age 65) New York City, USA
Occupation	Film director, producer, and screenwriter
Years active	1971–present
Religion	Buddhist
Spouse	Najwa Sarkis (1971–1977) Elizabeth Burkit Cox (1981–1993) Sun-jung Jung (1996 – present)

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. He won further attention - and controversy - with films JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Stone's movies frequently focus on contemporary political and cultural issues. He has received three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978), and Best Director for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). British newspaper The Guardian described Stone as "one of the few committed men of the left working in mainstream American cinema."^[1] Stone's films often combine different cameras and film formats within a single scene (including VHS and 8 mm film) as evidenced in JFK and Natural Born Killers.^[2]

Early life[link]

Stone was born in New York City, the son of Jacqueline (née Goddet) and Louis Stone, a stockbroker.^[3] He grew up affluently and lived in townhouses in Manhattan and Stamford, Connecticut. His father was Jewish and his mother was French-born and Roman Catholic.^[4] As a religious compromise, Stone was raised in the Episcopal Church,^[5][6] but has since converted to Buddhism.^[7] Stone attended Trinity School before his parents sent him away to attend The Hill School, a college-preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. His mother was often absent and his father made a big impact on his life; father-son relationships were to feature heavily in Stone's films.^[8] His parents divorced when he was 15, due to his father's extramarital affairs with the wives of several family friends.^[9] Stone's father was also influential in obtaining jobs for his son, including work on a financial exchange in France, where Stone often spent his summer vacation with his maternal grandparents - a job that proved inspirational to Stone for his movie Wall Street. Stone graduated from The Hill School in 1964.

Stone was then admitted into Yale University, but left after a year.^[10] Stone had become inspired by Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim as well as by Zorba the Greek and George Harrison's music to teach English at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam. Stone taught in Vietnam for six months after which he worked as a wiper on a United States Merchant Marine ship, travelling to Oregon and Mexico, before returning to Yale, where he dropped out a second time (in part due to working on his 1,400 page autobiographical novel A Child's Night Dream).^[9] In September 1967, Stone enlisted in the United States Army, requesting combat duty in Vietnam. He fought with the 25th Infantry Division, then with the First Cavalry Division, earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster before his discharge in 1968 after 15 months.^[9]

Early film career[link]

Stone graduated from film school at New York University in 1971, where he was mentored by director Martin Scorsese (the same year, he had a small acting role in comedy The Battle of Love's Return.^[11]). Stone first began making his mark in film as a scriptwriter in the late 70s, in the period between his first two films as a director: horror films Seizure (1974), and The Hand (1981), which stars Michael Caine. In 1978 he won his first Academy Award, after adapting true-life jail tale Midnight Express into a hit film for British director Alan Parker (the two would later collaborate on a 1996 movie of stage musical Evita).

Stone wrote further features before his directing career took off in 1986, including cult Al Pacino drug lord tale Scarface. The majority of those that made it to the screen were crime stories or thrillers, with the exception of Conan the Barbarian (1982). Stone has written or taken part in the writing of every film he has directed, except for crime movie U Turn (1997).

In 1986 Stone directed two films back to back: the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Salvador, shot largely in Mexico, and his long in development Vietnam project Platoon, shot in the Phillippines.

Mainstream success[link]

Platoon bought Stone's name to a much wider audience. It also finally kickstarted a busy directing career, which saw him making nine films over the next decade. Alongside some negative reaction, Platoon won many rave reviews (Roger Ebert later called it the ninth best film of the 1980s), large audiences, and Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. In 2007, a film industry vote ranked it at number 83 in an American Film Institute "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies" poll of the previous century's best American movies. British TV channel Channel 4 voted Platoon as the sixth greatest war film ever made.^[12]

Platoon was the first of three films Stone has made about Vietnam: the others were Born on the Fourth of July (1989, for which he won his second Oscar for directing) and Heaven & Earth (1993). He has called these films a trilogy; each deals with different aspects of the war. Platoon is a semi-autobiographical film about Stone's experience in combat; Born on the Fourth of July is based on the autobiography of US marine turned peace campaigner Ron Kovic; Heaven & Earth is based on memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, in which Le Ly Hayslip, recalls her life as a Vietnamese girl drastically affected by the war.

During this same period, Stone directed one of his most ambitious, controversial and successful films to date, JFK (1991). His take on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy won him a Golden Globe for directing. Stone also directed the acclaimed Wall Street (1987), which won Michael Douglas an Academy Award for Best Actor as a ruthless Wall Street corporate raider; Talk Radio (1988), based on Eric Bogosian's Pulitzer-nominated play, and The Doors (1991), starring Val Kilmer as singer Jim Morrison.

1994–present[link]

In 1994 saw the release of Stone's frenzied, controversial satire of the modern media, Natural Born Killers. This tale of two serial killers was later ranked as Entertainment Weekly's eight 'Most Controversial' movies to date.^{[citation needed]} Stone went on to direct Nixon (1995), which was nominated for Oscars for script and Anthony Hopkins' portrait of President Richard Nixon.

Stone followed Nixon with two more intentionally populist works, road movie U Turn (1997), and Any Given Sunday (1999), a film about power struggles within and without an American football team. In 2010, he returned to Wall Street for sequel Money Never Sleeps.^[14] Stone also directed the critically savaged Alexander (2004). He later re-edited his biopic of Alexander the Great in two different cuts for DVD. After Alexander, Stone went on to direct World Trade Center, based on the true story of two Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) policemen who were trapped in rubble after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Stone hoped to direct a fourth Vietnam War film Pinkville, about an investigation into the My Lai Massacre of Vietnamese civilians. The film was to have been made for the newly reformed United Artists.^[15], but the company halted the December 2007 production start thanks to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. After the strike, Stone went on to write, produce and direct the George W. Bush biopic, titled W. (2008). The film portrays the controversial President's childhood, relationship with his father, struggles with alcoholism, rediscovery of his Christian faith, and continues up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Josh Brolin plays the title role.

Controversy[link]

This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (August 2010)

In 1991, Stone showed his film JFK to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act^[16] of 1992. The Assassination Records Review Board (created by Congress to end the secrecy surrounding Kennedy's assassination) discussed the film, including Stone's observation at the end of the film, about the dangers inherent in government secrecy.^[17] Stone published an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his claims, shortly after the film's release.

Stone's screenplay Midnight Express was criticized by some^[who?] for its portrayal of Turkish people. The original author, Billy Hayes, around whom the film is set, has spoken out against the film, protesting that he had many Turkish friends while in jail.^[18]

Stone's film Natural Born Killers (originally based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino), released in 1994, received controversial recognition for its portrayal of violence, along with the intended satire on the media. Before it was released, the MPAA gave the film a NC-17 rating; this caused Stone to cut four minutes of film footage in order to obtain an R rating (he eventually released the unrated version on VHS and DVD in 2001). Entertainment Weekly ranked Natural Born Killers at number 8 on their list of the 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.^{[citation needed]}

Stone's other film The Doors, released in 1991, received criticism from former Doors member Ray Manzarek (keyboardist–bass player) during a question and answer session at Indiana University East (in Richmond, Indiana), in 1997. During the discussion, Manzarek stated that he sat down with Stone about The Doors and Jim Morrison for over 12 hours. Patricia Kennealy Morrison - a well known rock critic and author - was a consultant on the movie, in which she also has a cameo appearance, but she writes in her memoir Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (Dutton, 1992) that Stone ignored everything she told him and proceeded with his own version of events. From the moment the movie was released, she blasted it as untruthful and inaccurate.^[19] The other surviving former members of the band, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, also cooperated with the filming of Doors, but distanced themselves from the work before the film's release.

Also in 1997, Stone was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested against the treatment of Scientologists in Germany and compared it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s.^[20] Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn.^[20]

In 2010, Stone defended his decision not to interview Hugo Chavez's opponents during the filming of his documentary South of the Border. Stone indicated that people hear enough of those complaints already and that the movie is not intended to be a detailed examination of Chavez's record. He praised Chavez as a leader of a movement for "social transformation" in Latin America and expressed his deep admiration for him.^[21]

Drug use[link]

Stone loosely based Scarface on his own addiction to cocaine which he had to kick while writing the screenplay.^[22] On the DVD of Natural Born Killers: The Director's Cut, one of the producers, Jane Hamsher, recounts stories of taking psilocybin mushrooms with Stone and some of the cast and crew and almost getting pulled over by a police officer—a situation which Stone later wrote into the film.^{[citation needed]} In 1999, Stone was arrested and pleaded guilty to alcohol and drug charges. He was ordered into a rehabilitation program. He was arrested again on the night of May 27, 2005 in Los Angeles for possession of an undisclosed illegal drug.^[23]

Attempted meeting with FARC[link]

In a January 2008 interview with The Observer, Stone expressed disgust for what he claims to be the ongoing U.S.-supported paramilitary violence in Colombia's "war on drugs." He accompanied Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president and third party negotiator with the Colombian guerrilla group known as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in the release of three hostages held for over six years, another episode in the humanitarian exchange affair.

During The Observer interview, Stone did not condemn the FARC outright; "I do think that by the standards of Western civilization they go too far; they kidnap innocent people. On the other hand, they're fighting a desperate battle against highly financed, American-supported forces who have been terrorizing the countryside for years and kill most of the people. FARC is fighting back as best it can and grabbing hostages is the fashion in which they can finance themselves and try to achieve their goals, which are difficult. They're a peasant army; I see them as a Zapata-like army. I think they are heroic to fight for what they believe in and die for it, as was Castro in the hills of Cuba."^[24]

Stone made the comments shortly after returning from a trip to Colombia, where he was to have filmed footage of the expected release of three FARC hostages, including a young child named Emanuel. In the days before the 2007 New Year's Eve, the Venezuelan government had arranged for the release of high-profile hostages held in the Colombian jungle by the FARC guerrilla group. A high-level international team of observers was on hand, including former President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, Brazil's top presidential foreign policy advisor, and representatives from France, Switzerland, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, the Red Cross, and Oliver Stone.^[25][26] The mission failed, and Stone blamed the Colombian government and the United States for the fiasco.^[24] President Uribe said the FARC were lying the whole time, and they never had any intention of releasing the hostages because they did not have one of the three they had promised to deliver (a 3-year-old boy who was born in captivity). President Chavez angrily accused Uribe of "dynamiting" the mission. He said the FARC was in fact ready to release the two hostages they held, but had to retreat from Colombian military operations. President Uribe maintained his military, under orders from him, had held to a cease-fire in order to allow the release.^[25][26]

Controversial remarks[link]

In an interview with The Times newspaper on July 25, 2010, Stone claimed that America does not know "the full story" on Iran and complained about Jewish "domination" in parts of the US media and foreign policy.^[27] When Stone was asked why so much of an emphasis has been placed on the Holocaust, as opposed to the 25-plus million casualties the Soviet Union, for example, suffered in World War II, he stated that there was a powerful Jewish lobby within the US. The remarks were heavily criticized by Jewish groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, (where Yuri Eidelstein described his remarks as what “could be a sequel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,”)^[27] and the American Jewish Committee,^[28] as well as from Israel's Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister.^[27]

Stone a day later, stated: “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity.”^[29]

On July 28, 2010, Stone issued a second apology to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was accepted. "I believe he now understands the issues and where he was wrong, and this puts an end to the matter," said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.^[30]

Other work[link]

In 1993, Stone produced a miniseries for ABC Television called Wild Palms. In a cameo, Stone appears on a television in the show discussing how the theories in his film JFK had been proven correct (the series took place in a hypothetical future, 2007). Wild Palms has developed a moderate cult following in the years since it aired^{[citation needed]}, and has recently been released on DVD. That same year, he also spoofed himself in the comedy hit Dave, espousing a conspiracy theory about the President's replacement by a near-identical double. In 1997, Stone published A Child's Night Dream, a largely autobiographical novel first written in 1966-1967. After several unsuccessful attempts to get the work published, he "threw several sections of the manuscript into the East River one cold night, and, as if surgically removing the memory of the book from my mind, volunteered for Vietnam in 1967."^[9] Eventually, he dug out the remaining pages, rewrote the manuscript, and published it.

Stone with Hugo Chávez

In 2003, Stone made two documentary films: Persona Non Grata, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Comandante, about Cuban President Fidel Castro. In 2004, he made a second documentary on Castro, titled Looking for Fidel. (See also Controversy, above.) Stone is directing a short film about the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where the games were held. He was recently granted permission by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make a documentary about him. Stone had been previously refused permission by the Iranian government when the President's media advisor, Mehdi Kalhor, denounced Stone^[31][32] as being part of the "Great Satan" of American culture, despite his opposition to the Bush administration. However, Ahmadinejad approved permission a month later, saying he had "no objections" provided the documentary was based on accurate facts. Stone is due to visit Tehran to negotiate the production of the film with Iranian officials, possibly the president himself.

In 2008, Stone was named the Artistic Director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.

In 2009, Stone completed a documentary about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the rise of progressive, leftist governments in Latin America. Stone, who is a supporter of Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, hopes the film will get the Western world to rethink the Venezuelan president and socialist policies. Titled South of the Border, Chavez joined Stone for the premiere of the documentary at the Venice Film Festival in September 2009.^[33] The documentary features informal interviews by Stone with Chavez and six allied leftist presidents, from Bolivia's Evo Morales to Cuba's Raul Castro. Stone stated that he hopes the film will help people better understand a leader who is wrongly ridiculed "as a strongman, as a buffoon, as a clown." In May 2010, Stone began a Latin American tour to promote the film, with screenings planned in Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. The documentary was also being released in some cities in the United States and Europe in the summer of 2010.^[21][34]

The Untold History of the United States[link]

In early January 2010, it emerged that Stone was preparing a 10-part documentary series for Showtime titled The Untold History of the United States that he had been working on with American University historian Peter J. Kuznick since 2007. Stone will direct every one hour episode of the series, which intends to provide an unconventional account of some of the darkest parts of twentieth century history using little known documents and newly uncovered archival material.^[35] The miniseries will be accompanied by a companion book of the same name by Stone and Kuznick.^[36] Stone hopes to put into context some of the most controversial figures of the last hundred years, such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.^[37] Stone described the series as "the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. Certainly in documentary form, and perhaps in fiction, feature form."^[38] The series was expected to premiere May 2012^[39], but Stone told MTV News in April that it wasn't ready: "there are so many factors and fact checking. It's a lot of work...each hour has to work like a movie", he confirmed that the series was tentatively rescheduled for November 2012^[40]

Future projects[link]

Stone is also set to direct the 2012 film Savages, based on a novel by Don Winslow and featuring an ensemble cast that includes John Travolta, Uma Thurman, and Benicio del Toro.

Personal life[link]

Stone married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis on May 22, 1971. They divorced in 1977. He then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7, 1981.^[41][42] They had two sons, Sean Stone/Ali (b. 1984) and Michael Jack (b. 1991). Sean appeared in some of his father's films while a child. Oliver and Elizabeth divorced in 1993. Stone is currently married to Sun-jung Jung, and the couple have a teenage daughter, Tara.^[43] According to Newsmeat, Stone supported Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

In 1999, Stone was arrested on alcohol and drug charges and, as part of a plea bargain, agreed to enter a rehabilitation program.^[44] On May 27, 2005, Stone was arrested for driving under the influence and possession of drugs. He was released the next day on a $15,000 bond.^[44] In August 2005 Stone pled no contest and was fined $100.^[45]

He stated recently that he would prefer Ron Paul for U.S. President: "I think in many ways the most interesting candidate – I'd even vote for him if he was running against Obama – is Ron Paul. Because he’s the only one of anybody who’s saying anything intelligent about the future of the world."^[46]

In 2012, his son Sean told Agence France-Presse he converted to Islam whilst in Iran filming a documentary.^[47] The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted. According to Iran's Fars News Agency, Sean has become a Shia Muslim and had chosen to be known by the first name Ali.

Filmography[link]

As director[link]

As actor[link]

• Battle of Love's Return (1971)
• Platoon (1986) (cameo)
• Wall Street (cameo) (1987)
• The Doors (1991) (cameo)
• Dave (cameo) (1993)
• Any Given Sunday (1999)
• Torrente 3: El Protector (cameo) (2005)
• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (cameo) (2010)
• Graystone (film) (actor) (2011)

Screenwriter only[link]

• Midnight Express (1978)
• Conan the Barbarian (with John Milius) (1982)
• Scarface (1983)
• Year of the Dragon (with Michael Cimino) (1985)
• 8 Million Ways to Die (with David Lee Henry) (1985)
• Evita (with Alan Parker) (1996)

Producer/executive producer only[link]

• Sugar Cookies (1973)
• Blue Steel (1989)
• Reversal of Fortune (1990)
• From Hollywood to Hanoi (1992)
• Zebrahead (1992)
• South Central (1992)
• Wild Palms (1993) (TV)
• The Joy Luck Club (1993)
• The New Age (1994)
• Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995) (TV)
• Freeway (1996)
• The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
• Cold Around the Heart (1996)
• Killer: A Journal of Murder (1996)
• Gravesend (1997)
• The Last Days of Kennedy and King (1998)
• Savior (1998)
• The Corruptor (1999)
• The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001) (TV)
• Comandante (2003)
• Persona Non Grata (2003)

Bibliography[link]

• Hamburg, Eric. Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film. Hyperion Books. ISBN 0-7868-8157-7
• Riordan, James. Stone: The Biography. (1996)
• Stone, Oliver. JFK: The Book of the Film. Applause Books. ISBN 1-55783-127-0
• Salewicz, Chris. Oliver Stone: the making of his movies. Orion. ISBN 0-7528-1820-1

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (August 2010)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Oliver Stone

• Oliver Stone at the Internet Movie Database
• The first chapter of A Child's Night Dream by Oliver Stone at the New York Times site.

Online bibliographies[link]

• A biography of Oliver Stone
• Oliver Stone Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

Interviews[link]

• 1987 Cineaste magazine
• Can Oliver Stone Rock the Vote? -- Maxim Magazine, November 2008
• DVD Talk Radio interview with Oliver Stone
• Roger Ebert interviews Stone
• L.A. Weekly interview
• The Onion A.V. Club interview - October 16, 2008

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