The Anthony Cumia Show - June 17, 2025


World War III Fears ｜ 06-15-25


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

134.3

Word count

1,490

Sentence count

81

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the WBC Minicast, host Alex Blumberg talks about the growing threat of nuclear war between the United States and Iran, and why people aren't as afraid of nuclear weapons as they used to be.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:00.080 Listen, all you New Yorkers.
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00:01:05.300 This is the 77
00:01:07.140 WABC Minicast.
00:01:10.960 Israel. 0.81
00:01:12.120 Iran.
00:01:13.600 Do we get involved?
00:01:15.580 Are we already involved?
00:01:18.000 How far does it go?
00:01:20.280 We've
00:01:20.960 had a few world
00:01:23.460 events that have happened uh that people say well here it comes world war three here it is
00:01:29.940 and it doesn't it doesn't pan out to be world war three uh you know the ukraine russia thing of 0.60
00:01:40.040 course there were plenty of other things where people said well this is it nukes everyone loves
00:01:47.680 throwing that around these days too i grew up in the 60s well as a little kid in the 60s mostly the
00:01:56.480 70s as a as a child but i remember i remember being in first grade and having to go under the desk
00:02:03.360 for the teacher no i'm teasing the uh the air raid drills they put you under the desk
00:02:10.500 to protect you from atomic bombs.
00:02:15.700 The desk, yeah, we all joke about that now, don't we?
00:02:19.560 But the prospect of nuclear war back then was very frightening,
00:02:26.440 and it was very realistic.
00:02:29.000 You had the Soviet Union, China, the United States,
00:02:31.960 and they were always just bashing heads.
00:02:37.800 and proxy wars, all kinds of things going on
00:02:42.340 that took us to the brink of nuclear war on a couple of occasions
00:02:48.160 and probably more so that we never even knew about.
00:02:52.000 But it was petrifying.
00:02:53.840 It was a very horrible thing.
00:02:55.960 And any time it was talked about, it was in very somber tones by the media,
00:03:02.580 the government officials.
00:03:04.340 It was never taken lightly.
00:03:07.800 And now, no one seems to really be afraid of the prospect.
00:03:14.780 They almost seem to be cheering it on.
00:03:18.100 Like, come on, let's do this.
00:03:19.880 Where's World War III already?
00:03:21.760 Where are the nukes?
00:03:23.740 And I don't quite know why that's happened over the course of the years.
00:03:29.300 I've seen it on a smaller scale where people don't seem to be afraid of guns anymore.
00:03:33.100 You see that happen a lot in a lot of inner city disputes where someone will pull a gun out.
00:03:41.560 And in the old days, you'd think people would put their hands up, get on the ground, try to run away, something.
00:03:49.760 But now you just, you know, oh, you're going to shoot me?
00:03:53.300 What? What? You're going to shoot me? 0.94
00:03:55.780 Yeah, and then they shoot them. 0.84
00:03:57.320 So this lack of fear seems to be an issue these days.
00:04:04.700 And I look at the World War III scenarios, and people don't seem to be as afraid of it,
00:04:12.860 of the prospect of atomic weapons.
00:04:16.740 Now, I don't know.
00:04:17.400 I don't think Iran has nuclear weapons. 0.86
00:04:20.380 I think if they did, they may have at least threatened with them a little more than they have. 0.62
00:04:28.280 I think the United States, Israel, I guess any other country that was keeping tabs on Iran 0.79
00:04:35.960 would probably have known if they were able to build an actual working nuclear weapon.
00:04:43.100 So I don't think they have it.
00:04:45.820 But it's a hell of a gamble, isn't it?
00:04:47.860 What if they were able to cobble together some kind of a rudimentary nuclear weapon,
00:04:54.560 even if it's not delivered by missile, you know, suitcase bomb?
00:04:58.860 How about a dirty bomb? 0.84
00:05:00.700 I heard Netanyahu say that Iran has the potential, or at least had before the other day,
00:05:06.520 maybe they still do, to build six atomic bombs, enough enriched uranium.
00:05:13.100 them uh those could very readily be used as dirty bombs you just uh slap slap some material on the
00:05:24.120 side of one of those missiles and uh you have an irradiated area for for a while and i'm not saying
00:05:31.300 this is any reason to go in and attack iran i'm just saying uh how do you attack iran not knowing
00:05:40.300 that. If you say they have enough nuclear material for six atomic bombs, you have to
00:05:46.560 be a little, a little, I don't know, on guard that they have the potential to irradiate
00:05:55.620 Tel Aviv. Maybe. Unless you're absolutely positively sure they don't have enough nuclear
00:06:04.440 material for six atomic bombs. And maybe you don't want them to ever get that. Or maybe
00:06:09.600 you want the mullahs and the ayatollah and and all the other fanatical islamic um uh figures over
00:06:20.740 there in in iran gone um like i i'm not sure what's going on over there i don't think many
00:06:30.200 people are i've heard a lot of theories because some people really hate israel and some people
00:06:36.680 really love israel so anything that you say uh people have an answer to but they don't really
00:06:43.640 have an answer they have they have what they want to hear and one of those things is that iran was
00:06:51.780 on the brink of making nuclear weapons they have said death to israel death to the u.s and they
00:06:57.240 would have used them had they been able to put it together so preemptive strike was necessary
00:07:02.240 and then you have the people that go what the hell are you doing even bothering iran
00:07:09.380 well they're they're sponsors of terrorism well so we're a bunch of other countries we do business
00:07:15.600 with uh and that's the key here that's what i really want to delve into do business with
00:07:21.680 uh we we don't do business with iran no one does business with iran maybe one or two maybe
00:07:32.220 Maybe North Korea, maybe Russia has a few things, China gets in there, but nothing on the level of pretty much every other large nation in the Middle East.
00:07:49.200 Many years ago, if Israel would have decided to bomb Iran, everyone would have jumped in. 0.53
00:07:56.000 You'd have seen Saudi Arabia, Egypt going in after Israel, everybody. 0.60
00:08:00.000 But over the course of the years, what brought enough goodwill and peace to all these nations to the point where Israel can now bomb the crap out of Iran without any other Middle Eastern nation even saying anything about it?
00:08:21.360 I haven't heard a word from the Saudis or Jordan or the United Arab Emirates or Qatar or any, none of them.
00:08:32.780 Why?
00:08:33.680 What makes that goodwill?
00:08:36.440 Is it the difference between right and wrong?
00:08:39.720 Do you think they're like, good, they might have nuclear weapons?
00:08:42.760 No.
00:08:44.140 It's business.
00:08:46.620 The West does business with all these nations now.
00:08:51.360 And if there's one thing that will keep people from shooting each other, it's mutual interest in making a lot of money and garnering as much power as you can.
00:09:07.200 So when you look at all these other nations, we aren't going to get in a tiff with Saudi Arabia because the money that is exchanged is unbelievable between the two nations.
00:09:21.360 and with Israel.
00:09:22.960 Israel is part of the business machine of the Middle East now.
00:09:27.620 Who isn't in that? 0.96
00:09:30.300 Iran, that's right.
00:09:32.080 Very good.
00:09:33.700 Iran. 1.00
00:09:35.220 They're still in this archaic, they want to be isolated. 1.00
00:09:44.680 They are very strict about their adherence to their religion
00:09:50.480 to the point where they will not even do business with people that they deem evil 0.98
00:09:58.040 and should be killed. 0.99
00:10:01.260 So they can still be bombed. 1.00
00:10:04.500 And no one will care because it doesn't affect the bottom line.
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