The Back from the Brink Podcast

 

Tina Cordova: I often say to people, you may survive the testing of a nuclear device. You may survive the limited use of a nuclear device, but it will be the beginning of the end for you because that's what it's been for us.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: That was Tina Cordova. Powerful, isn't she? She grew up near a nuclear weapons testing site in New Mexico and has dedicated her life to fighting for a safer, healthier world. She and Molly McGinty are our two guests today. 

You're listening to the Back From the Brink podcast, a limited series where we explore why a world free of nuclear weapons is both necessary and possible. I'm your host, Ryann Blackshere Vargas. I'm a journalist, and like you, always learning how we can make this world a better place. 

So I have a question for you. What kind of world do you want to live in? 

We recorded this in early 2026, and as we prepared for this episode, the world started to feel a lot colder. The last arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia has expired. It's been

looking like the U.S. might actually resume testing nuclear weapons again. And traditional diplomatic routes are starting to break down. I'm sure you remember, as I do, learning about nuclear weapons in school. I remember being horrified that world leaders have the power to kill millions of people in a matter of minutes. But that always seemed to be a threat of the past, a relic of the Cold War. 

Today, nuclear weapons aren't even at the top of most people's priorities. But the more I learn, the more I'm certain that needs to change as global tensions rise. In fact, experts at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say we're closer to nuclear war now than we have ever been in the past. 

That's truly terrifying. Can we change that? How do we keep our families safe? Could we really get rid of nukes? 

All I have are questions. So I spoke with people who have the answers. Because I want to better understand what a world free of nuclear weapons looks like, and more importantly, how we can get there. 

Today, I'm wondering what the modern threat of nuclear war looks like. So I wanted to speak with the activists and people who work on abolishing nuclear weapons every day. Why does this issue matter when there's so much else going on? So much going on. And what's motivating younger activists to get involved? 

Our first guest, Molly McGinty, is the perfect person to answer these questions. She's the program director at IPPNW. That's the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Like so many young people, she cares deeply about building a happier, healthier, and more just world. And she started seeing connections between nuclear weapons and other issues she cares about. So she decided there was only one possible course of action. I'll let her tell you that story. 

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: All right. Well, Molly, thank you so much for joining the Back From the Brink podcast. It's an honor to speak with you today.

Molly McGinty: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Well, I'm excited you're here. The more I learn about you, the more I admire your passion for nuclear disarmament. So I was reading a little more about

your academic background. I know you have a degree in social work and gender and sexuality studies. Tell me how you got to that. What led you to those interests? And how does that inform your work and your activism?

Molly McGinty: Yeah. So I, like many people in teen years, was deeply unsure of what I wanted to do. I didn't really feel like I had much of a path. I knew I wanted to go to school, and I knew I wanted to do something that helped people in the broadest way possible. And when I was in high school Mike Brown was murdered by the police here in the States, and it really awoke a conversation in my community about police violence, and police violence against people of color. And from, really that was, I think, 2013 maybe or 2014. So a few years after Trayvon Martin's death. Really awoke a passion for me to kind of learn about what was really going on around the world and what role folks can play, myself included, in pushing back against all of these deadly norms that have just kind of existed parallel to me my whole life. That's a long way to say that I went into school hoping to help people and trying to figure out a way to do it.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: So from my understanding, you eventually started working in nuclear disarmament in 2019 as a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow. So how did you learn of that opportunity, and what was that like? What was that experience like getting your toes wet into this space, nuclear disarmament space?

Molly McGinty:  Yeah. So I learned about Quaker Voluntary Service, or QVS, through the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which is a DC-based lobby group. My senior year of college, I had a fellowship program with FCNL where I was working on police demilitarization advocacy in my local community in Salisbury, Maryland, where I went to school. That was the first time I'd ever engaged with Quakers before and really valued – again, I grew up Catholic – but really, really valued kind of the Quaker model of, just a basis of care for one another and a basis of justice as a form of care for one another, kind of fighting for one another to show love and community. 

My beginnings with advocacy started with the Black Lives Matter movement, but my work with FCNL on police demilitarization really broadened my perspective on militarism. I was really drawn to IPPNW, which is the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, where I still work today. I was really drawn to IPPNW. At the time when I applied, I knew absolutely nothing about nuclear weapons. I, again, do not have a background in international relations. And then that led me, when I saw IPPNW, to say, "Oh my gosh, nuclear weapons are still around?" It was genuinely one of the first questions that came to mind, and this is a problem that actually matters. And then going through the website, learning about the humanitarian impacts, I was like,"Oh, okay, this sounds like something that I wanna be a part of," and something that, I'm really grateful that they were able to take me on for what was meant to be a year, and really educate me from the ground up about what we can do about this problem and why it matters for people to act today.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Can you talk a little bit about how you felt at that time? Like you said, you touched on it, which was, "Wow, nuclear weapons are still around?" You know, what was your feeling then? Was it like, is it a sense of hope – I can do something about it. Is it a little bit scary? You know, I wanna get your sense and your feeling as a young person kind of in the realities that you are now finding yourself learning about.

Molly McGinty: Yeah. I wish I could say that one of my first, second, or third thoughts was hope, but I would say my first 10 thoughts was fear and a sense of overwhelm. You know, kind of like a bubble bursting or popping or a dam opening. You know, just like, "Whoa, okay. Now here's another thing to worry about in addition to everything else that's going on." 

I mean, by the time I came in in 2019 the Ban Treaty was already adopted by the UN General Assembly, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was an easily accessible, ready-to-use tool for me. So, you know, I was coming in after not just two years, but after decades and decades and decades of activists working on this issue and trying to find ways, successfully finding ways to bring people in. So the fear was definitely there. But again, I came in at a very, very good time to just kind of grab on and figure out where I was most needed.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Much of your work has focused on the power of grassroots organizing and youth-led movements. Why do you think youth should be at the forefront of nuclear disarmament, particularly when there are so many other pressing concerns nationally and internationally?

Molly McGinty: You know, this is a question I get asked a lot and something that I consider frequently when I'm doing outreach to youth groups, whether that's medical students or other, you know, climate groups that are youth-focused, or other youth-led and youth-centered groups, because it is inherently a terrifying thing to learn about and a terrifying thing to share. So the question often comes up in my mind of, is this the right thing to do? Is it the right thing to scare people and to kind of have the dam burst for them as it did for me? 

And I come back over and over again to yes, it's a duty of care to share this information with, young people because, you know, at the end of the day, we're inheriting the world that's being created today, whether or not we know about each and every one of the horrors that we are going to face. And you know, it is a privilege to not just know about this information, but to be able to act. 

Not everybody is going to have this as their number one top social issue that they want to care about and push back against. But nuclear weapons are here. We're under their threat every single second of every single day, and they need to be part of the conversation and at kind of the top of our consciousness. Yeah.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: You've advocated for nuclear abolition at local, state, and national levels. What makes you believe abolition is possible, and what would you say to those who don't think it is?

Molly McGinty: Hmm. I would say that there's no other option, that things are so dire right now. Countries around the world are threatening to build their own nuclear arsenal. What's happening right now is not sustainable. It's clearly not working. We're lucky that we've made it this far. 

I think the other piece to this is that nuclear weapons are not some sort of natural phenomenon. They're not out of our control. It's not like a storm is coming and we just have to wait for it to pass. We have control over the weapons. We built them over decades, but we have the ability to dismantle them just as, if not more easily.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Why is it important that women be part of these conversations surrounding nuclear abolition and people of color as well?

Molly McGinty: I think like every other issue, every single person needs to be in the conversation. You know, without everybody in the conversation, we're not going to have the bold actions required, the bold ideas, the new ideas to make change. You know, for much of the 20th century when these weapons were being built, it was men in charge of both building the weapons, creating the weapons, and in charge of arms control, risk reduction, other types of measures. And at that point in time, all of the nuclear arm states were northern western states, so you think of the U.S., Russia, France, and Britain, while states primarily in the Global South, were non-nuclear weapon states. 

So today, those non-nuclear weapon states are taking back that power through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and saying, "We're no longer willing to accept this as a reality." That includes people of color. That includes women. You know, women have really been at the forefront of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, saying, "We're not accepting this anymore. We're not waiting for somebody to ask us to have a seat at the table. We're building something new here." So I think having people that haven't always been a part of the conversation, you come in and you can see it in a whole new light, and you can have new ideas about how to do it. 

There's also studies from the UN that peace talks are more successful when women are at the table. So whether we're looking at peace, whether we're looking at disarmament, women generally, are incredible communicators, and have an ability to connect with one another and not have some of those barriers that I think have always existed in these spaces.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Yeah, I really appreciate you talking about that because I do think that's important that there is, like you said, this is the world that we'll all inherit, and so it is so important to amplify youth voice, but really feeling, you know, identifying with the folks that are part of the community, so you yourself. So I hope there's, you know, folks that are listening and watch this who can see themselves in you and say, like, "There's a place for me, too. " Because that, that is so important. If you can talk a little bit about what you are doing with medical students and why, you know, grabbing and getting the attention of young people is so important right now.

Molly McGinty: So yeah, our work with our medical students is the forefront of IPPNW's work. And they do a number of essential advocacy activities. One of the really exciting things that they're working on that I get to support is looking at the connection between nuclear weapons and the climate crisis. So obviously many young people, you know, grew up concerned about the climate crisis. That's been kind of front of mind for generations now. But knowing that the climate crisis is accelerating and is getting further and further out of our control as red lines are crossed time and time again with the fossil fuel industry. They're looking at the connections between the climate crisis and nuclear weapons, which many people in this space talk about, and it's exciting to have our medical students play a role in that. 

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: There's folks who are doing so much, you're doing so much personally, to advance this cause. Did you ever feel, though, a little fatigued or distraught by what's going on? And what do you do when you, when you have those feelings?

Molly McGinty: Yeah. I definitely feel fatigue. And I have 100% at times felt hopeless. At times it does feel like you're kind of spinning on a hamster wheel and the wins can feel, and can truly be, far and few between. So I think one piece to that is when you can, celebrating your wins when you have them. I found that that can be as small as I had a really good conversation with a medical student and they left our meeting planning to do X, Y, and Z. And then I talk to them in a month and they've done X and Y. That's huge. You know? That means that people are doing things and that the work is continuing on. 

The other element to it is, that change can happen at any time, and historically does happen when things seem the most bleak. And I think we've learned through history that when things seem most dire and are most dire, something has to break. And I think right now, my hope and belief is that the thing that's going to break is the continued existence of nuclear weapons. But whenever we can, reminding ourselves that we have to keep moving.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: What does a world free of nuclear weapons look like to you?

Molly McGinty: I might get on my, my cliches and I might get on a soapbox, but, um, it's one that, A I think is possible, and B, is a world that's based on cooperation, mutual understanding. Not a world based on threats of violence and threats of mass death, which is what we're living under right now. You know, one of the things that we often talk about in this climate nuclear nexus space is that as we build a world of nuclear weapons, it's going to require multilateral diplomacy. It's going to require trust through verification and through other processes. It's going to require trust and investment in the UN, through the IAEA, and through other bodies which we're really not seeing right now. And I think through that process, we will also learn how we can better respond to the climate crisis, how we can shift our priorities and shift our needs.

You know, without $10 billion annual investments in nuclear weapons, which is what we spent in 2024 alone on nuclear weapons, we'll be able to spend money on a just transition from fossil fuels to renewables. We can spend more money on public goods like transportation, education, healthcare, you name it. You know, we'll be able to completely shift where our priorities lie and what goods are seen as essential.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Molly, what brings you hope?

Molly McGinty: What brings me hope are the incredible people in the disarmament space. I'm frequently blown away by the great work of people around the world. That includes the United States and in every corner of our globe that are spending their precious minimal free time to work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. I think I see a special side of this working with doctors. You know, there are physicians in IPPNW who, for example, our board chair, Dr. Ruth Mitchell, is a pediatric neurosurgeon that goes into surgery multiple times a week. And then in her very, very limited free time, joins IPPNW board meetings, speaks to the press, and publishes articles on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and the need to get rid of them. My hope comes from people that are willing to dedicate so much of themselves to this work. And they too see that a world without nuclear weapons is necessary and is possible. So, I will too.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas [NARRATION]: That was my conversation with Molly McGinty. More information about her work at IPPNW is in the show notes. This podcast is part of the Back From the Brink campaign, which has been working for years across the United States to bring communities together and prevent the growing threat that nuclear weapons pose to our health, environment, and all we hold dear. Information about how you can get involved is at the end of the episode and in the show notes.

In our next interview, we're going to go back to the beginning of the nuclear era. It's 1945 in South Central New Mexico, and the U.S. has just conducted the Trinity test. That's the first ever detonation of a nuclear weapon. The resulting radiation creates generations of Downwinders, or people who became ill from living downwind of the sites. And no, they were not informed of or protected from this massive exposure to radiation. It's a chilling history that may be repeating itself. For the first time in decades, a U.S. president is threatening to restart nuclear weapons testing. 

To understand what this means, I reached out to our next guest, Tina Cordova. She's a seventh generation native New Mexican who grew up in the aftermath of the Trinity test. This background inspired her to found the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. And if you're trying to decide where you stand on the issue of nuclear disarmament and abolition, well, Tina has a message for you. So stay tuned for that.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Well, Tina, hello. Thank you so much for joining the Back from the Brink podcast. It's an honor to speak with you today, and the more I learn about you, I've been doing a lot of research about you, and I see that you've spoken out about nuclear weapons for decades. There's a lot of information about you. But I'd like to start with little Tina. Where did she grow up? Where was home? And what, who was around to watch her grow?

Tina Cordova: I grew up in a small village in southern New Mexico called Tularosa, and Tularosa was a town of about 3,500 people. And I grew up being raised in a family with a father whose name was Anastasio Cordova and a mother named Rosalie Cordova. I have three siblings. I'm the oldest, and we actually lived in a very idyllic place. I couldn't walk, you know, [chuckles] away from my home and not run into either somebody I was related to or somebody that I knew very well. The whole, the whole village raised the entire group of kids growing up when I was growing up. And I always tell everybody, I felt like I grew up in an Eden. We had a garden and grew almost all the vegetables that we ate, and so it was very, it was very idyllic. Everybody took care of each other. It was wonderful. I felt very blessed. It was really very, very simple, but very full.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Simple but full. I love that, and I love the idea of... It sounds like the neighbors and the village was part of your upbringing. Like, everyone was together. Is that right?

Tina Cordova: Oh, that's absolutely true. Everybody lived within walking distance, so if I was out and about and I got hungry, I could stop at one of my grandmothers’ house and grab a sandwich.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Did you guys ever hear stories of what had happened near your town as you were growing up, or is that something that you came to realize later?

Tina Cordova: I'll never forget this. There was a woman, and everybody knew who she was. She was such a strikingly beautiful woman. She had a young family, and she got brain cancer. And I remember the ladies talking, I'll never forget this, because somebody said it was probably because of the bomb. And it was really kind of one of those moments where when I heard “the bomb,” then I started thinking, "What are they talking about?" I can remember a lot of that stuff, and I do remember people clearly talking about the reason people were so sick was because of the bomb.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Can you talk about when you realized that there was something happening, there was a sickness happening within your family?

Tina Cordova: In his early 60s, my dad developed cancer at the base of his tongue, and he didn't have risk factors for that. He didn't have... You know, my dad wasn't a smoker, rarely drank alcohol. And I remember speaking to the surgeon that did this, the eight-hour surgery that he went through, and the surgeon told me, "This just doesn't happen, but we see it all the time in New Mexico." 

When I went to college and started studying the sciences, it became crystal clear to me that this is why people are so sick, and this is why people are dying. We were very likely overexposed to radiation, uh, living adjacent to the Trinity site.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: I just wanna pause, you know, in remembrance of your father and those who, you know, had to suffer the consequences of the cancer and the horrible reaction to that test. So I just wanna pause there and, and, you know, give my sincere condolences to that. [pause] So Tina, this is obviously very personal for you. Obviously, there's your personal story, but then there is a journey for you to become an activist and to speak out on behalf of your family and your community. What is that journey that led you to say, "I will be a voice for this. I won't just be, you know, someone that watches this happen in my community, but I will speak out"?

Tina Cordova: So I co-founded the organization 21 years ago with a gentleman named Fred Tyler. He has since passed away. Fred had a career away from Tularosa and had returned, and he wrote a letter to the local newspaper, a letter to the editor, and basically what he said was, "I've been away for 25 years. I'm back now. My mother just died after having multiple cancers. And when are we gonna hold the government accountable for the harm they did to us when they detonated the bomb here?" 

And I called him up and I said, "Fred, I don't live in Tularosa any longer. You're there. My family's been through the same thing your family has been through." And I said, "We have got to do something. We've got to start an organization. We have to start giving people a safe place to come forward with their histories so that we can learn more about whether indeed what we believe is true is true." 

And within a week of that phone call, I made a trip down, we sat down at his kitchen table, and we started to sort of chart out what we thought would be a process. And we scheduled a town hall meeting, and we asked people to come forward and let's have a discussion, and I was pleasantly surprised because 50 people, about 50 people showed up, which I thought, you know, if we can get 50 people or so, that'd be great, and sure enough, we did. And I think I thought I understood this, but it wasn't until I heard all those stories, and I remember at the end, because by this time I had already been diagnosed with my cancer, I'd already been through my treatment, and then I asked the question, "How many of you either have thyroid disease or have had thyroid cancer?" And I imagine about 75% of the people in the room raised their hand. And it was that confirmation I needed. And then I really did start to, um, explore all of this. 

First of all, I learned, you know, about the test itself and that there had not been any warning to the public before or afterwards. I learned very quickly that they had counted on the people

in New Mexico to be unsophisticated, uneducated, unable to stand up for themselves, and that aggravated me in a way that I can't even describe because I thought, you know, they came here, they invaded our lands and our lives, they destroyed everything that we depended on because we truly did live off the land. 

In 1945, when they detonated the bomb, we didn't have running water. We had cisterns, we had holding ponds, we had ditches, rivers, lakes, streams. We counted on the rain that fell from the sky. A cistern basically was a catch basin. The water was directed off the roof of your house into this catch basin. That water was precious. It was only used for drinking and cooking, and, you know, everybody planned on other methods for gathering water to be used for cleaning and bathing. And of course, our water supply was then completely contaminated. And we also didn't have electricity readily available, so nobody had refrigeration, which meant you couldn't go to a grocery store and buy things like, you know, dairy, meat, or produce. You could buy sugar, flour, coffee, rice, cereal, but you could not buy anything that was refrigerated, so all of the food that we ate was basically produced by our own means in our own home. 

When I started to consider all these things, I thought it's the perfect storm. You know, the bomb was detonated in a way that created massive fallout. It was tremendously over-packed with plutonium. Only three pounds of plutonium were necessary for the fission process, but because they had to make sure that it was a go, they packed it with 13 pounds of plutonium, so 10 pounds of plutonium went up in that fireball and dispersed plutonium only God knows where, and it has a half-life of 24,000 years. 

The more I explored, the more I learned, the more aggravated I became with the whole idea that we were just collateral damage. You know, I can only say this much. It was so hard for me to process that they thought so little of us. And when I thought about all the sacrifice and the suffering I had seen people do, I became so angry and so unable to let go of any part of this. I just decided that it had to become my life's work. It had to be what I would focus my time and energy on.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Obviously, you have your personal story, but there's so much going on in the world, so many issues that people could be focused on, that you could be focused on. Why is it important for you to continue to talk about this now and in the future?

Tina Cordova: I firmly believe that we are in a very dangerous time as it relates to the nuclear history of our country right now. We have no treaties in place that effectively control the way that nuclear devices are developed, tested, or used, and, you know, we're gonna enter a new... We are [laughs] already into a new nuclear arms race. They're building plutonium pits at Los Alamos labs, and we have not taken care of the environment that they basically destroyed the first go around. 

I often say to people, "You may survive the testing of a nuclear device. You may survive the limited use of a nuclear device, but it will be the beginning of the end for you, because that's what it's been for us." And everybody needs to understand that there are real human

consequences to all of these things. I can't even fathom that we would start to test again when we've never taken, adequately taken care of the mess we made when we were testing nuclear devices at the rate that we were. I can't even imagine somebody thinking that the limited use of a nuclear device is okay. There are no winners. There's just losers.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: What would you say to those that believe in nuclear deterrence, that, you know, well, one, we already have nuclear weapons, so it's too hard to remove them or get rid of them and not do that again, and that nuclear weapons keep us safe? I mean, how do you feel? What is your response to that, Tina?

Tina Cordova: It's insanity. I mean, I don't believe at all in the idea of deterrence, and I believe that the only thing that makes sense is complete abolition. The only thing that makes sense to me is not more guns, and certainly not more nuclear devices, and certainly not depending on everybody to play fair. You only have to have one madman with his finger on the, you know, the detonator to make this go really badly.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Doesn't that feel like an uphill battle sometimes, a huge battle? Have you ever felt that way, that it just feels overwhelming, the amount of work that has to be done in order to convince minds and hearts, and to get people aware of the need to get rid of these weapons?

Tina Cordova: Through all the years that I've been doing this work, I've lost count of the number of people who have told me they're never gonna acknowledge. They're never gonna offer us any kind of reparation. And I have said many times, "I will do this work until the time that they acknowledge and support us, or until the time they put me in the ground." And for those of us who truly believe that we can stand up and be heard, there comes a point of no return where you feel that way, where you start saying, "It's either gonna happen or they're gonna bury me trying." And for those of us who believe in abolition, for those of us who believe in disarmament, for those of us who believe in those processes, we have to believe that way. We have to believe that we're gonna do everything we can. It's how a movement works.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: What is a successful result of your advocacy that you're most proud of?

Tina Cordova: In 1990, the U.S. government established a program called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, and that law existed for 31 years before New Mexico was included. And basically, RECA paid claimants in parts of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, but never included the Downwinders of New Mexico although, you know, we were the first people exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb or test. And now, the people of New Mexico, the entire state, because our, our state was not only irradiated by Trinity, it was irradiated by the Nevada testing that took place, and that's a well-established fact because they had monitoring stations here that was, they were... Those monitoring stations showed that New Mexico received radiation from the Nevada testing. 

So now people from throughout New Mexico that lived here for one year between 1944 and 1962 when they stopped doing above ground testing, if you lived here for one year and you have one of the 19 compensable cancers, you qualify for a one-time payment of $100,000. And you can also apply on behalf of a deceased spouse, a deceased child, a deceased parent, or a deceased grandparent. 

So recently I received a call, and it was from a woman that I grew up with. She and her husband were high school sweethearts. They got married right out of high school, and about 15 years later, he died from brain cancer. She had to become the sole provider now for a family, not something she had intended or was expecting to do. And, you know, her family scraped by. And she was calling to tell me that the Department of Justice was asking her for her bank account information so they could make the deposit into her account, and she was crying, and she told me, "You have no idea what this means for me and my family." That does mean everything to me, that you're gonna get your money after all the years that you suffered as a single mom and without your spouse. I just... That means everything to me.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: What brings you hope, Tina, in this work? What is your vision for the future that really keeps you excited and keeps you going?

Tina Cordova: 21 years ago when I first started doing this work, no one wanted to talk to me. No one wanted to hear this history. No one believed me, you know? And today I'm speaking with you, which is significant. You're interested in hearing about this. Last week I was interviewed by two architectural students from New York who are doing a thesis paper around building a permanent memorial to the Downwinders of New Mexico. I'm working with a graduate student from Amsterdam. She happens to be from New Mexico, but she studies in Amsterdam, and she's working on a project about what do adequate reparations look like for Downwinders across the world. You know, I work with organizations like ICAN to communicate the message of what it was like to be the first people exposed to radiation. More people now are reaching out to me because they wanna understand this history and because they cannot believe they don't know this history. That gives me hope. 

It gives me hope when people want to engage with us, want to know more, and especially when young people are very, very interested in knowing more so that they can stand up for their own futures. And that's what I'm finding with the many young people that I interact with these days. That gives me hope because it is our job as the elders that work on these issues to make sure that we bring along our young folks who are gonna inherit this very pressing issue. And so I'm always impressed when I hear from somebody that's not from New Mexico, and they're young, and they wanna embrace this history as part of how they educate themselves around what to do relative to our current nuclear situation. And I mentioned earlier that we have this amazing award-winning documentary called First We Bombed New Mexico, and I think that if people are interested, they can go to the website firstwebombednewmexico.com, and they can actually see the trailer and learn more about the history of how the documentary was made.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Is there anything else that you wanted to mention or that I didn't ask you?

Tina Cordova: I just want to say probably in closing that this is not over for us. You know, one of the ladies on our steering committee said one time, this is our nuclear past, our nuclear present, and our nuclear future. For people who've been overexposed to radiation, it goes on and on. And, you know, I can only hope that people can embrace that idea as they decide where they stand on the issue of disarmament and abolition.

I mean, we absolutely cannot continue down this road. It's not sustainable. Imagine putting all this money. We spend 50 billion dollars annually just maintaining our nuclear arsenal in the United States, 50 billion dollars putting our nukes to bed at night. And can you imagine what we could do with all of the money we're spending now on building plutonium pits that we don't need and likely will never use? Trillions, trillions of dollars. And it just, until people stand up and say no more, this goes on. So everybody has an opportunity to stand up and say no more.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas: Well, I think one of the best ways to do that is to listen to survivors and families of survivors, listen to people's stories. So thank you for sharing the memory of your father, your mother, your story, your siblings, your community and the damage, but also the beauty of how you grew up and your concern for all of our communities.

Tina Cordova: Well, thank you, Ryann, and thanks to Back from the Brink for considering our voice as part of the podcast that you all produce. We really appreciate this opportunity.

Ryann Blackshere Vargas [NARRATION]: That was today's episode of the Back from the Brink podcast. Thank you again to our guests, Molly McGinty and Tina Cordova, for taking the time to share why this issue matters so much to them and is so personal. Check out the show notes for more information about Tina's work at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium and Molly's work at IPPNW. If you're feeling inspired by our conversations today and looking for tools to get involved, head to our website, preventnuclearwar.org. 

Next time on the Back from the Brink podcast, we're going to dive deeper into what U.S. nuclear policy looks like to better understand why it needs to change. Spoiler alert, we're creating a lot of needless risk. 

This podcast was written and produced by Jiayu Liang, Anthony Eyring, and me, Ryann Blackshere Vargas. Thank you also to the entire Back from the Brink team who helped out. It was made financially possible in part by a grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. If you're enjoying this limited series, please take a second to rate and leave a review on your listening platform. It really does help more people discover the show. Until next time, we wish you peace, joy, and a world free of nuclear weapons.