Episode 47: Part 1 Child Fusion Reactors & Karen Silkwood

A teenager builds a “star in a jar,” the press crowds around, and a Geiger counter clicks to life. That single image threads through our journey as we follow young makers who pushed past textbooks to light plasma, register neutrons, and force adults to decide how far curiosity should go. We open with David Hahn, the infamous “Radioactive Boy Scout,” whose improvised neutron source triggered a federal cleanup and a lifelong cautionary tale about brilliance without guardrails. Then we turn to T...