Alvin Weinberg's "Age of Anxiety" talk at Oak Ridge was broadcast by Oak Ridge Community Television.
We've seen a few interviews with Weinberg, but not him speaking from a podium.
This footage contains a still-relevant talk on humans-living-longer while also fearing technological advances responsible for our longer lives.
Richard Weinberg digitized it off VHS for Myriam Tonelotto, as she researched "Thorium: The Far Side of Nuclear". Myriam says it was invaluable for the creation of the animated Alvin Weinberg character.
We have entered into what I like to call an "Age of Anxiety". Some of you may recall Leonard Bernstein's second symphony is entitled "The Age of Anxiety."
Our life expectancy has increased (particular in the United States) by about 20 years since the turn of the century. Despite the fact that we're all living longer, we seem to fear death more than ever before. Indeed, we have given up the notion that there's such a thing as a natural death.
Every death must now be attributed to some very specific cause. An identifiable or presumed cause. In this we seem to be going back to a kind of primitivism.
A very famous of French anthropologist, his name is Levy Bruhl. He pointed out that one of the primary characteristics of primitive society is that in a primitive society, the notion of natural death was never accepted.
If you died, it is because your enemy had poisoned you or if he hadn't poisoned you, he had uttered some terrible impartation and the gods somehow were not friendly to you, they're friends of your enemy. And so, you die.
The public's perception is: Dying "earlier" can be attributable to technology.
For anyone wondering where the footage of Alvin Weinberg is, here's my tally:
Larson Collection interview with Alvin Weinberg (100 minute interview)
https://ieeetv.ieee.org/mobile/video/larson-collection-interview-with-alvin-weinberg
Alvin Weinberg 2004 Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGzKuhY50v4 (MSR excerpt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLt4UIKI-0 (full Q&A)
Pandora's Box (Ep6) A Is for Atom (brief appearances)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EviEN0ScOwg
Molten Salt Reactor Experiment doc (brief glimpses)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o
There's an ORNL released documentary "Alvin Weinberg"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeTjXxWvPTc
...but it only contains 3 seconds of Alvin at the end.
So, there's not a lot. What does exist is of mixed capture quality.
And again, this is the only video I've ever seen of Alvin giving a talk!
Crazy, huh?
Much thanks to Myriam for sharing this video file with me.
This footage was cleaned up via:
Neat Video (visual noise reduction comparing temporal image data)
iZotope RX7 Advanced (de-click, de-noise, boosting of human voice)
Quick Search for Weinberg Video
I noticed my 2004 excerpt of a MSR question from Kirk cites a dead link as source (in YouTube Description data) so took a quick look to re-source it. Some new videos now exist on YouTube, posted in 2018.
UTK Department of Nuclear Engineering
Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg: People and Personalities in the Manhattan Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxbqrmEGSHE
UTK Department of Nuclear Engineering
Dr. Alvin Weinberg: Enrico Fermi and the World's
First Controlled, Self-Sustaining Chain Reaction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIbufbzba04
UTK Department of Nuclear Engineering
Dr. Alvin Weinberg: Walter Zinn, Nuclear Power Pioneer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skH4iyLuwDQ
So it appears UTK original video host was deprecated.
They moved content to YouTube in 2018.
And moved these 3 new-to-YouTube videos along as well.