Sontag reads from "Illness as Metaphor" and discusses differences between diseases, particularly tuberculosis and cancer, regarding historic understanding and cultural representation.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, psychiatrist and psycho-historian, discusses the acceptance and embrace of nuclear disaster, doctors' opposition to nuclear weapons, difference in Americans' and Europeans' opposition to nuclear weapons, psychological impact of nuclear bombings in Japan, and the mental disconnect experienced by those who build atomic weapons who then see the bombs' effects.