Once again, commercial vessels sailing in the Red Sea are being attacked. Our correspondent explains why Houthi rebels, an Iranian-backed militia in Yemen, have regrouped. The islands of Tuvalu are sinking. Now Australia is offering residents the world’s first “climate visas”. And remembering Dutch agronomist Simon Groot.

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UK universities are internationally renowned, but their finances are in a mess. Our correspondent offers a lesson in how to fix them. Why an amateur football league is thriving in China. And what Superman tells us about American foreign policy. Listeners of “The Intelligence” get 15% off our business writing and storytelling course. Visit economist.com/writingcourse and use code INTELLIGENCE

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Where did the world’s most devastating weapon come from? In a four-part series, we go behind the scenes at America's nuclear laboratories to understand how a scientific-mystery story about the ingredients of matter led to a world-changing (and second-world-war-ending) bomb less than five decades later.

Nuclear weapons have been central to geopolitical power ever since. Now America is seeking to modernise its stockpile and, in doing so, its scientists are pushing the frontiers of extreme physics, materials science and computing.

In episode one, we look at the birth of nuclear physics—the science that emerged early in the 20th century to answer a mystery: what is an atom actually made of?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Frank Close, a physicist and author of “Destroyer of Worlds”, a history of the birth of nuclear physics; Cheryl Rofer, a chemist who used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); and Nicholas Lewis, a historian at LANL.

This episode features archive from the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

This is a free episode. To continue listening to “The Bomb”, you’ll need to subscribe.

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