Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok Jha talks to our correspondents about the innovations, discoveries and gadgetry shaping the world. Published every Wednesday.
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Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok Jha talks to our correspondents about the innovations, discoveries and gadgetry shaping the world. Published every Wednesday.
If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.
For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page here https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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.
Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.
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