Over the past few years, much has been written and created around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, but little attention is paid to those whose lives were ended or forever changed when the bombs dropped in Japan.
In this episode, we delve into...
Yesterday
The AI Jobs Panic of the 1890s: The Linotype Triggered Fears of Mass Layoffs but Created an Explosion in Newspaper Work
One of the most feared inventions ever was the Linotype machine. Debuting in 1886, it was designed to eliminate tens of thousands of newspaper jobs, specifically the hand-compositors—the highly skilled workers who painstakingly picked individual metal letters out of wooden trays ... Show More
57m 59s
Aug 11
April 1945 in Berlin: The Final Month of the Third Reich
When Heinrich Himmler was appointed to command the army group defending Berlin in January 1945, his operations officer described briefing him as "talking about colors with a blind man." Himmler couldn't read a map scale, worked five hours a day due to chronic stomach problems, an ... Show More
1h 1m
Aug 6
Writing Was Invented for Accounting and Scrawled on Baboon Bones
A three-inch baboon bone bearing twenty-nine deliberate incisions was pulled from a South African mountain range in 1970. It is approximately 43,000 years old, and microscopic analysis shows the notches were made over time with different cutting tools, meaning someone was trackin ... Show More
54m 26s
Aug 2025
Hiroshima: in the shadow of the bomb
At 8.15am on 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. It was an event that changed the course of history, but it was also one driven by individuals. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Iain MacGregor tells this story through the eyes of people whose lives were ... Show More
43m 36s
Oct 2025
Hiroshima's atomic plague
In the wake of the nuclear attacks on Japan, the official Allied line was that radiation sickness was not a danger. Yet, as this Long Read written by Steve O'Hagan reveals, the first Western journalist to witness the effects on the people of Hiroshima told a very different story. ... Show More
16m 31s
Aug 2020
75 Years On: Remembering Hiroshima
75 years ago this week, a devastating atomic bomb changed world history. What can we learn from these events? Guest:Koko Kondo, Hiroshima bomb survivor and peace campaigner.Host: Manveen Rana. Clips used: NBC, Imperial War Museum, US Army.You can hear more first-hand memories of ... Show More
27m 58s
Aug 2024
Atomic Bomb Literature—Kyoko Hayashi and "Masks of Whatchamacallit"
This episode is marked mature.In this episode, we take a look at Japanese writing about the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed as many as 215,000 people in August 1945. We’ll start with the history of the atomic bomb, its use, and its effects on the hibakusha ... Show More
59m 28s