In Our Time (radio series)

The Manhattan Project, first broadcast October 7, 2021 A tight account of how the fear that Germany, with its head start in nuclear fission, would build an atomic bomb first drove the United States into a vast engineering project led by General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer. Physicists Bruce Cameron Reed and Frank Close explain the science in plain terms, while Cynthia Kelly, founder of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, brings the history of the project itself, through the first explosion in July 1945 to the bombs used against Japan. A natural next step for anyone who came to the subject through the 2023 film Oppenheimer and wants the facts without the drama.