John Mecklin

Members of Israel's Home Front Command and police forces inspect a crater left by an exploded projectile at a heavily-damaged school building in Israel's southern city of Gedera on October 1, 2024, after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel in response to the killings of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and other Iran-backed militants. Reports said Iran fired between 150 and 200 missiles in the attack, the country's second on Israel after a missile and drone attack in April in response to a deadly Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

Science needs marketing in the same way Nike needs marketing. In this age of mis- and disinformation, a scientist’s job must expand from discovery alone to discovery and persuasion. And that’s where marketing comes in.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement formed by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings and nuclear weapons testing (or Hibakusha), “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

A collection of pieces from the Bulletin's coverage of the 2024 US election, carefully curated for the benefit of Americans and concerned citizens around the world who have limited reading time between now and Election Day.

A longtime nuclear expert recounts the efforts he and his wife, Kitty Tucker, made in seeking justice for Karen Silkwood, a union activist at a plutonium fuel fabrication plant whose mysterious death 50 years ago has spawned books, articles, documentaries, and a critically acclaimed Hollywood motion picture.

Iran and the EU3 agreed to hold talks in Geneva, seeking a possible solution to the nuclear impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. (The United States declined to participate.) These new negotiations offer the incoming Trump administration a golden opportunity to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and perhaps improve relations throughout the Middle East.

"Experience Day" at Offutt Air Force Base's petting zoo, 2017.

A wise man once told me that there is no policy without politics. I’d amend that absolute a bit: In a democracy, relatively few governmental initiatives go forward simply and entirely on their merits. The political implications of a policy shift are usually hovering in the background, and the politicians considering the shift are usually looking over their shoulders, wondering which of the implications might step forward later to bite them.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, (center, in sunglasses) walks in front of what the North Korean government says is a Hwasong-17 ICBM on its launcher, at an undisclosed location on March 24 of 2022. Image: North Korean government / Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

In this interview, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' new leader discusses her plans for the Bulletin and a host of related subjects, including the possibility that President Trump could achieve progress in arms control and nonproliferation.