From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of One Nation, Australia's most controversial minor party.

For thirty years, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, no one is laughing. This week we're running the first episode of The Making of One Nation, a new series from The Conversation hosted by Ashlynne McGhee. She explores how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics.

Hanson's infamous 1996 maiden speech to the Australian Senate — warning that Australia was "being swamped by Asians" — still echoes through Australian political life.

But who was Pauline Hanson before she became a phenomenon, and what did she actually represent? Was she a cause of a new kind of politics, or a symptom of one already forming?

We hear from Anna Broinowski, documentary maker and senior lecturer at the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, who made a documentary and wrote a book about Hanson.

Follow The Making of One Nation to make sure you don't miss more episodes in the coming weeks.

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Final preparations are underway for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission around the Moon for more than 50 years. Four astronauts, three men and one woman, will spend 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft, going further into space than any other humans as they orbit the Moon and return to Earth.

The mission is the next step of the Artemis programme, which plans to land astronauts back to the Moon by 2028. China has its own programme targeting a full crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2030.

In this episode, we speak to Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University about why the US is going back to the Moon. Pace worked in space policy for the George W. Bush Administration, followed by a stint at NASA before his appointment as the executive secretary of the National Space Council during the first Trump administration, where he worked on the launch of the Artemis programme.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• NASA’s Artemis II mission will take an astronaut crew around the Moon – a space policy expert describes the long road to launch
• Nasa’s Artemis II mission is crucial as doubts build that America can beat China back to the Moon
• NASA announces a big shake-up of the Artemis Moon program
• NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon shows how US space strategy has changed since Apollo – and contrasts with China’s closed program
• NASA’s Artemis II plans to send a crew around the Moon to test equipment and lay the groundwork for a future landing

The day after the US began bombing Iran, US Central Command confirmed it had used a new, cheap type of kamikaze drone called a Lucas for the first time in a combat operation. These drones were made in America, but their roots actually lie in Iran – they are reverse engineered copies of an Iranian drone called a Shahed that the Russians have also been using to bomb Ukraine.

In this episode, PhD researcher and military expert Arun Dawson at King's College London explains how the Iranians developed the Shaheds, why the US decided to copy them, and what role these low-cost drones might play in the future of warfare.

This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• Not just Patriot interceptors: A defense expert explains the various weapons US and allies use to defend against missiles and drones
• Drones over Ukraine: What the war means for the future of remotely piloted aircraft in combat
• Iran war shows how AI speeds up military ‘kill chains’
• The US is using repurposed Iranian drone technology to attack Iran – a military expert explains why

Mentioned in this episode:

The Making of an Autocrat

Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.