Hello economist listeners, my name is Mark Leon Goldberg, host of Global Dispatches,

which the Guardian has called a podcast to make you smarter. I've hosted Presidents and Prime

Ministers, Frontline Adworkers and Journalists, all to give listeners a deeper understanding of

world affairs. Global dispatches is for people who seek world news that does not often make

the headlines, but should. Find global dispatches, world news that matters, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. In our South London Bureau, I'm Jason

Palmer. And in London for just one more day, I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh

perspective on the events shaping your world. You may remember giggling nervously through sex

education classes at school. And if you don't, your teachers should do. Sex education may be awkward,

but it's really important. And across much of Latin America, schools don't do it very well.

And popular imagination has it that the dinosaurs ruled supreme over the earth a couple of

hundred million years ago. But it wasn't always that way. How did they get that apex predator status?

They were just dressed a little bit better for the changing weather.

First up though.

Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia today. On the second leg of a trip to the Middle East that

began in Israel in the West Bank. Saudi Arabian United States have been staunch allies for decades.

They established diplomatic relations in the late 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt met Ibn

Saad, the country's first king, aboard an American warship in 1945.

The Arabian monarch goes aboard the president's cruiser to be received amid impressive and colorful

ceremonies. This conference was no doubt among the most important of these meetings. And presumably

sat it on the vastly important question of oil. At times the relationship has been rocky.

But also it has been enduring and bipartisan. The Saudi government got on unusually well with

...