This week, floods have hit the global headlines. First up, we delve into the various reasons why floods form.
After learning about the causes of floods, we discover a nature-based solution in the form of mangrove forests. Laura Michie from the Mangrove Action Project tells us why these ecosystems are important, and how they can protect coastal zones.
We also find out that humans have moved so much water around the planet that we’ve shifted the location of the geographic North Pole.
Plus, a rare flooding event is currently taking place in the Australian Outback, awakening an ecosystem after years of dormancy.
And what could happen when hackers take control of tractors?
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Andrada Fiscutean and Sandy Ong
Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, with Lucy Davies, Debbie Kilbride and Margaret Sessa Hawkins
In this episode, Fr. Thomas Joseph White joins Rusty Reno on The Editor's Desk to talk about his recent essay, "The Future of Catholic Theology" from the August/September 2025 issue of the magazine.
Grant Us Eyes is a book-length close reading of Bloodborne by literary critic Nathan Wainstein (LA Review of Books, Cartridge Lit, American Book Review). Grant Us Eyes situates the game’s oft-discussed difficulty in relation to a much longer tradition of difficult art – surrealist painting, the modernist novel, etc. Wainstein probes the difficulty of Bloodborne’s fragmented narrative, the difficulty of its graphical and aural glitches, the difficulty of the philosophical problems it poses, and the difficulty of performing close analysis itself within a medium that still doesn’t have established, agreed-upon methods of interpretation in the way literature and film do.
Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.
If you got a COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna or Pfizer, congratulations, you got a vaccine that uses mRNA to teach your cells how to fight the disease. But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is doing his best to undermine their future use. On Tuesday, he announced the cancellation of $500 million in grants and contracts aimed at developing more mRNA vaccines. The decision has received near-universal condemnation from public health experts — even President Donald Trump’s first-term Surgeon General said it will 'cost lives.' Dr. Fiona Havers, an infectious-disease specialist at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a former senior advisor on vaccine policy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, joins us to talk about Kennedy’s dangerous decision and the risk it poses to public health.
And in headlines: President Donald Trump says he wants a new Census, The U.S. Air Force said it’s denyingthe option to retire early to all trans service members who have served between 15 and 18 years, and tariff day is (unfortunately) finally here.
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Ryan welcomes Paul Everitt, developer advocate at JetBrains and an early adopter of Python, to discuss the history, growth, and future of Python. They cover Python’s pivotal moments and rise alongside the internet, the increased adoption from transitions like Python 2 to Python 3, and the significant role Python plays in academia and data science today.
Episode notes:
JetBrains is improving the developer experience through a rich suite of tools.
Reeling from the Epstein crisis, Donald Trump turns even more erratic and destructive—launching a grand jury investigation into the make-believe crimes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, threatening to seize control of the D.C. police, and sharing some eugenicist theories about who's suited for what kind of work. Jon and Dan share how they're feeling eight months into Trump 2.0, check in on MAGA's efforts to rig the congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms, and react to DHS reinstating its infamous family separation policy. Dan talks with epidemiologist Michael Osterholm about RFK Jr.'s decision to halt federal research into mRNA vaccines—and then confronts Jon about his ill-advised Twitter fight with Megyn Kelly.
In most of the world, inflation is no longer an exception, it is the rule. Official inflation targets of 4 percent, 5 percent, or even 6 percent per year have become normalized.