75 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki what is the nuclear future of the world? Henry Sokolski says that ' the answer is unclear. Military advances in precision guidance and targeting are making city busting (the massive murder of innocents) far less attractive or necessary. Yet for relatively small, weak states that lack such non-nuclear options, acquiring and using the bomb may remain attractive no matter what advanced states might do'. He explains who has weapons, who wants them and why and suggests how we can move forward so that 'indiscriminate attacks like Hiroshima' can become 'an ever more distant memory'.

Then (at 15 mins) do the woke left and the alt-right have more in common than they might think? Zaid Jilani believes so. He argues that it is the 'same puritanical spirit that prevailed during the heyday of the Moral Majority, except that its been marshalled in service of a different faith'. He tells us about a new study that examines the 'link between political attitudes and the so-called three Dark Triad personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy'. The conclusions so far? 'Notwithstanding their diametrically opposed political postures, both hard Left and hard Right seem disproportionately populated by individuals who are impelled to control others behaviour, and draw attention to themselves'.

Also (at 25 mins) Amanda gets on her soapbox to rant about positive thought.

Then (at 27 mins) who should you believe? An expert or someone on twitter? The person who says they have all of the answers or the person who doesn't have the answer right now? Dr Andrew Little argues that 'the rise of social media means that experts willing to share their hard-won knowledge have never been more accessible to the public. So, one might think that communication between experts and decision-makers should be as good as, or better than, ever. But this is not the case'. So how do we block out the noise and how can we 'change the way that we relate to experts, not just listening to the loudest and most confident voices, but to those with a track record of only claiming as far as the evidence will take them, and a willingness to say I dont know'.

Finally (at 40 mins) how can we hear what's happening deep in a forest or in the middle of a wasteland? Adam Welz explains that 'a recent, steep drop in the price of recording equipment and the rapidly expanding capabilities of user-friendly artificial intelligence algorithms are heralding an era of big natural audio data. One key use of biological acoustic monitoring is tracking what is known as defaunation, the hard-to-detect decline of animals like birds and monkeys from habitat that appears intact for example, animals shot and trapped by poachers in an intact forest'. He tells us how it works and where it is and how it is' rapidly expanding scientists ability to understand ecosystems by listening to them'.

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Then and now - Counterpoint - ABC News