On Thursday's Houston Matters: We talk with the Houston Chronicle's Jacob Carpenter about the recent firing of two charter school leaders for questionable spending of the district's funds.

Also this hour: An “Ike Dike” funding bill is close to approval in the Texas Legislature even as Houston and Harris County struck out in the latest round of flood mitigation and relief funding from the federal government. How frustrating is it to identify important flood mitigation projects and gain all the appropriate approvals only to find the money isn’t there? We ask Jim Blackburn,  co-director of Rice University's SSPEED Center.

Then, in this month's installment of our movie segment The Bigger Picture, with the release this week of the Disney film Cruella, we discuss great villains in cinematic history.

And we meet members of Riyaaz Qawwali, a local ensemble dedicated to Sufi devotional music from South Asia.