Children learn best when they’re taught in the language they use at home, research suggests. But there's the question about the power of world languages like English, Spanish, French or Arabic and how they could provide more opportunities to those who learn it, be it in education or a career.

You’ve been messaging us about what languages you learned in at school. Say hello to Brian in Kenya and Christian in the Philippines!

We then skip over to Nigeria, where our reporter Makuochi Okafor breaks down for us why the government is reversing its policy of teaching in other languages that aren't English. And our colleague Santiago tells us what went wrong when he was learning in English in his Colombian school.

Plus, we get the research from Justine Sass, from UNESCO - the UN agency for education, science and culture.

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GPS interference or GPS ‘jamming’ is getting more common. It’s when radio signals on the same frequencies as GPS satellites are used to overwhelm and block legitimate navigation signals. It’s led to pilots having to make emergency landings or switch to older non-GPS systems. The issue has become so prevalent that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) held a conference on it last year. Several European governments also believe it is intentional interference by Russia. BBC journalist Emilia Jansson explains GPS jamming in detail and how it is affecting the aviation industry.

Plus we hear from Ian Petchenik, director of communications at flight-tracking website Flightradar24 about what GPS interference looks like in real-time.

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COP30, the big meeting where countries discuss climate change annually, has finished. This year it was hosted in the city of Belem in Brazil, in the Amazon forest, which is directly affected by it. The role of the two biggest emitters has also made headlines. The United States hasn’t taken part in the talks and China has kept a very low profile.

This summit has ended without a clear commitment to phase out fossil fuels and that has angered protesters and activists, who participated in demonstrations showing their opposition to this plan. We wrap up the highlights of COP30 with our resident climate expert, Georgina Rannard and also hear from Natalia Tsuyama, a Brazilian climate activists who shares with us how her first COP has been.

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Scientists at Oxford University in the UK now think that kissing evolved more than 21 million years ago, and it wasn’t humans that started it.

As a behaviour, it has no obvious survival or reproductive benefits but it’s seen across the world, in humans and animals alike.

Victoria Gill, our Science Correspondent, tells us all about the research and what we know about if animals can be romantic like humans can.

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Miss Mexico Fatima Bosch has been crowned Miss Universe at a ceremony in Bangkok, marking the end of an exceptionally scandal-filled pageant season.

Early in November, Miss Mexico walked out of an event after she was told off by a Thai official and those who supported her were threatened with disqualification.

Then in the days before the final, some judges resigned, one over claims the competition is rigged - which is of course denied by the Miss Universe Organisation.

Social media has shown some of the drama behind the scenes… and at the centre of it is two of the men running the pageant. Nawat Itsaragrisil and Raúl Rocha Cantú have very different visions for the future of the pageant, which has been dealing with declining ratings and financial issues.

William Lee Adams, host of Marketplace Morning Report, takes us through what’s been going on behind the scenes, everything from finances to clashes over how it should be run.

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After months of mounting pressure, US lawmakers have just voted to release all of the so-called Epstein files. So documents from criminal investigations into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before his death could soon be made public. The vote was passed in the House of Representatives 427-1 and the Senate unanimously fast-tracked it without a formal vote. Now it’s down to US President Donald Trump, who’s already said he’ll release them.

This story has been around for a while, and it’s become a bit of a thorny issue for the US president. Trump used to socialise with Epstein, although there are no allegations of wrongdoing against him. During his re-election campaign, Trump called for the Epstein files to be released. Then, once in power, he changed his mind. But, after a rebellion from some in his own party, he switched sides again, calling for their release.

Following this vote, lots of people have questions: When will the Epstein files be released? What are the Epstein files? And who’s in them? In this episode we explain everything we know so far.

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In Sudan, where a civil war has been raging for over two years, millions of students have had their education disrupted. Over half of all schools are in conflict zones. Many schools are being used as shelters and many students have missed their exams. In some parts of the country there is no education at all.

Sudan is one of the biggest countries in Africa. It’s mostly Muslim and is also one of the poorest countries in the world. More than 150,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and around 12 million have had to flee their homes. The UN has called it the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

In this episode school and university students in Sudan tells us how their education has been affected by the war. And BBC journalist Maha El Gaml explains how some schools are now re-opening.

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Both Jamaica and the Philippines have been battered by tropical storms in the past month. Hurricane Melissa, a category five storm, was the worst storm to ever hit Jamaica and one of the strongest so far to affect the Caribbean, leaving at least 30 people dead. And super-typhoon Fungwong displaced more than a million people in the Philippines, only days after an earlier storm claimed hundreds of lives.

Neither region is a stranger to storms - the Philippines is hit with an average of 20 typhoons each year - but scientists say that climate change is making these storms more severe. So, how can island nations better protect themselves in the face of natural disasters?

Environment and climate journalist Jhesset Enano, who’s from the Philippines, tells us what it’s like to live in a region where tropical storms are common - and what’s being done to protect people. And Rosanne Martyr, a senior scientist from Climate Analytics, tells us about the natural defences small islands around the world are using to minimise the damage caused by storms.

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These days, buying concert tickets is a huge expense. If fans miss out, they can often find tickets on resale sites at hugely inflated prices. Sometimes people resell their tickets because they can’t go but there are also lots of “professional resellers” or ticket touts playing the system and making loads of profit. They buy tickets in bulk from the original seller platform, then mark them up to fans.

We hear from a Taylor Swift super fan, who has spent hundreds on resale tickets.

Now, a group of musicians including Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Sam Fender and Radiohead have sent a letter to the UK government, asking politicians to introduce a price cap on resale tickets to "stop touts from fleecing fans”. Ireland has already introduced a law to stop people selling tickets for more than their original price. Gary Devitt, who co-founded a platform in Ireland for fan-to-fan ticket resales called Toutless, gives us his view on what effect the law has had.

In this episode we hear some stories about buying resale tickets, and ask whether price caps can actually stop the touts. The BBC’s music correspondent Mark Savage also explains how ticket touts operate, and what artists could do themselves to reduce dodgy reselling.

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Prepping is a big deal in the US. There’s even a reality TV show called “Doomsday Preppers”. Prepping is when you stockpile loads of stuff - food, water, medicine - in case of a disaster, nuclear war or an unstoppable virus. Now billionaires are taking it to the next level, building underground mansions and self-sustaining bunkers that look like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a $100 million compound in Hawaii—complete with plans for a huge underground bunker, although he’s described it as a “little shelter, like a basement”. Peter Thiel, the CEO of Paypal tried to build one in New Zealand and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is rumoured to have underground security areas under every one of his homes.

In this episode BBC reporter Nathalia Jimenez joins us again to chat about what exactly these billionaires are building and what they’re so worried about. And we hear from Lauren, a prepper in the US, about why she thinks it’s important to get organised.

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