Massive bushfires have destroyed millions of acres in Australia over the past few months. RAND's Melissa Finucane, a community resilience expert who grew up in a remote region of New South Wales, has watched in anguish. Experiences from previous disasters have highlighted concrete steps that can help communities start to recover right away, she says. She also notes that rural Australians have "a special kind of resilience," with perspectives and wisdom from years of hard experience. But still, measuring the effects that fires and other disasters have on people's mental health, social, and economic needs remains a unique challenge.

This week, we discuss what to do about bias in algorithms; Russia's limits in the Middle East; learning from other countries' experiences with fentanyl; what protests could mean for democracy in the Middle East; how cities can help U.S. diplomacy; and helping U.S. Army special operations forces assess their missions. Earlier this month, a controversy about gender bias in the Apple Card algorithm lit up social media; an outraged tech executive posted about how his credit line was 20 times higher than his wife's, even though the two share all assets. According to RAND's Osonde Osoba, problems like this may become more common as artificial intelligence is used in more kinds of decisionmaking. It's not always possible to pinpoint how a complex algorithm led to a bad outcome, he says. But there are ways for companies to audit algorithms for sexist, racist, biased behaviors.