Oecusse, a rugged, remote district of Timor-Leste in south-east Asia, is usually a pretty sleepy place. But in August, Oecusse was rocked by a large police raid on a suspected scam centre, later linked by a UN report to organised crime networks running scamming operations across south-east Asia.

And then in early September, a Facebook post by one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations about a murky criminal underworld trying to get a foothold in the country.

In this episode, we speak to Michael Rose, an anthropologist and adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide who has lived and worked in Timor-Leste, about how Asia’s scamming gangs set their sights on Timor-Leste as their next frontier – and the movement to keep them out.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• Cambodia is vowing to ‘rid’ the country of scam compounds. But we’ve seen several still operating in the open
• Listen to episode 1 of Scam Factories '‘It seemed like a good job at first’: how people are trafficked, trapped and forced to scam in Southeast Asia'
• Scam Factories: read the series on The Conversation
• Organised crime may be infiltrating Timor-Leste’s government. One minister is sounding the alarm

Donald Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applications now given priority under a new refugee system.

This preoccupation by some Americans with white Afrikaners has a long history dating back to the publication of a large sociological study focusing on poor white Afrikaners in the 1930s.

In this episode, we speak to Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to trace the history of the links between white nationalists in the US and South Africa.

This episode was produced by Gemma Ware, Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• Trump and South Africa: what is white victimhood, and how is it linked to white supremacy?
• The South African apartheid movement’s close relationship with the American right – then and now
• Trump’s white genocide claims about South Africa have deep roots in American history
• Donald Trump, white victimhood and the South African far-right

Twice a year, 40 scientists gather together for five days to decide what strains of influenza to vaccinate against for the next flu season. It takes around six months to prepare the vaccine – which usually includes protection against three different strains of flu.

Europe and the US are heading into a flu season that some are warning could be particularly severe this winter. While even as summer approaches in Australia, the country is still registering high numbers of cases after a record-breaking flu season earlier in the year.

So how does the process of deciding on a flu vaccine each year actually work? And does what happens in the southern hemisphere influence the way the virus circulates in the northern hemisphere?

In this episode, we speak to Ian Barr, deputy director for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, based at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, part of the University of Melbourne. Barr is one of those 40 scientists who attend the meetings to decide what strains to focus vaccination efforts on.

This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany, Katie Flood and Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• First human bird-flu death from H5N5 – what you need to know
• Flu season has arrived – and so have updated flu vaccines
• Flu season has started early in the UK – here’s what might be going on