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RNZ News at 10pm, March 26

A wrap of the day's big stories

The book club for men

Lucas Oakeley is one of the organisers of something called the boys book club - which provides reading ideas and community for men in the UK. On his own social media, Lucas has gained a big following with content urging followers to stop doom scrolling and stop the brain rot. Outside of waxing lyrical about the joys of reading, he's also found time to write a book. Lucas tells Emile how he gets blokes enthused by books and what there is to gain from being well read.

The mysterious broadcast which started after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran

V32 is a station sending numbers in the Persian (aka Farsi) language which began broadcasting just hours after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran. So who is behind this message? How is it being transmitted? Where is it coming from? And what is its purpose? To help us unpack all of that, Emile is joined by Dr Tony Ingesson, an expert in counterintelligence, deception, and intelligence analysis at Lund University in Sweden.

Politics with Natalia Albert

Political scientist and regular Nights' contributor Natalia Albert looks at what Labour needs to do to win the upcoming general election.

Meta and Google found liable in social media addiction trial

Earlier this week a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375m US after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation. Then just today a Los Angeles jury found both Instagram and YouTube - owned by Google - were addictive and awarded a woman known as KGM - $6 million US for contributing to her mental health issues. So are these landmark decisions which will lead to further cases and eventually operational changes at these big tech companies, or does the size of the fines mean nothing to these multi-billion dollar corporations? And who actually gets this money? Alex Sims is Professor in the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland Business School. She joins Emile in the Auckland studio.