The Week Unwrapped: Chinese chips, the Pope in Africa and podcasting

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Rory Reid, Mariana Vieira and Suchandrika Chakrabarti.

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In this week’s episode, we discuss:

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Microchip wars

As China becomes more politically isolated, the rest of the world is scrambling to accelerate its capacity to build microchips – and to keep the most advanced chip technology out of the Chinese government’s hands. While China’s factories have successfully replicated many forms of microprocessor, the most powerful models – used in military and intelligence-gathering systems – are still beyond their ability. The US is leading the diplomatic campaign to keep it that way.

The Pope in South Sudan

On his way back from a visit to South Sudan on Sunday, Pope Francis called on Christian churches to welcome gay people into their congregations and criticised countries, including South Sudan, which criminalise homosexuality. He was flanked by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Iain Greenshields, the Presbyterian moderator of the Church of Scotland. What does this apparent outbreak of progressive unity mean for the three churches – and for gay Christians more broadly.

A pivot-point for podcasts

News that the number of new podcasts fell by 80% last year led to claims that the medium has gone from the next big thing to yesterday’s news. Even so, more than 200,000 new shows made their debut last year. Is that too few, too many, or just the right number? And amid such an avalanche of audio content, how are we meant to find the ones we like?