If the apocalypse is nigh, do you want a text alert?

Will a US-Iran deal happen?

There were reports on the weekend about an imminent deal to end the U.S. war with Iran — but those hopes were dimmed by fresh airstrikes Monday. What’s happening with talks between Washington and Tehran? And what does it mean for the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon? Guest host Catherine Cullen talks to Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent for The Economist; and Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C.

If the apocalypse is nigh, do you want a text alert?

Artist and coder Kyle McDonald has created an apocalypse early warning system. It tracks billionaires' jets to see if they are fleeing to their private doomsday bunkers. If the end really is upon us, it won't save you. (The super rich will probably be toast too.) But he hopes the social commentary it provides might make you feel less helpless and nudge you to do something about the mess he says we're in.

Why this Ebola outbreak could be "catastrophic"

The World Health Organization's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is outpacing response efforts to contain the virus. We speak with Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency physician and public health professor at Brown University, who contracted Ebola while treating patients in west Africa in 2014. He says the dismantling of US aid and CDC response teams have hampered efforts to detect and contain this latest outbreak.

Are there too many A+ students?

Harvard University recently capped the number of As received by undergraduates in an effort to curb grade inflation. In Canada university admission averages have been climbing for years. There's been a surge in A+ high school students. Do grades still reflect merit? We hear from Christopher DeLuca, professor of educational assessment at Queen’s University, and Darja Barr, a senior instructor in mathematics at the University of Manitoba who has studied the connection between high school grades and achievement in first year university.

What we can learn from the resilience of trees

For the past four decades, world renowned biologist Nalini Nadkarni has risked her life studying trees. In 2015, she fell from a 50-foot bigleaf maple tree in the Olympic Peninsula. She tells The Current host Matt Galloway what her recovery from that catastrophic fall taught her about resilience and trees.