R Weekly Highlights

A glimpse into the R Consortium Submissions Working Group's recent successes and future work, and a new way to view those nested lists from a familiar face making his return to blogging!

Episode Links
This week's curator: Batool Almarzouq - @batoolmm.bsky.social (Bluesky) & @batool664 (X/Twitter)
Submissions Working Group: 2026 Plans and 2025 Success
Viewing Nested Lists with xfun::tabset()
Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W08
Supplement Resources
R Consortium Submissions Pilot 4 https://rpodcast.quarto.pub/submissions-wg-pilot-4/
R-Podcast Episode 18 (Yihui Xie Returns) https://r-podcast.org/024-rstudioconf-yihui-xie/
litedown: R Markdown Reimagined https://yihui.org/litedown

Supporting the show
Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
Get in touch with us on social mediaEric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter)

Music credits powered by OCRemix
A Toadstool Mix - Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Reuben Spiers, Gamer of the Winds - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04064

A prominent leader at the intersection of data science and data engineering across multiple languages shares her insights, how a recent Git workshop tailored for data science de-mystifies common pitfalls, and for the second straight episode a new transpiler bringing dplyr syntax to databases (quite literally).
Episode Links
This week's curator: Jon Carroll - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonocarroll.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy (Bluesky) & @carroll_jono (X/Twitter)
The Test Set Pod - Column selectors, data quality, and learning in public (Episode link)
Git & GitHub: Practical Version Control for Data Work
dplyr comes to duckdb
Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W06

Supplement Resources

Risk Conference 2026 Agenda (Mike is presenting!) https://rconsortium.github.io/Risk_website/program.html
libdplyr https://github.com/mrchypark/libdplyr

Supporting the show

Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
Get in touch with us on social mediaEric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter)

Music credits powered by OCRemix

Lost Woods Inglewood - Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - BenCousins - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00853
Aerobotics - Mega Man 8 - Just Coffee - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03323

The way LLMs can be a little stubborn when interpreting data visualizations, bringing new meaning to digging for your data and learning along the way, and the latest addition to the futureverse that seems too good to be true, but it is real! Plus an amazing Shiny app tailored made for this very podcast.

Episode Links
This week's curator: Jonathan Kitt - @jonathankitt.bsky.social (Bluesky)
LLMs interpret plots well, until expectations interfere
Students, software, and soil flux
futurize: Parallelize Common Functions via a "Magic" Touch
Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W05

Supplement Resources

{bluffbench} https://simonpcouch.github.io/bluffbench/
{neonSoilFlux}: An R package for continuous sensor-based estimation of soil CO2 fluxes https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-210x.70216
Building an R Weekly Highlights Podcast Assistant! https://jokasan.github.io/r-weekly_chatbot/

Supporting the show
Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
Get in touch with us on social mediaEric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter)

Music credits powered by OCRemix
Sunken Secrets - Super Mario 64 - Fishy - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02909
Serenity & Grace - Chrono Cross -timaeus222 - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04143

The inside story of how Claude Code with the proper scope provided a massive boost to drafting hundreds of pull requests, and debunking the myth on settling for compromises when prioritizing accessibility principles as demonstrated by a prominent leader in the visualization space. Plus we address candid feedback on last week's discussion on the tinyshinyserver package.

Episode Links
This week's curator: Jon Calder - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonmcalder (X/Twitter)
Semi-automating 200 Pull Requests with Claude Code
How to create a more accessible line chart
Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W04

Supplement Resources

Risk Conference hosted by the R Consortium (February 18-19, 2026) https://rconsortium.github.io/Risk_website/

Supporting the show

Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
Get in touch with us on social mediaEric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter)

Music credits powered by OCRemix
Divinity - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Nostalvania - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03442

It's a new year of R Weekly Highlights! In this episode we learn of the positive intellectual diversity impacting R and Python communities, a great starting point to create your first RAG-powered knowledge store, and a new package enters the Shiny ecosystem that is certainly not tiny in its ambitions.

Episode Links
This week's curator: Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) & @theRcast (X/Twitter)
R + Python: From polyglot to pluralism: A very targeted recap on posit::conf(2025) and a broader reflection on how the best design and devtools ideas from R and python have influenced each others' stacks for the better
Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Setting up a Knowledge Store in R
{tinyshinyserver} 0.1.0: Tiny 'shiny' Server - Lightweight Multi-App 'shiny' Proxy
Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W03

Supplement Resources
tinyshinyserver GitHub repository: https://github.com/lab1702/tinyshinyserver
Yann Tourman's R Weekly episode length analysis https://bsky.app/profile/yannco.bsky.social/post/3mbarm75kik2j

Supporting the show
Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
Get in touch with us on social mediaEric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter)

Music credits powered by OCRemix
We're the Fugawe Forest - Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - XPRTNovice feat. Weisty - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03597
Zelda's Graceful Nightmare - 25YEARLEGEND: A Legend of Zelda Indie Game Composer Tribute - Matheus Manente - https://zelda25.ocremix.org/index.html