The value of community and sustainability in full view at UserR 2026, a new tool ready to equip reproducibility and more for command-line utilities built with R, and the conclusion to LLM-prompting black magic that draws upon the awesome glue package. 

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Colin Fay - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @colinfay.bsky.social (Bluesky) & [@_ColinFay]](https://twitter.com/_ColinFay) (X/Twitter)
• What Makes R Strong: Reflections from useR! 2026
• ir 0.1.0: self-describing R scripts and Quarto documents
• Building our own glue with R
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W31

Supplement Resources

• Matrix operators in R https://019b2dbc-0ac6-3185-aa9f-0bea50e3da6d.share.connect.posit.cloud/matrix-operators.html
• {golem} 1.0.0 is here https://golemverse.org/news/golem-1.0.0-release-on-cran/
• Package Tools with ir https://r-lib.github.io/ir/tools.html

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 media
  • Eric 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

• Snow Cone Heaven - Ice Climber - Mazedude - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01176
• Salut Voisin! - Final Fantasy IV - Colorado Weeks, Aeroprism - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04553

The first wave of 2026 R Consortium technical grants has arrived, how the new ggchord2 can round out your next process visualizations, and a clever take on supplementing your prompts with R objects. 


Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) & @theRcast (X/Twitter)
• R Consortium Awards First Round of 2026 Technical Grants
• Chord diagrams in R with ggchord2
• R Blackmagic for LLM Prompting
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W30

Supplement Resources

• igvShiny demo app https://gladkia-igvshiny-demo.share.connect.posit.cloud/
• ggchord2: Chord diagrams with ggplot2 https://nrennie.gitlab.io/ggchord2/
• Generic Functions: The Underrated R Technique Fixing Your Worst Problems https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p00um9ezh74

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 media
  • Eric 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

• The Unnamed Frontier - Metroid II: Return of Samus - Pyro Paper Planes, Viking Guitar - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02892
• Super Buck II - Super Mario Brothers 2 - Estradasphere - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00577

An exciting new way to search and discover R packages wrapping novel technology, how the new checktor package finds the key issues standard checks will miss, and yes, you can play Doom in R (what?)

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Ryo Nakagawara - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rbyryo.bsky.social (Bluesky) & @R_by_Ryo) (X/Twitter)
• Searching the R Ecosystem by Function, Not Package Name
• The Check Passed. The Reviewer Didn’t.
• {rdoom} is a playable version of Doom for R.
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W29

Supplement Resources

• The Warehouse https://rwarehouse.netlify.app/
• Warehouse GitHub repository https://github.com/kylieainslie/warehouse
• checktor https://r-pkg.thecoatlessprofessor.com/checktor/
• tigerfb Interactive Framebuffer for R https://github.com/coolbutuseless/tigerfb

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 media
  • Eric 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

• On Wings of Steel - After Burner - Juan Medrano - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03405
• Black Genesis - Final Fantasy 6 - Brandon Strader, Rexy - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02796

A set of principles to enhance testing APIs created inside R, and the engine behind automatic reloading of rendered Shiny apps becomes available for new use cases.

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Jon Calder - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonmcalder (X/Twitter)
• Testing Your Plumber APIs from R
• watcher 0.2.0: filesystem watching for R, and the engine behind Shiny auto-reload
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W28

Supplement Resources

• {plumber2}: https://plumber2.posit.co/
• {httr2}: https://httr2.r-lib.org/index.html
• {mirai}: https://mirai.r-lib.org/index.html
• {nanonext}: https://nanonext.r-lib.org/index.html
• roxygen2 @exampleIF tag https://roxygen2.r-lib.org/articles/rd-functions.html#examples
• {watcher}: https://watcher.r-lib.org/
• fswatch https://emcrisostomo.github.io/fswatch/

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 media
  • Eric 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

• Relm's Weepy Loop - Final Fantasy 6 - MkVaff - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00178

The R Core team receives a prestigious award in the world of Statistics, a month-long recognition of the rOpenSci package maintainers, and a collection of helpful tips for obtaining robust R code from AI agents. 

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) & @theRcast (X/Twitter)
• 2026 Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics Awarded to R Core Team for Transforming Statistics Computing Worldwide
• Celebrating Our Maintainers during Maintainers Month
• 10 tips for getting better R code from your AI coding agent
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W26

Supplement Resources

• The Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics 2026 https://www.rousseeuwprize.org/2026
• {btw} A complete toolkit for connecting R and LLMs https://posit-dev.github.io/btw/

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 media
  • Eric 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

• Super Buck II - Super Mario Brothers 2 - Estradasphere - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00577
• Escape Route - Cave Story - Corran - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01513

The evolution of Posit's data science agents, robust approaches to unnamed parameters in R functions, and the power of math and visualization collide in an unexpected way.

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Sam Parmar - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @parmsam_ (X/Twitter)
• A brief and biased history of Posit data science agents
• Three small dots for more readable code
• Little useless-useful R functions – Ulam Prime Spiral
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W25

Supplement Resources

• Ulam Spiral Animation Function https://github.com/tomaztk/Useless_R_functions/blob/main/functions/ulam_spiral_animation.R
• Eric's new Quarto Terminal Theme https://github.com/rpodcast/quarto-revealjs-terminal

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 media
  • Eric 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

• Suco de Melancia - Final Fantasy 7 - Red Tailed Fox - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01671
• The Quick and the Blue - Mega Man 2 - The Megas - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02090

A friendly reminder on checking customization when upgrading R, how refactoring may not be so tedious when using the Jarl utility, and honest takes on various code smells you can prevent in your next testing suite. 
Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Batool Almarzouq - @batoolmm.bsky.social (Bluesky) & @batool664 (X/Twitter)
• The Lurking Dangers of the R Version Update
• Refactoring with Jarl: a coffee chat
• 11 Test Smells That Make Your Tests Lie to You
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W24

Supplement Resources

• {renv} - Project environments in R https://rstudio.github.io/renv/index.html
• rig - The R installation manager https://github.com/r-lib/rig

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 media
  • Eric 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

• Vamo alla Django - Final Fantasy 9 - AndyP, Dan Bryant, Fishy - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03579
• Gurgling Desert Pond - Final Fantasy 1 - blackguitar - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02555

R is capable of many analyes in the world of data science, but can it build a computer? Also a massive usability feature landing in the latest bslib to power up your cards, and optimizing memory usage with the latest rleases of mirai and mori. 

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Jonathan Kitt - @jonathankitt.bsky.social (Bluesky)
• Building a Computer in R
• Introducing Toolbars: Supercharge your Cards and Inputs
• A memory model for production async R: mirai 2.7.0 and mori 0.2.0
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W23

Supplement Resources

• Mike's blog post: Reflections on AI and Security https://blog.ketchbrookanalytics.com/posts/2026-05-28-ai-security/ai-security.html

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 media
  • Eric 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

• The Unnamed Frontier - Metroid II Return of Samus - Pyro Paper Planes, Viking Guitar - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02892
• Brushwork - Mario Paint - Fratto, Wiesty, The OC Jazz Collective - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04389

The power of choice is in full effect! How you can leverage GitLab to publish your next Quarto document online, how to bring key R functional paradigms to a Python session, and adding a larger safety net with your unit tests with {mutagen} 0.2.0. 

Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Jon Carroll - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonocarroll.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy (Bluesky) & @carroll_jono (X/Twitter)
• Deploying Quarto documents with GitLab
• Functions over Idioms - Writing R in Python with rfuns
• muttest 0.2.0: More Mutators, Better Reporting, and Parallel Execution
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W22

Supplement Resources

• Data Science at the Command Line https://datascienceatthecommandline.com/
• DevOps for Data Science https://do4ds.com/
• {pak} System Requirements https://pak.r-lib.org/reference/sysreqs.html

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 media
  • Eric 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
 

• Wrestling with Double Bass - Street Fighter II - Malcos - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01270
• A Simple Flip can Change Fate - Final Fantasy VI - Level 99 - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02692

Applying novel statistical and visualization techniques to predict war duration, why there is more than meets the statistical eye behind a classical model benchmarking statistic, and celebrating a major milestone for pioneers in open science with R. 
Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Colin Fay - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @colinfay.bsky.social (Bluesky) & [@_ColinFay]](https://twitter.com/_ColinFay) (X/Twitter)
• Durations of wars by @ellis2013nz
• Learning Data Science: Why a High R^2 Can Be Misleading
• 15 Years of rOpenSci, and We're Just Getting Started
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W21

Supplement Resources

• Correlates of war data set: https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/cow-war/
• tidymodels https://www.tidymodels.org/
• Donation to rOpenSci https://ropensci.org/donate/
• Upcoming rOpenSci events https://ropensci.org/events/
• Software peer review https://ropensci.org/software-review/
• R Pharma Hangouts recordings https://rinpharma.com/docs/hangout/recordings

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 media
  • Eric 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

• The Quick and the Blue - Mega Man 2 - The Megas - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02090
• Serenity & Grace - Chrono Cross - timaeus222 - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04143

A massive milestone for the language that eventually led to the R we know and love, plus a comprehensive look at two popular workflow frameworks across the R and Python ecosystems.
 
Episode Links 

• This week's curator: Jon Calder - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonmcalder (X/Twitter)
• S at 50
• Comparing R's {targets} and dbt for Data Engineering
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2026-W20

Supplement Resources

• Fifty years of S poster https://blog.r-project.org/post/S-at-50/s_at_50_poster.jpg
• Quarto 2: Parsing and Source Maps https://opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-05-07_quarto-2-parsing/
• Beyond Feasibility: Learning from FDA’s Response to WebAssembly and Container-Based Submissions https://r-consortium.org/posts/beyond-feasibility-learning-from-fdas-response-to-webassembly-and-container-based-submissions/

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 media
  • Eric 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

• J-Type - Tetris - Nostalvania - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04401