M. Gessen, an Opinion columnist, watched Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate with a sense of dread. In their mind, the question was not who would win the debate but, rather: How much did we lose? In this audio essay, Gessen argues that when we put Trump and his acolytes on the same platform as regular politicians and treat them equally, “that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our understanding of politics.”

Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.

Thomas Friedman, an Opinion columnist and Middle East correspondent, is keenly aware of the many red lines that have been crossed in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. He says, after Iran’s latest attack on Israel, anything is possible — from symbolic retaliation to the bombing of a nuclear facility. Hear why he believes that “this really is the most dangerous moment in the modern Middle East.”

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Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, was indicted last week for soliciting foreign funds for his campaign and for personal use. Casey Michel, director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, argues that to prevent the further degradation of our democracy, officials need to be more aggressive about enforcing existing foreign interference laws.

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Listen to Times Opinion Editor Kathleen Kingsbury make the case for Kamala Harris.

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Jesse Wegman, a member of the Times editorial board, has argued that to make the American election process more straightforward and just, the United States should elect its president based on the outcome of the popular vote rather than the Electoral College. But in this episode of “The Opinions” he goes a step further, arguing that the Electoral College renders elections more vulnerable to legal manipulation for political ends.

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Flash floods plagued Utah and much of the Colorado Plateau this summer. Climate change has made them more frequent and more intense. In this audio essay, Terry Tempest Williams, a writer and conservationist, describes the terrible beauty of witnessing one such flood alone in her home.

In this episode, the columnist Nicholas Kristof argues that Democrats should focus their criticism on Donald Trump instead of Trump voters.

Recently, Republicans have taken to accusing Kamala Harris of using fake accents while on the campaign trail. In this episode of “The Opinions,” John McWhorter, an Opinion writer and linguist, argues the vice president is simply revealing a piece of herself by slipping into “Black English,” a form of code switching that is actually quite presidential.

Questions? Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.