Swiss Alps celebration turns tragic. Throngs pack a frozen Times Square. An unhappy new year for Obamacare. CBS News Correspondent Peter King has those stories and more on the World News Roundup podcast.
Harriett Gilbert welcomes bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni into the World Book Club studio to discuss her internationally acclaimed novel, The Palace of Illusions.
A luminous reimagining of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharat, The Palace of Illusions traces the life of Princess Panchaali—better known as Draupadi—from her miraculous birth in fire to her destiny as the wife of five brothers cheated of their father’s kingdom. Swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, Panchaali stands beside them through years of exile and the terrible civil war that engulfs the kings of India. Along the way, she navigates fierce rivalries, a complex friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, and a forbidden attraction to her husbands’ most dangerous enemy.
With its vivid imagery, lyrical prose and unforgettable characters, Divakaruni’s novel brings to life a world of warriors, gods, and fate, seen through the eyes of a fiery woman determined to shape her own destiny.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni answers readers’ questions about reclaiming women’s voices from myth and legend, the different kinds of love - marital, forbidden and divine, and how mythology can be used to re-write expectations for how people should live their lives even in the modern day.
From the BBC World Service: The past 12 months have brought lots of turbulence to global economies, from fast-changing U.S. tariff policies to the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence. As we ring in the new year, what might 2026 hold? Plus, billions of dollars have poured into AI development, but there are increasing concerns about a market bubble. What are the chances it will burst?
Could human dreams really, in some way, predict the future? At first, it sounds like the stuff of science fiction... but the real-life answer may not be as clear-cut as the plot of a sci-fi blockbuster. Instead, it turns out that probability, bias and, perhaps, the bleeding edge of physics may all play a role in the strange phenomenon known as precognitive dreams. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they search for a scientific take on precognition in the second part of this two-part series.
When it comes to homebuilding, Ronda Conger, vice president of CBH Homes, wants to be like the Savannah Bananas.
“We are out there trying to do things so differently,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons we embraced AI so quickly.”
But there are growing fears that artificial intelligence will begin to replace human employees. For Conger’s team, the bots are doing the grunt work, so the real humans can shine.
Health insurance costs jump for millions after pandemic-era Affordable Care Act subsidies expired overnight. The Trump administration freezes child care funding nationwide after targeting Minnesota over unproven fraud claims tied to Somali-run day care centers. And New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is sworn in at midnight as he prepares to take office.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Carrie Feibel, Cheryl Corley, Andrea De Leon, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Our deputy Executive Producer is Kelley Dickens.
(0:00) Introduction (02:33) Healthcare Subsidies Expire (05:53) Trump and Minnesota (10:06) Mamdani Takes Office in NYC
As 2025 comes to a close, we're revisiting interviews with this year's nominees and winners of some of the biggest prizes in literature. Tessa Hulls’ grandmother, Sun Yi, was a dissident journalist in Shanghai who faced intense political persecution during the Chinese Communist Revolution. In today’s episode, Hulls tells Here & Now’s Scott Tong that her grandmother’s trauma often cast a shadow over their family – one she decided to finally face in her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. It’s a reexamining of Hulls’ matriarchal lineage, of Chinese history and of generational love and healing.
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2025 might not have been a great year —but the music sure was stellar.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.