In the Loop with Sasha-Ann Simons - WBEZ Sing-A-Long And Pop Quiz

How many of this week’s top local headlines do you remember? We put our live studio audience in the hot seat for the high-stakes prize of some WBEZ swag. Plus: We’re dusting off our vocal pipes and learning to sing in harmony with Davin Youngs, the founder of Chicago Circle Singing. For a full archive of In the Loop interviews, head over to wbez.org/intheloop.

1A - The Outstanding Cases Against The Trump Administration

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s new term, he issued hundreds of executive actions and his administration implemented sweeping changes to the federal government.

Changes to federal grant funding, DEI policies, the federal workforce were all met with fierce resistance and legal challenges, totaling more than 350 lawsuits so far. Judges across the country are also mulling whether Trump’s attempt to change birthright citizenship and his deployment of ICE agents for mass deportations are legal.

The administration has spent a lot of time defending its policy actions in court. We get up to speed on their record over the past year.

How successful has the administration been in the courts? And what cases from 2025 remain up in the air?

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Inside Europe - Anatomy of a black-out: five days that rocked Berlin

How is Europe handling Trump's renewed threats against Greenland and who is behind Berlin's five-day power outage? Then: A preview of Oulu's 2026 Capital of Culture program, the work of a young Ukrainian and member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, a visit to the new Byron museum in Italy, and the strange case of the Greek monks illegally occupying a mountain monastery.

Village SquareCast - Flying Pig Academy: Bad Therapy OR why we really ought to think groupishly to address our political division

Introducing the newest thing in higher (and we really mean higher — like look UP) education: The Flying Pig Academy. A dream of The Village Square (with support from Florida Humanities) for many years, it's finally aloft. The division in American society is big and seems impossible at times to address.

The Flying Pig Academy is kind of an insider's how to.

This Flying Pig Episode: We live in a highly individualistic society, so maybe it's not a surprise that when we're trying to solve a big wicked problem like our deepening political division our approach is based on the individual. Most of us think that we need to wrestle with the problem of political polarization in our own hearts, or we need better skills for talking to people who don't look or think like us. Of course those things are partly true, but The Village Square has learned through two decades of building trust across divisions that human beings are very groupish and that the solution to polarization is at a group level, not at an individual one. Bonus: you get bigger results way more quickly that way. It SCALES, which we need to do more quickly if we're going to really tackle of societal polarization.

Mentioned: Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind

The second in the Flying Pig Academy series is an homage to our intellectual hero (and lucky for us, our friend and colleague) Dr. Jonathan Haidt who - literally - wrote the book for Pigs With Big Dreams.

Here are the rest of our Flying Pig episodes:

WSJ Minute Briefing - China Reviewing Meta’s Deal for AI Startup Manus

Plus: Minnesota officials say the FBI has shut them out of the investigation into the fatal shooting of a woman in her car by an ICE agent in Minneapolis yesterday. And the U.S. trade deficit shrank in October to its lowest level since 2009. Pierre Bienaimé hosts.


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Global News Podcast - Lebanon completes first phase of plan to disarm Hezbollah

The Lebanese military says it has completed the first phase of its plan to disarm Hezbollah, but Israel has warned far more needs to be done. The army in Lebanon says the south of the country is now free of non- state weapons. The area had long been dominated by Hezbollah. Also: President Trump has signed a memorandum ordering the withdrawal of the United States from sixty-six international organizations -- nearly half of them UN bodies. Cambodia says it has extradited a billionaire businessman from China, who is accused of masterminding a vast cryptocurrency scam. And human like robots - aptly named humanoids - take centre stage at the annual consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas.

The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk