The 52-episode Christian podcast was announced with a number of actors involved yet many claim they had no idea about it
The Fox News announcement of a new podcast series on Jesus Christ has turned into a bizarre holiday tale in Hollywood, as several actors attached to massive, 52-episode project claim their recordings date back 15 years and are being released without their prior knowledge.
The new audiobook titled The Life of Jesus Christ Podcast, announced on Wednesday as part of a splashy rollout for the network’s new Christian vertical called Fox Faith, purports to guide listeners “through the life, teachings, and miracles of Jesus Christ”, with each episode introduced by Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt.
Coach’s assistant in tough time at Feyenoord sees parallels with issues his former boss needs to deal with at Anfield
Just over five weeks after Arne Slot’s Feyenoord had lost a tight Conference League final by a goal to Roma in 2022, they suffered a 7-0 home defeat by Copenhagen in their first pre-season friendly. Some of the Dutch club’s internationals were on holiday, seven of their starters from the final would leave that summer and Copenhagen were well ahead in preparations, but even so, the scoreline was bruising. It felt as if Slot had to start all over again.
“I can remember it like yesterday,” says Marino Pusic, Slot’s assistant at Feyenoord and earlier at AZ. “The score could have been even higher – that says enough.” Copenhagen’s then coach, Jess Thorup, described it as more akin to “a training session than an actual friendly match”. Two weeks later a stronger Feyenoord side lost 4-0 to the Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise. Then came home defeats by Lyon and Osasuna.
As most government business halted during the shutdown, immigration agents continued their raids
US immigration officials arrested, detained and deported tens of thousands of people in operations nationwide during the federal government shutdown, new data reveals.
The arrests have led to a marked increase in the number of people held in immigration jails, with more than 65,000 currently detained nationwide – the highest number of people in immigration detention ever.
Officials say the move is ‘long overdue’ and meant to close decades of safety gaps in vehicle crash testing
The transportation department has unveiled a first crash test dummy in the US modeled specifically on female anatomy, a move officials say is meant to close decades of safety gaps in vehicle testing.
Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, unveiled the THOR-05F, an advanced female design for a crash-test dummy with upgraded technical specifications. According to the transportation department, the dummy will be incorporated into federal vehicle crash testing once a final rule is published.
Shumeet Banerji was away during crucial discussions that led to resignation of director general and BBC News chief
A member of the BBC’s board has resigned after saying he was cut out of the discussions that led to the shock resignation of its director general, Tim Davie.
Motorist told dispatcher ‘you may not believe me’ and said windshield was shattered while driving on North Carolina highway
A motorist in western North Carolina escaped injury when the carcass of a cat crashed into the passenger side of her front windshield along a highway near the Great Smoky Mountains national park.
In a call to 911, the unidentified driver on US Route 74 in Swain county, near Bryson City, told a dispatcher that a bald eagle dropped the cat. Bryson City is about 65 miles south-west of Asheville.
Climate crisis talks look likely to stretch well into the weekend in Brazil, with countries still far apart on the crucial issues of phasing out fossil fuels and cutting carbon.
The Cop30 president, André Corrêa do Lago, urged ministers and high-ranking officials from more than 190 countries to find common ground: “We need to preserve this regime [of the Paris climate agreement] with the spirit of cooperation, not in the spirit of who is going to win or is willing to lose’” he said. “Because we know if we don’t strengthen this, everyone will lose.”
A fire at Cop30 in Brazil, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, Russian missiles hit Ukraine and a giraffe on the move in Kenya: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
US president demands that Kyiv accepts plan that would mean giving up territory to Russia
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine faces one of the most difficult moments in its history, after Donald Trump demanded Kyiv accepts within days a US-backed “peace plan” that would force it to give up territory to Russia and make other painful concessions.
Trump confirmed on Friday morning that next Thursday – Thanksgiving in the US – would be an “acceptable” deadline for Zelenskyy to sign the deal, which European and Ukrainian officials have said amounts to a “capitulation”.
The 23-year-old ‘Queen of Tejano music’ was murdered just as her music was set to cross over and revealing new film Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy finds new ways to celebrate her
The tragic circumstances surrounding Selena Quintanilla’s death are well documented. In 1995, while on the verge of US pop crossover success, the 23-year-old Queen of Tejano Music was murdered by one of her employees, Yolanda Saldívar.
Selena’s life story has already been told in multiple ways, including through a movie, a musical and a podcast series. However, the touching Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy is the most empathetic and personal look at her life and career to date. Working alongside Selena’s family, who generously opened their archive of rare photos and home videos and sat for extensive interviews, director Isabel Castro uses intimate recollections and vivid primary sources to trace the artist’s ascent.
The wider TV and film industries have a long way to go in including disabled actors and creators, and leaving stereotypes behind
While the entertainment industry has been at pains to address issues of diversity in race, gender and sexuality, disability remains shockingly underrepresented. It’s not just that disabled actors are discounted for many roles. As actors and activists have pointed out, “blacking up” might have become taboo, but “cripping up” is still a shoo-in for awards. In almost 100 years, only three disabled actors have won an Oscar, compared to 25 able-bodied actors who have won for playing disabled characters.
The arrival this weekend of Wicked: For Good, the second part of a prequel story to The Wizard of Oz, has put the importance of authentic casting in the spotlight once more. The story of green-skinned witch Elphaba, and the prejudice she faces, Wicked is a celebration of difference. Yet since the hit musical opened in 2003, only able-bodied actors had played the part of Nessarose, Elphaba’s disabled sister. Last year, Marissa Bode became the first wheelchair-using actor to take the role, in part one of the film adaptation. The child Nessa is also playedby a wheelchair user. The movies give the character greater agency and complexity, amending a scene that suggested she needs to be “fixed”.
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Party’s former leader in Wales admitted taking payments to make statements in favour of Russia
Nigel Farage is facing calls to investigate and root out links between Reform UK and Russia after one of his party’s former senior politicians was jailed for 10 years for accepting bribes from a pro-Kremlin agent.
Keir Starmer said Farage had questions to answer about how this happened in his party. Nathan Gill, a former leader of Reform UK in Wales, admitted taking payments to make statements in favour of Russia.
To prevent a future pandemic we’d need agile leadership, smart decision-making, humility and trustworthiness. How does one build those into a political system?
It feels as though a collective amnesia has set in around Covid-19. We all just want to move forward and pretend it didn’t happen. But, as the saying goes, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
On 20 April 2020 I tweeted, “At what point will the British public realise what has happened over the past 9 weeks?” On Thursday, the Covid inquiry published its module 2 report on the political response to the pandemic. The answer finally to my tweet, more than five years later.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
Fit Forever: Wellness for midlife and beyond
On Wednesday 28 January 2026, join Annie Kelly, Devi Sridhar, Joel Snape and Mariella Frostrup, as they discuss how to enjoy longer and healthier lives, with expert advice and practical tips.
Book tickets here or at guardian.live
As little as a decade ago it would have been unthinkable that an American institution such as Disney would have chosen to hitch its wagon to F1
The remarkable nature of the transformation in Formula One’s fortunes in the United States could not have been better illustrated than by the incongruous sight of Mickey Mouse and an assortment of his Disney pals leading a gang of enthusiastic fans on a walk down the pit lane at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
F1 successfully hosting a race in Sin City and the US now boasting three sellout meetings is testament to the sport’s burgeoning prosperity. For all of the somewhat surreal edge of seeing Donald Duck and Goofy outside garages, the fact Disney has chosen F1 as a partner is indicative of the sea change the sport has brought about in a market it has long coveted.
The European Union has imposed sanctions against Russian prison officials responsible for the death of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna.
Roshchyna was reporting on Russia’s systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing.
By the time Mark Wood replaced Jofra Archer the only thing Steve Smith seemed to know for certain was that he wanted to be at the non-striker’s end
After freewheeling at increasing pace for 16 giddy months, the Ashes hypemobile had to run out of road. But instead of letting it come to a juddering halt, the 22 players somehow managed to conjure a fresh acceleration.
It is implausible for something as anticipated as this not to produce disappointment, as anyone who follows England knows far too well. Those memories will have flooded miserably back when Zak Crawley nicked the sixth ball of the day to slip. His wicket marked the start of not only the sudden whoosh of optimism leaking from the English balloon, but of a day of 19 wickets, bowling of impeccable quality (with exceptions) and absurd entertainment.
Robert Garcia, the ranking member on the House oversight committee, has sent a letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, urging the justice department to release the complete trove of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, despite the newly launched investigation into several Democrats’ ties to the late sex offender.
“There is already a concern President Trump will attempt, on dubious legal grounds, to exploit a provision which allows DoJ to withhold information relevant to ongoing investigations,” Garcia wrote.
Record scorer for Norway’s age-group sides discusses his World Cup hope, being frozen out at 15 and fake tickets heartbreak at Anfield
Liverpool against Aston Villa on 18 January 2014. It was impossible to measure the excitement in a seven-year-old from Norway making his first pilgrimage to Anfield. Inside was the promise of watching his favourite player, Daniel Sturridge, and the rest of a freewheeling side throwing everything at a title push. But as Sindre Walle Egeli and his family reached the turnstiles, the cruelest of realities dawned.
“It’s not a good memory,” Walle Egeli says. “We showed up, ready to go, and it turned out we’d got fake tickets. I don’t know what happened, maybe my parents bought from some shady people. It was heartbreaking.”
The autumn budget will mop up some damage, but the true source of the economic crisis is clear. The government should now fix it – don’t hold your breath
Imagine a family stuck in a house that constantly floods. The carpets are soaked, the walls damp. It’s always cold, no matter how much they turn up the heating.
The family try everything. They promise to replace the sodden carpets and find new, innovative ways to warm the house. Someone with a laptop wonders if AI might be the answer. But no one ever looks upwards and says: maybe we should just repair the giant hole in the roof.
In this week’s newsletter: When the video-sharing site launched in 2005, there were fears it would replace terrestrial television. It didn’t just replace it – it invented entirely new forms of content. ASMR, anyone?
Barely a month goes by without more news of streaming sites overtaking traditional, terrestrial TV. Predominant among those sits YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion monthly viewers. For people my age – a sprightly 28 – and younger, YouTube is less of an app or website than our answer to radio: the ever-present background hum of modern life. While my mum might leave Radio 4 wittering or BBC News flickering in the corner as she potters about the house, I’ve got a video essay about Japan’s unique approach to urban planning playing on my phone. That’s not to say I never watch more traditional TV (although 99% of the time I’m accessing it through some other kind of subscription streaming app), but when I get home after a long day and the thought of ploughing through another hour of grim prestige fare feels too demanding, I’m probably watching YouTube. Which means it’s very unlikely that I’m watching the same thing as you.
When Google paid $1.65bn for the platform in 2006, (just 18 months after it launched) the price seemed astronomical. Critics questioned whether that valuation could be justified for any video platform. The logic was simple – unless YouTube could replace television, it would never be worth it. Nearly two decades on, that framing undersells what actually happened. YouTube didn’t just replace television – it invented entirely new forms of content: vodcasts, vlogs, video essays, reaction videos, ASMR and its heinous cousin mukbang. The platform absorbed new trends and formats at lightning speed, building what became an alternative “online mainstream”. Before podcasters, TikTokers, Substackers and even influencers, there were YouTubers.
The holidays are around the corner. As we get ready to mix, mingle and carouse, I think it’s important to set the record straight on something: small talk is great!
People love to complain about small talk. On Reddit, people say it’s “painful”, “dishonest” and “a chore”. Some of my own friends have called it “boring” and “exhausting”. A 2016 Wired article titled “Small talk should be banned” argued that idle chit-chat “does not build relationships and does not make us happier”, but persists because “we actively seek the lowest common denominator”. Instead, the authors suggest deeper conversation topics, such as: “What is your relationship with God?” or What is something you fear in life?”
Numbers taking languages at A-level and beyond has been falling for decades, although Duolingo says young people are using its app more than their elders
Universities are blaming a “societal shift” for the axing of dozens of foreign language degrees and even entire departments, citing a lack of demand among students – but can years of study be easily replaced by AI or online translation tools?
Not so, according to Michael Lynas, the UK country director for the Duolingo language app, who argues there is no good substitute for the hard graft of learning a language as a way of seeing another country’s culture from the inside.
Connexion
