The Global Story

We are away for Christmas, so this is a repeat of a previous episode. AI companies are seeing a monumental surge in investment – but some experts are now warning of the risks of an economic bubble. Could AI be the biggest market bubble since the dot-com crash? Or is it a genuinely transformative technology that’s simply taking time to deliver? We speak to the BBC’s Evan Davis. Producers: Aron Keller and Xandra Ellin Executive Producer: James Shield Mix: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: Artificial Intelligence mobile apps. Hannibal Hanschke/EPA/Shutterstock

We are away for Christmas, so this is a repeat of a previous episode. In 1994, Ukraine surrendered the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal, inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union, in exchange for security assurances from the US, Russia, and the UK. Ukraine’s denuclearisation is often considered a huge success story in nuclear non-proliferation, but in retrospect, it may have paved the way for Putin's 2022 invasion. As talk of US-European security guarantees for Ukraine resurfaces in the context of tentative Russia-Ukraine peace talks, we speak with BBC Paris correspondent Andrew Harding about the history of the 1994 agreement, and consider whether Ukraine would ever again believe promises made to protect it. Producers: Sam Chantarasak and Xandra Ellin Executive producer: Annie Brown Mix: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: France's President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ludovic Marin/ Getty

We are away for Christmas, so this is a repeat of a previous episode. Apple is promising to make more products in the US, backed by a $600bn investment over the next four years. But after decades of relying on Chinese manufacturing that promise is going to be tough to keep. Today we’re joined by journalist and author Patrick McGee to discuss whether Apple can navigate the demands of Donald Trump’s America First agenda and disentangle itself from a made-in-China business model. Producers: Hannah Moore and Aron Keller Executive producers: James Shield and Annie Brown Mix: Nicky Edwards and Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: Apple CEO Tim Cook. Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters

We are away for Christmas, so this is a repeat of a previous episode. For much of the 21st century, our social lives have been shaped, at least in part, on the internet. But in an age of influencers, generative AI, complex algorithms, and politically entangled technocrats, some users say social media is growing less, well, social. So, is social media dead? Or is it just becoming something else? We speak with New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka about what happened to social networks, and what their transformation suggests about the future of media. Producers: Xandra Ellin and Aron Keller Executive Producer: James Shield Mix: Travis Evans Senior News Editor: China Collins Photo: Social media apps on a phone. Yui Mok/PA

We are away for Christmas, so this is a repeat of a previous episode. In September, President Trump and the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference in which they made extraordinary new claims about autism. They suggested a potential link between the use of Tylenol during pregnancy and the development of autism. They also advocated spacing out childhood vaccinations. The two men's interest in the link between vaccines and autism goes back decades but these claims did not originate in the US. They trace back to the UK in 1998, when disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield first published his now-debunked theory linking MMR vaccines to autism cases in children. The science journalist Adam Rutherford explains to the Global Story how the Wakefield vaccine conspiracy became the biggest medical disinformation disaster in recent history, and how these ideas found fertile ground in the Trump administration. Producers: Viv Jones, Valerio Esposito Executive producer: Annie Brown, James Shield Mix: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: President Trump & Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters