Pete Alonso’s hot bat making for legendary postseason

A Virginia family had an unexpected visitor come down their chimney this week.

The Atlanta Falcons are expected to release quarterback Kirk Cousins after just one season due to lackluster play, with rookie Michael Penix Jr. taking his place.

Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin sarcastically blasted the College Football Playoff -- just one game in -- after the Rebels failed to clinch a spot in the newly reformed postseason.

Florida running back Anthony Rubio, the son of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, scored his first collegiate touchdown in Friday's victory over Tulane in the Gasparilla Bowl.

Here's a look at the top five recipes Americans searched for on Google in 2024, with everything from muffins to mac and cheese to "dense bean salads."

Trump ally Elon Musk used his outsize influence on X to help kill a bipartisan funding proposal, spreading multiple false claims in the process.

The co-favorites to win the College Football national championship at DraftKings are also the largest favorites of any team in the opening round.

Director Robert Eggers' highly-anticipated horror film "Nosferatu" will hit theaters on Christmas Day. The acclaimed director sat down with CBS Saturday Morning to talk about bringing the classic vampire tale to a new audience.

The introduction of congestion pricing would be a blow to restaurateurs and others in the food industry, raising the cost of the goods they purchase and making New York City an even more expensive place.

A major winner in this year's committee assignment sweepstakes is Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who is joining the powerful budget committee.

In his new book, ‘Soldiers and Kings,’ Jason De Leon offers insights from the seven years in which he was embedded with migrant smugglers.

A list of the top LGBTQ romance novels, including books by Alexis Hall, Rebecca Fraimow and Kit Rocha.

“I’m like Shelley Winters in every film she’s ever been in.”

Derrick Henry has come back to earth after an Offensive Player of the Year-worthy first half. 

President Joe Biden agreed to provide $571.3 million in defense support for Taiwan, the White House said, following China's massing of naval forces around Taiwan last week.

Chicago-based chef Rick Bayless has spent decades traveling to Mexico, bringing the flavors and traditions back to the United States. He's written nine cookbooks and hosted a PBS cooking show, while his restaurants have earned culinary honors, including Michelin stars. Now, on a special holiday edition of the Dish, Bayless opens up about his annual tradition of spending Christmas in Mexico.

The Israeli military says a rocket fired from Yemen hit Tel Aviv, injuring 16. In Gaza, funerals for 19 people — 12 of them children — killed in Israeli strikes.

UN agencies are reportedly offering themselves as replacements to scandal hit UNRWA that's been riddled with accusations of terrorism since the Hamas terror massacre in southern Israel.

Pope Francis has told Vatican bureaucrats to stop speaking ill of one another, calling gossip "an evil that destroys social life."

The suspect, identified by local media as 50-year-old Taleb A., was arrested after plowing a black BMW into a Christmas market crowded with holiday shoppers in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least five people and wounding more than 200 others.

In 2024, more than 10,000 people died in traffic accidents in Brazil, according to the Ministry of Transportation.

The death toll in the attack on a busy Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg has risen to five, as police look for a possible motive.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has taken several professor and scholar roles at Georgetown University since 2023 but doesn't appear to have taught a single course since then.

Who's ready for a little Saturday afternoon NFL football?

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said he had gone for the controversial punt in the fourth quarter of Friday's loss to Notre Dame because "we were doing nothing on offense."

“It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations," Baldoni's lawyer said in response.

As a HUD official in the 1970s, he helped lay the groundwork for the housing choice voucher program, Section 8. He later lobbied for D.C. charter schools.

Inside Gaza, mourners held funerals for 19 people, 12 of them children, killed in Israeli strikes.

New Yorkers who normally nurse some serious “Christmas envy” are plotzing over the cultural conundrum they’ve dubbed “Chrismukkah,” a Judeo-Christian mashup for the ages.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.Small talk, in my experience, is one of those life skills that doesn’t get easier the more you practice. Even for me, a person who enjoys chatting with people I don’t know well, small-talk panic is always at risk of setting in: when I realize I’ve gotten their name or hometown wrong, for example, or that we’ve run out of things to say halfway through the bathroom line at the bar.My colleague Gilad Edelman has a helpful fix for such moments: Go ahead and talk about the weather. “We want to talk about the weather because it is on our minds, and it is on our minds because it matters,” he writes. “It determines how we dress, the plans we make, what we’ll cook for dinner, whether we catch that flight.” Ultimately, good small talk, as Gilad notes, gets people involved and animated. So when you’re stuck in a new group at a holiday party or don’t know what to say to your cousin’s new partner, you can always rely on a good long discussion about the odds the snow will stick this winter. Today’s newsletter rounds up some other wisdom from our writers on handling the strange human challenge of small talk.The Best Small-Talk TopicBy Gilad EdelmanGo ahead, talk about the weather.Read the article.How to Make Small TalkBy Julie Beck and Becca RashidHow do we overcome the awkwardness that keeps us from starting a conversation?Listen to the podcast episode.An Ode to Small TalkBy James ParkerHow about this weather?Read the article.Still Curious? How to end a conversation without making an excuse: It’s difficult to simultaneously do three things, Joe Pinsker wrote in 2021: end an interaction, be honest, and be considered polite. The surprising benefits of talking to strangers: Many of us have been raised to see strangers as dangerous and scary, Joe Keohane wrote in 2021. What would happen if we instead saw them as potential sources of comfort and belonging? Other Diversions The luxury makeover of the worst pastry on Earth A nonreligious holiday ritual The words that stop ChatGPT in its tracks

Night watchman Roland Borg is one of several fascinating people profiled in the new book "Custodians of Wonder."

It happens almost every holiday season. This culprit, lurking in workplaces everywhere, has a knack for sending employees into a fury of frustration.

Phony stickers offering deals and giveaways are popping across NYC and when scanned, lead to horrifying videos of injured and bloodied children and anti-Israel messaging.

A virtual private network can help ensure your information remains security and your privacy remains intact. Kurt the CyberGuy explains.

Isaac Klapper was 10 years old when he started having episodes of what doctors initially thought was a movement disorder.

Netflix’s Christmas movie “Hot Frosty,” starring Lacey Chabert and Dustin Milligan, is gloriously ridiculous — and it knows it.

Fruit and crime: What the Mafia has to do with Italy’s lemon crop, how Mexican cartels control avocados, and more.

Dune: Prophecy opens with a thesis statement. It comes as the Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen (played by Olivia Williams), a member of the powerful, quasi-religious order known as the Sisterhood, instructs a group of novices in the subtle art of Truthsaying, which is used to determine whether someone is being dishonest. “Humanity’s greatest weapon is the lie,” she tells them—both the justification for the lesson and an explanation of the ethos that the Dune universe’s rigid imperial society runs on. But the Sisters’ weapon isn’t just their ability to sniff out lies; it’s also their ability to tell them. Tula and her fellow Sisters are not simply reacting to the deceptive men in control of the empire, as portrayed in the Dune books. Instead, the women of Dune: Prophecy are the show’s heroes and its villains.Toying with the binary of “good” and “bad”—and who falls into which category—is a core interest of the Dune franchise. The novelist Frank Herbert’s (predominantly male) heroes are bound by virtue, but they’re also deeply flawed: Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the first Dune novel, is a deconstruction of the messianic figure, his seemingly divine traits the result of forces beyond his control. The reader is encouraged to root for Paul, but the story’s climax argues that the existence of an omnipotent despot spells bad news for a fragile interstellar empire.Dune: Prophecy relies on Frank Herbert’s antihero model in recounting the origins of the Sisterhood, a nunlike order of duplicitous superwomen eventually known as the Bene Gesserit. Prophecy is based on the prequel novel Sisterhood of Dune—written by Brian Herbert, Frank’s son, with the writer Kevin J. Anderson—which follows the high-ranking (and biologically related) Sisters Tula and Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) in their pursuit to grow their order. Their goal is to manipulate the noble houses into installing one of their members on the imperial throne, thus cementing the Sisterhood’s control over the known universe.[Read: A colossal blockbuster that justifies its scale]A more obvious interpretation of this story would perhaps have girlboss-ified these characters, painting them as an independent and influential group of women determined to save humanity from its darkest impulses. Instead, though Tula, Valya, and their co-conspirators see themselves as saviors, Prophecy ensures that the audience doesn’t. The show repeatedly reveals the women’s hypocrisy: They have no problem using the very lies they deem forbidden to everyone else, and they’ll go to extremes to protect their legacy.The series’ antagonistic view of the Sisterhood is an expansion of the order’s portrayal in Frank Herbert’s work. In the first book, the author reduces the Bene Gesserit to a cautionary tale of hubris: Paul thwarts their millennia-long efforts to influence the empire for their own gain. Dune: Prophecy deepens the audience’s understanding of why these women crave absolute power despite its dangers, and their despicable methods to attain it. In the Dune-iverse, your legacy is your destiny, but for the Sisters, destiny is just another tool at their disposal.Prophecy’s emphasis on its main characters’ inconsistent morals is a refreshing change from other female-led fantasy series of late. Recent shows have typically encouraged viewers to root for the women at their center: HBO’s House of the Dragon renders its central former friends turned sworn enemies as tragic, not malicious. The Wheel of Time’s sorceresses fight to save their world’s source of magic from the forces of darkness. A female Elf commander leads the battle for Middle-earth on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and it’s not even a real contest. When the conflict is heroes versus villains, it’s easy to know which side to stand on, and thus a little boring to engage with.[Read: Dune is epic, but that’s not why it’s great]The Sisterhood, by contrast, is sneaky and manipulative and amoral. These alienating qualities don’t hold Prophecy or its characters back; the Sisters’ moral turpitude drives both the empire and the intrigue forward. But what’s most compelling is how these women depend on, and often promote, the Dune universe’s strict, gendered structures. They arrange marriages, ensuring that noblewomen bear children that carry on humanity’s most coveted genes, and uphold the technologically advanced empire’s archaic system of lords and serfs. Where other series in its genre tend to showcase strong female characters breaking free of sexist restraints, Prophecy shows how its women leads use discrimination and subjugation to their advantage.Not all of this works. The show has already gotten its fair share of criticism for its use of certain source material (some Frank Herbert purists consider the Brian Herbert prequels noncanonical) and for its depiction of some parts of the lore. But its core themes—the corrupting allure of control, the dangers of putting the future in the hands of greedy autocrats—align closely with those of the original Dune novels. Like the elder Herbert’s male leads, Prophecy’s women willfully perpetuate a cycle of abused power and depravity. Their actions are their own, and they’re not ashamed of them.

When Page Six asked the comedian whether he feels he is "punching above his weight," he heartily concurred, "One thousand percent."

Spotify shared its Top 10 list of most-streamed holiday tracks of all time.

The cutting of ties is certainly not coming out of nowhere, and the Falcons wouldn't be wise to take in any more costs for a quarterback that has cost the team $90 million over 14 games.

Wedding night!

For soldiers in France listening to Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" in December 1944, home must have seemed far away. 

Follow Page Six's live updates for the latest Taylor Swift news, photos, fan theories and more.

Jewish Studies Center director Leah Garrett alleged that Hunter administrators have turned a blind eye toward antisemitism on campus.

Luigi Mangione, now held in a New York City lock-up, could face the death penalty if convicted of the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The killing is sparking new concerns about violent extremism bubbling across the country.

An Ohio woman who recently turned 106 credits her long life to her positive attitude, willingness to have fun, and, perhaps, her favorite beverage: Fireball Whisky.