iWorld
‘Kalki Presents: My Indian Life’ now on BBC Hindi
Mumbai: BBC Hindi has announced the launch of Kalki Presents: My Indian Life in Hindi, after three hugely successful seasons in English from the BBC World Service.
The podcast, presented by Kalki Koechlin, is about being young and Indian in the 21st century. The Bollywood actor will meet and share young Indians’ remarkable stories from all over India.
https://www.bbc.com/hindi/podcasts/p0frdsxv
The first episode is about Tanya, a private detective who says everyone has a secret. We hear about some of the cases she has investigated. There was a student who Tanya followed to an unexpected place, a fiancé who couldn’t give up his dream and a husband whose affair potentially put his life at risk.
In episode two, Koechlin interviews a famous gamer with 34 million subscribers but none of them know who he is. He says he thinks he knows how Spiderman feels – his identity hidden from the world.
Notably, the podcast won’t shy away from exploring some challenging subjects, and issues like dealing with body shaming which can impact mental health, and myth busting. In one of the episodes, Indian actor Rytasha Rathore opens up about being stereotyped about her weight and being offered a certain type of role, to which Kalki also adds her own experience of being stereotyped.
Koechlin says, “I am delighted to present the BBC podcast ‘Kalki Presents: My Indian Life’ in Hindi for BBC Hindi after hosting three phenomenal seasons in English. Through this podcast, I will bring you amazingly inspiring stories of young Indians, who have overcome tough challenges and achieved onwards and beyond.”
The podcast Kalki Presents My Indian Life is an All Things Small production for the BBC World Service. All Things Small – part of Rainshine Entertainment – is a Mumbai based company, which focuses on telling true stories from South Asia. My Indian Life is its first project with the BBC.
It will also be available on BBC Hindi’s Facebook, YouTube, Gaana, Spotify, JioSavan and most worldwide podcast and audio streaming platforms.
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
