News Weakly

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah goes long on artificial intelligence, authenticity and the increasingly difficult question: how was this thing actually made?From Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s disputed biography and Mahmood Fazal’s anonymous-source scandal at the ABC, to novelist Jerry Falade’s collapsed $2 million publishing deal and Hank Green reconsidering his own use of AI, The Story Machine asks what journalism, academia, publishing and creativity are really selling us.Is AI the problem—or has it simply exposed how willing institutions already were to reward compelling outputs without checking their provenance?News Weakly is completely ad-free and listener-supported through Patreon.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah watches Victorian Labor replace Jacinta Allan with her own deputy and announce a fresh start from inside the same government.Meanwhile, tens of thousands cross from Morocco into Spain’s African enclave of Ceuta, producing a humanitarian emergency, unstable statistics and some highly selective European geography.Plus, Trump announces Hamas’s complete disarmament—while Hamas, Israel and the English language remain less certain.News Weakly is ad-free and listener-supported through Patreon.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah follows India’s Cockroach Janta Party from a Supreme Court insult and viral meme to mass youth protests over examination leaks, unemployment and corruption.How did a cockroach holding a mobile phone become the symbol of a generation losing faith in education, employment and government? And why might satire be better at organising political anger than political parties are?Plus: India’s crackdown on comedians, the youth movements spreading across South Asia, and why Australians should understand the politics shaping the people they live and work alongside.News Weakly is completely ad-free and listener-supported through Patreon.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah follows two news stories through the online outrage machine.An ABC report about climate disasters increasing the risk of child marriage becomes “the ABC defends Muslim child brides”. Meanwhile, a review of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Gaza casualty database becomes both “all Palestinian journalists are terrorists” and “CPJ erased twenty murdered reporters”.It’s an episode about missing qualifiers, invented context, tense laundering, viral screenshots and why reading beyond the headline may now qualify as civic service.All that, and more.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at how disasters become PR opportunities.Telstra somehow fixes a nationwide outage by creating another one, Narendra Modi gets the rock-star treatment in Melbourne while human rights concerns barely get a mention, and China reminds the Pacific what "friendly" military exercises look like.Plus, the Royal Commission into Antisemitism turns its attention to the ABC, and Iran transforms Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral into a masterclass in authoritarian image-making.All that, and more.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah marks America's 250th birthday by asking what its greatest populist, Huey Long, can teach us about Donald Trump, democracy, and why every generation keeps looking for a king.Plus, Australia's aged care system discovers that maybe humans should assess human beings after all, and the debate over journalists killed in Gaza descends into another battle over who counts as a journalist in the first place.All that, and more.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah explains why Donald Trump's favourite movie might also explain his foreign policy.From Jean-Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport to the Iran war, this episode explores the dangers of confusing spectacle with strategy, humiliation with victory, and refusing to flinch with actual courage.How did America win every battle but still end up negotiating over the Strait of Hormuz? And what can an '80s martial arts movie teach us about modern geopolitics?All that, and more.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at how every political problem somehow ends up being blamed on immigrants.Comedian Dave Hughes goes viral railing against Labor’s housing policies, permanent residents, and falling property values, accidentally arriving at the same talking points that have fuelled One Nation’s resurgence. Meanwhile, anti-immigration riots erupt in Belfast after a violent crime becomes a vehicle for broader fears about migration, identity, and social decline.The episode explores why housing affordability, wage stagnation, and cost-of-living pressures keep getting reframed as migration problems instead of policy failures, and how media personalities help launder increasingly extreme ideas into “common sense”.Plus: Pauline Hanson’s political comeback, Barnaby Joyce’s confusion about what a permanent resident actually is, and the algorithmic pipeline turning ageing celebrities into grievance influencers.All that, and more.Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning comedian, writer, journalist, and broadcaster.For more: http://thesamishah.comTheme music 'Historic Anticipation' by Paul MottramThis podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Sami Shah.