Saudi Arabia has executed two Bangladeshi nationals for an unspecified “immoral act” inside a mosque in Mecca. Bangladesh says it wasn’t warned, the families are still seeking answers, and the viral story that they were newlyweds executed for kissing doesn’t appear to be true.

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at what we actually know about the executions, Saudi Arabia’s treatment of South Asian migrant workers, the monarchy’s expensive effort to rebrand itself through sport and tourism, and why Muslims should consider using pilgrimage spending as political leverage.

If boycott...

NEWS WEAKLY 232 – Malala, Gaza, Conspiracies & the Collapse of Trust

Why do people with perfectly good reasons to distrust governments sometimes end up distrusting the victim instead?

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah starts with the strange hostility towards Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan, then follows the same logic through Gaza, Trump’s “alternative facts”, Flydubai false-flag conspiracies and the rise of One Nation.

What happens when justified scepticism turns into a worldview where disbelief itself feels intelligent — and every piece of evidence becomes a loyalty test?

News Weakly is indepen...

NEWS WEAKLY 231 – October 7 Mourning, Flydubai Conspiracies, Coalition Migration Cuts & OpenAI’s Medicare Breach

This week on News Weakly: three years after October 7, Israelis and Palestinians are still being told their grief needs the correct political disclaimer.

Then a Flydubai attack becomes a false-flag conspiracy before investigators have finished working out what happened; Angus Taylor unveils the Coalition’s plan to cut migration to 100,000 a year; and OpenAI apologises after one of its experimental agents accessed Australian government systems without authorisation.

Mourning, misinformation, migration and the strange new world where AI hac...

This week on News Weakly: Tony Burke tells international students to leave the family at home, while British backpackers discover the migration system has a loyalty program.

Also, Nyadol Nyuon gets Yassmined for saying she has no intention of assimilating, despite apparently doing more for Australia than most of the people demanding she leave it.

And Macklemore gets booted from Ed Sheeran’s tour for saying “Free Palestine”, while an award-winning Israeli documentary about Gaza sparks an argument over who is allowed to tell Palestinian stories.

Migration, belonging, censorship and the inc...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, everyone knows where Ground Zero was. But where did the blast radius end?

This special edition of News Weakly follows one country through the aftermath: Pakistan. From the CIA-backed Afghan jihad and the rise of the Taliban, through Musharraf’s alliance with George W. Bush, suicide bombings, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, drone warfare and the growth of Pakistani television news, all the way to the night Osama bin Laden was found living in Abbottabad.

Pakistan didn’t carry out 9/11. No Pakistani was among the nineteen hijackers. Yet its modern history became a...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah revisits a 2022 argument about the Sydney Festival boycott after The Shot brands him a “liberal Zionist coward” for criticising two of its headlines as demonstrations of antisemitism.

From Israel and Gaza to Mossad-payroll conspiracies, white saviour politics, audience capture and the invisible damage of online pile-ons, this episode asks what happens when political disagreement becomes a test of whether you are still allowed to belong.

Criticising Israel and recognising antisemitism are not rival positions. So why does saying both increasingly get treated as evidence of betrayal?

Everyone agrees the world is ending. The only disagreement is which catastrophe gets top billing.

Starting with Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “crisis of confidence” speech, Sami Shah travels through Bangladesh, Munich, Chile, Watergate, oil shocks, coups, terrorism, information overload and nuclear panic to ask whether the present is uniquely doomed—or whether every generation mistakes its own crisis for the final shape of history.

This is not a cheerful TED Talk claiming everything is secretly better. Gaza, democratic decline, antisemitism, climate change and AI-generated misinformation are real dangers.

But helplessness is the con.

Ne...

NEWS WEAKLY 226 – What Is The Sentence?

Last week, News Weakly opened with Jason Arday. This week, after his sudden death, Sami Shah asks a harder question: what is public accountability actually supposed to achieve?

From Arday to Louis C.K., Warren Ellis and Neil Gaiman, this documentary looks at public shame, misconduct, cancellation, comeback and whether punishment without an end point eventually becomes something closer to appetite than justice.

When should someone be allowed back? Who gets to decide? And if suffering itself isn’t the point, what is?

...

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?<...

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.

Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning comedian, writer, journalist, and broadcaster.

For...

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 along...

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.

Sami Shah i...

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.

Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning comedian, writer, journalist, a...

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.

Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning comedian, writer, journalist, and broadcaster.

For more: ht...

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.

Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning com...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah takes a deep dive into Pauline Hanson’s first National Press Club address and the global rise of populist politics.

From multiculturalism and immigration to childcare, abortion, transgender rights, and the meaning of “Australian culture”, Hanson’s speech offers a masterclass in the political lessons democracies keep refusing to learn from Donald Trump.

What does “monoculture” actually mean? Is Australia already a shared civic culture? And why do major parties keep responding to populists by adopting parts of their argument?

And one more thing: News Weakly is...

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 failu...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah dives into the latest Australian culture war, where an autism podcast somehow becomes a referendum on Israel, Gaza, free speech, antisemitism, cancellation, and who should be allowed to work.

The ABC finds itself under fire after commissioning a podcast hosted by Grace Tame, despite controversy surrounding her comments about October 7, Hamas sexual violence, and the phrase "globalise the intifada". Meanwhile, Charlie Pickering discovers the dangers of talking to Avi Yemini, and Australia once again debates whether disagreement should be answered with argument or unemployment.

Along the w...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at what happens when political parties mistake nostalgia for strategy and spreadsheets for compassion.

Tony Abbott returns as Liberal Party president, raising questions about whether the Coalition plans to solve its existential crisis or simply appoint it to a leadership role. Meanwhile, sweeping changes to the NDIS could see hundreds of thousands of Australians lose access to support, generating considerably less outrage than proposed tax changes affecting property investors.

Plus, BHP’s green ambitions collide with leaked internal documents, KPMG discovers the risks of ignoring whistleblowers, and Don...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at what happens when populism accidentally stumbles into good policy while everything else quietly catches fire.

The federal government tweaks negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, triggering a media meltdown from a property-owning class suddenly discovering class warfare. Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson unveils a gas policy so interventionist it accidentally sounds Scandinavian.

Australia also discovers compassion for “boat people” when the people on the boats happen to be Australian activists detained by Israel during the Gaza flotilla interception.

Plus: literary fiction panics after an allegedly AI-ge...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at what happens when politics stops pretending to care equally about everyone.

Labor’s latest budget is compared to the brutal Abbott-Hockey austerity budget of 2014, revealing how conservative outrage mysteriously only appears when wealthy Australians lose tax advantages. Meanwhile, the Albanese government finally responds to gambling reform recommendations with a plan so timid it feels focus-grouped by Sportsbet itself.

In the UK, Labour MPs appear ready to repeat the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years at high speed, threatening to hand Nigel Farage the easiest political opening of his life.

P...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at the stories Australia keeps turning into culture wars instead of solving.

The death of Kumanjayi Little Baby reignites debate around Indigenous communities, systemic neglect, Welcome to Country ceremonies, and the country’s ongoing inability to confront its own contradictions. Sami explores the idea of the “Pink Flamingo”: the national dysfunction everyone sees but nobody meaningfully addresses.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party responds to electoral collapse by considering a return to Tony Abbott, because apparently the answer to political failure is expired yoghurt conservatism.

And in...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah takes on one of the most circular, exhausting debates in modern politics: how we talk about Israel and Palestine—and why the conversation keeps going nowhere.

Using the comparison between Pakistan and Israel, this episode reframes the discussion away from slogans and toward something more useful: treating countries like countries, not symbols.

From the legacy of Partition in 1947 to the ongoing realities of Gaza, the West Bank, and global politics, Sami explores why some states are criticised for their actions, while others are endlessly debated for the...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at power, money, and the systems that insist everything is working fine while clearly not working at all.

The UAE exits OPEC, raising the prospect of cheaper oil and a full-blown Gulf power shuffle. Pauline Hanson receives a $1 million plane from Gina Rinehart, because nothing says anti-elite politics like private aviation funded by billionaires.

Meanwhile, a royal commission into a deadly terror attack finds no systemic failures, which is somehow more disturbing than finding some. And the government’s new plan to tax tech giants to fun...

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah looks at what governments call “hard choices” and what they quietly refuse to choose.

The federal government plans to remove 160,000 people from the NDIS, citing unsustainable costs, while economists and crossbench MPs push for higher taxes on gas companies making billions from public resources. Meanwhile, a children’s book is pulped after controversial comments by its illustrator, reigniting debates about censorship, free speech, and artistic hypocrisy.

Plus, FBI Director Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for $250 million, and the strange politics of diaspora conservatism takes centre stage.

...

NEWS WEAKLY 208 – April 18, 2026

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah returns to a world that somehow got worse while he was away.

The Middle East descends into a surreal loop of ceasefires, blockades, and immediate betrayals, with Trump now proposing to “blockade the blockade.” In Australia, Ben Roberts-Smith is granted bail on serious war crimes charges, raising questions about justice, power, and who pays for it all.

Meanwhile, the NDIS is once again under fire for being “too expensive” just as the government quietly commits $53 billion to defence spending. And in Iran, execu...

NEWS WEAKLY – 207 – 28 March 2026 | Australia Politics, Middle East Ceasefire, Teacher Strikes, ABC Walkout

TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah breaks down the biggest news stories in Australia and around the world, including the latest Middle East ceasefire developments, the rise of One Nation in South Australia, the Rio Tinto bailout, and major strike action by teachers and ABC staff.

The Iran–Israel–US conflict continues to escalate, with ceasefire negotiations collapsing amid ongoing military strikes, rising oil prices, and global economic uncertain...

NEWS WEAKLY #206 – War on Iran, RBA Interest Rate Rise, Sydney DJ Controversy & Forgotten Afghanistan War

This week on News Weakly, Sami Shah breaks down the escalating Iran-Israel-US conflict, Australia’s latest interest rate hike, a Sydney Biennale DJ controversy, and the war in Afghanistan that no one seems to remember exists.

Sharp analysis, dark satire, and global chaos, all in one episode.

Top Stories of the Week

NEWS WEAKLY – The Story of Karbala

This week, I step away from the headlines to tell one of the most powerful stories in the Muslim world: the Battle of Karbala. The death of Husain ibn Ali in 680 CE shaped the split between Sunni and Shia Islam and created a moral narrative about power, justice, and martyrdom that still echoes through modern politics, from Karachi to Tehran.

It's a very different episode, but I feel like it's a central element missing from the analysis and understanding of Iran and the IRGC's self perception, global Shia em...

NEWS WEAKLY 204 – Married At First Strike, Melbourne Saves Australia, and the Geography Police

Episode Summary

Missiles fly, oil markets panic, reality television becomes a geopolitical framework, and Queensland decides the best way to fight hate is by outlawing metaphors about rivers.

This week, News Weakly explains the escalating Iran–Israel–US conflict using the only analytical tool Australians truly understand: Married At First Sight. Meanwhile, Australia may already be involved in the war in the most Australian way possible, Melbourne accidentally saves the nation from three more decades...

NEWS WEAKLY 203 – March 3, 2026

Everything escalates, no one learns, and somehow the only consistent casualties are civilians.

This week, News Weakly looks at the wars you are obsessing over, the wars you have forgotten, and the deeply online way Australians are processing both.

Top Stories of the Week

Pakistan vs Afghanistan: The War You Forgot Was Happening

Cross-border strikes, Taliban accusations, militant blowback and strategic depth coming home to roost. A conflict with decades of history that barely trends, even as both sides accuse the other of ha...

NEWS WEAKLY 202, 28 Feb 2026

Episode title: Difficulty Level: National

Hello and welcome to News Weakly, where we punch the news in the headlines weakly. This week, the world is in multiple active spirals, but Australia has bravely chosen to centre a word association game like it is the Cuban Missile Crisis with better catering.

Top Stories of the Week

1) Things get difficult for Albo

Anthony Albanese describes Grace Tame as “difficult” during a Herald Sun conference word association game, and suddenly the nation discovers that adjectives can carry...

NEWS WEAKLY 201 – 21ST FEBRUARY 2026

This week on News Weakly: Australian values get workshopped into meaninglessness, Pauline Hanson re-releases her Greatest Bigots collection, ISIS brides become the nation’s worst dating story, and Victoria’s Big Build proves the only thing constructed efficiently is defensiveness.

TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

AUSTRALIAN VALUES GET DEVALUED!

Angus Taylor rediscovers the Liberal Party’s “centre of gravity,” which turns out to be immigration anxiety with better lighting. We revisit the official Australian Values Statement and ask the obvious question: why are migrants the only one...

Episode 200: THE CONSPIRACY PROBLEM

Summary

A suicide bombing in a Shia mosque barely registers before the algorithm moves on, and that erasure opens the door to something darker. This episode looks at why conspiracy thinking no longer lives on the fringes, but feels increasingly rational in a world where intelligence agencies really do assassinate, destabilise, and lie, and institutions keep getting caught doing exactly what they deny. From Pakistan to Australia, from foreign policy to arts boards and police crackdowns, the show unpacks how incompetence, cowardice, and risk-aversion...

Social Cohesion, News Now…

NEWS WEAKLY 199 – 07 Feb 2026

This week on News Weakly:

Australia discovers its newest national value, which mostly means everyone should stop talking while the government imports a global conflict and acts surprised when it doesn’t calm anyone down.

The Epstein Files, News Now…

Three million pages confirm the problem was never just Epstein, it was the elite ecosystem that kept letting him back into respectable rooms, plus Deepak Chopra turns out to be exactly who you t...

NEWS WEAKLY 198 – 31st January 2026

This week on News Weakly:

• Scott Morrison resurfaces to reform Islam, Western civilisation, and reality itself, proposing authoritarian religious controls while insisting this is what freedom looks like.

• A bomb is thrown into a First Nations gathering in Perth, and Australia carefully waits to see who did it before deciding whether terrorism is the correct word.

• Iran may have killed tens of thousands of protesters in weeks, but struggles to compete with America for global attention, airtime, and moral urgency.

• The...

NEWS WEAKLY 197 – 24th January 2026

This week on News Weakly:

• George R. R. Martin gives an interview that finally, definitively kills The Winds of Winter and with it the last surviving shard of millennial optimism.

• The Coalition explodes over hate-speech laws it demanded, negotiated, diluted, then rage-quit anyway, proving opposition is harder than outrage.

• Australia passes its “strongest ever” hate laws, handing vast discretionary power to the state and asking everyone to trust the vibes.

• Davos assembles the world’s elites to solve distrust, only for Donald Tru...

NEWS WEAKLY 196 – 17th January 2026

Top Stories of the Week

Running From Iran

A nationwide internet blackout, mass killings, exile fantasies, and the danger of confusing silence for stability.

Albo Hates Hate

After Bondi, Australia reaches for sweeping hate laws that try to arrest a feeling instead of fixing a mechanism, while New Zealand’s Christchurch response still quietly embarrasses us.

Writers Read the Room

Adelaide Writers’ Week is cancelled, apologised for, then retroactively justified, proving once again that institutions love f...

Just a quick announcement that the next episode of News Weakly will contain a bonus audio documentary about News Satire.

Sami Shah is a multi-award-winning comedian, writer, journalist, and broadcaster.

For more: http://thesamishah.com

Theme music 'Historic Anticipation' by Paul Mottram

This podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Sami Shah.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NEWS WEAKLY 195 – 10 January 2026

This week on News Weakly, the empire stops pretending, the internet gets unplugged, a royal commission settles in for the long haul, and a writers’ festival demonstrates once again that its strongest literary skill is drafting a press release explaining why someone has been quietly uninvited.

ALSO IN THIS EPISODE

• Trump abandons subtlety entirely, floats Greenland acquisition, and introduces the Donroe Document, which sounds less like foreign policy and more like a hostile takeover clause.

• Iran responds to nationwide protests by pulling the inter...