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.

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 harbouring terrorists.

Iran, Israel, America and Everyone Having an Opinion

Khamenei is dead. Strikes escalate. American bases get hit. Diaspora celebrations clash with anti-war outrage. From Iranian expats to The Greens, Labor, pro-Israel hawks and The Australian’s columnists, everyone finds a way to cheer something while claiming the moral high ground.

Bad vs Bad: How We Turn Foreign Wars into Domestic Culture Wars

What happens when geopolitical catastrophe becomes suburb-specific moral panic? A look at how Australian political factions filter Middle East conflict through their own tribal lenses.

“You can oppose illegal wars and also oppose theocratic fascists. But that requires holding multiple uncomfortable truths at once.”

If you enjoy News Weakly and want to support the show, head over to Patreon at patreon.com/samishah. Paying members get ad-free episodes and bonus content.

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 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.

Anthony Albanese describes Grace Tame as “difficult” during a Herald Sun conference word association game, and suddenly the nation discovers that adjectives can carry freight. The real story is not just the word, it is what the word has historically meant when men apply it to women, and how quickly a flimsy media moment becomes a full week of moral theatre. Then Tame responds on Instagram, politicians demand titles be stripped, commentators run their diagnostics, and Australia convinces itself it is doing political analysis while mostly doing a social media reading comprehension test.

The US and Iran meet in Geneva for indirect nuclear talks, mediated by Oman, with messages passed back and forth like divorced parents refusing to make eye contact at a school recital. Everyone says they want to avoid war while moving military hardware around like it is a hobby. The argument is about enrichment and rebuilding, but the anxiety sits in the region, especially Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Israel both know how quickly “posturing” turns into “miscalculation.”

NSW Police data records 197 incidents of anti LGBTQIA+ hate related violence since 2023, with a disturbing pattern of teenage boys luring victims on dating and hook up apps, then assaulting and robbing them, sometimes filming it. The ideology varies, the method does not. Extremism is a franchise model now. Different uniforms, same obsession, same fixation on queer bodies as a site for performance, humiliation, and cruelty.

“We are treating a throwaway word in a word game as if it were a constitutional crisis.”

You can back the show on Patreon.com/samishah.

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 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.

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 ones being tested on it?

PAULINE PAULINES!

Pauline Hanson declares there are no “good Muslims,” the ABC obliges, and the outrage machine spins up like it’s 2015 again. Is she a politician, or just a human push notification powered by grievance?

SWIPE RIGHT FOR THE CALIPHATE!

Anthony Albanese has “nothing but contempt” for Australian ISIS brides attempting to return. But if citizenship collapses under the weight of terrible romantic decisions, half the country is in trouble.

BIG BUILD, BIG TANTRUM!

Explosive allegations of corruption on Victoria’s Big Build projects meet a Premier more offended by tone analysis than by bikie infiltration. When the scandal costs $15 billion, the real emergency is apparently eye direction.

AND ENGLAND GETS ONE STEP CLOSER TO BEHEADING A ROYAL AGAIN!

We briefly consider the monarchy, remember Charles I, and decide unless limbs are involved, we simply do not care.

News Weakly is independent and powered by listeners who prefer their news punched gently but repeatedly.

If you’d like to support the show and keep it free of corporate chairmen’s lounges and vibe-based patriotism, join the Patreon:

patreon.com/samishah

You’ll get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and the warm glow of knowing you are funding sarcasm in dark times.

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.

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 get misread as secret coordination, and why that misunderstanding doesn’t challenge power but lets it off the hook. When everything feels orchestrated, accountability disappears. And once reality becomes optional, nothing democratic survives for long.

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.

Social Cohesion, News Now…

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 thought he was.

Everything Is Fine, News Now…

The media panics over One Nation polling, Cori Bernardi returns from irrelevance, and Australian democracy once again proves it prefers furniture to fascism.

Oman Is the New Geneva, News Now…

The US and Iran meet in Oman to not start a war yet, with Trump threatening bombing as a confidence-building exercise and everyone pretending this is diplomacy.

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.

• 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 world watches state violence selectively, proving outrage is less about scale and more about proximity to English-speaking cable news.

• Why I’ve stopped following American politics altogether, while people drown quietly in the Mediterranean and the global order reshapes itself off-screen.

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.

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.

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 free speech right up until they have to defend it.

Kevin Oh Succession

Kevin Rudd exits Washington and Canberra realises the next US ambassador’s main qualification is surviving Donald Trump without triggering an alliance incident.

A deep dive into how “foreign meddling” narratives poison solidarity, why cultural institutions keep mistaking safety for optics, and how despair gets rebranded as pragmatism.

And at the end of the episode, a bonus feature:

Mocking the News – Sami’s documentary exploring how satire collides with journalism, objectivity, and power, and why jokes sometimes end up telling the truth faster than headlines.

“Silence isn’t stability. It’s just what violence sounds like once it’s done its job.”

patreon.com/samishah

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.