Induction

Donald Trump will be celebrating his 80th birthday this Sunday, and he will be celebrating with style. If by style we mean gaudy excess. Donald Trump’s big birthday bash will consist of a specially-arranged, double title fight night of UFC matches being held on the South Lawn of the White House. The meeting of the American Presidency and the UFC might seem a little odd. So, today, I want to both t...

The 2026 FIFA World Cup begins this week, and even before kick off, the tournament has been caught under a mountain of scandal. We can put the blame for the situation at the feet of just one man: FIFA president Gianni Infantino. He may have been the man elected to save FIFA after a wave of arrests and rampant corruption, but has he saved or doomed the beautiful game? The Slow Newsroom Creator and...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is due to go public next week. In effect, this means it will go from being a privately-held company owned by Musk and a number of friends and colleagues to being a publicly-tradable company which you, yes you, can buy stocks in too. There’s a real risk that SpaceX might be massively, massively over valued, meaning retail investors (and retirement funds) might end up being forced...

Hasan Piker, the American Twitch streamer has been banned from entering the UK, along with The Young Turks host (and Piker’s uncle) Cenk Uygur. I’ve seen a few attempts to explain what’s going on here online, often by Americans and so I wanted to try and provide an explainer grounded a bit more in UK politics and law. So here we go. The Slow Newsroom Creator and Host: Tom Nicholas Editor: Georgia...

Elon Musk might be in the process of sabotaging the British far-right and inadvertently handing the Labour Party a massive win. Better still, I don’t think he knows he’s doing it or particularly cares. All of this relates to the by-election which is currently taking place in the constituency of Makerfield, where Andy Burnham’s biggest challenge to winning that seat should be Nigel Farage’s Reform...

New rules around single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms and bathrooms, were published towards the end of last week. These govern how businesses and organisations in the UK are (and crucially are not) allowed to provide for trans people. It's another win for British transphobes, I'm afraid. The Slow Newsroom Creator and Host: Tom Nicholas Editor: Georgia Burrows Producer: Jack Carter See Privacy...

The so-called “steroid olympics” (officially called the "Enhanced Games") are taking place this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. Happening in a purpose-built stadium (for some reason) just off the Las Vegas strip, it will feature more than 40 athletes souped up on personalised regimens of performance-enhancing drugs to see just how far the human body can go (you know, if you add a bunch of performanc...

Can Britain Undo Brexit? We're just shy of a decade since the UK voted to leave the EU, but could we be bracing for another big debate about EU membership? Recently, Wes Streeting announced that it would be part of his platform for Britain to rejoin the EU, should he became a candidate to replace Keir Starmer. Could this actually happen, or is there something else going on? The Slow Newsroom Creat...

The Eurovision Song Contest is in crisis this year, with five countries: Spain, Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, and Slovenia having pulled out of the competition, with some refusing to broadcast, due to Israel's participation. Critics have accused Israel of using the show to distract from the genocide and human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. There have also been investigations into vo...

Keir Starmer is (almost) gone. Nearly 100 Labour MPs have publicly called for him to resign. But, when he goes, there will be a leadership contest for Leader of the Labour Party and, by extension, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So I want to dedicate some time in the coming week or so to lifting the lid on some of the key contenders for that role. To...

It's election day in Britain and Keir Starmer is in trouble. Will he resign? Apparently not! Argh! In his steadfast refusal to resign despite election losses, scandal, and terrible polling fast turning him into Britain's Joe Biden? The Slow Newsroom Creator and Host: Tom Nicholas Editor: Georgia Burrows Producer: Jack Carter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy No...

The stock market might be broken. Really broken. The massive AI bubbles has shown everyone that. But can we really just blame over-enthusiastic investors, or might there be another trend which is keeping the bubble from bursting too? The Slow Newsroom Creator and Host: Tom Nicholas Editor: Georgia Burrows Producer: Jack Carter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy...

It’s a bad week to be a dodgy landlord in the UK, as a new piece of legislation comes into force bringing much-needed security for tenants, and reducing the power landlords have to turf out residents at short notice. The BBC earlier this week were billing it as “one of the biggest changes to housing law in history”. But I’m here to tell you that that’s not quite true. In fact it’s really just reve...

The King's Going on Holiday! Sorry, I mean an official "state visit" to America in order to salvage some from of working relationship with Donald Trump. This trip puts the Monarchy in an awkward position, as having the King merely stand with Trump implies that he endorses the President's views. It's also incredibly unpopular with the British people. The Slow Newsroom Host and Creator: Tom Nicholas...

Keir Starmer is on his way out. Whether it takes a month or a year, he is going to be a Prime Minister whose tenure is shrouded in failure. But could he be about to take down the entire Labour Party with him? A new poll by YouGov was released recently that showed that the Labour Party could be facing an existential crisis in the local elections on the 7th May. The Labour Party could lose control o...

The US-Iran ceasefire expires tomorrow, and all eyes are on Pakistan as it looks like peace talks may, possibly, fingers crossed go ahead, and we might avoid a recommencement of strikes. Donald Trump has accused Iran of violating the ceasefire and continued his streak of threats and brinkmanship, however, whilst Iran has threatened that it is preparing 'new cards on the battlefield'. Tensions are...

This feed is changing... Join me, Tom Nicholas, for discussion and updates about the ups and downs of UK global politics twice a week. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

In recent decades, more and more energy has been put into developing interventions to either reduce fossil fuel emissions or, in some cases, remove them from the atmosphere entirely. But, which of those interventions actually have the potential to turn the tide in our fight against global heating and which are all talk and no substance? In today's episode of Induction, Tom chats with Dr Simon Clar...

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere now. Over the past year, tools like ChatGPT, Dall-E and Stable Diffusion have turned what was previously a fairly marginal technology into headline news. Industry leaders make great predictions about the future of AI, predicting an end to work (and, perhaps even an end to humanity). But how much of that is likely and how much is pure hype? In this fortnight's...

Over the past half decade or so, video essays have taken over YouTube. As things stand, a significant portion of the site's largest creators and most popular videos are at least video essay adjacent. In this fortnight's episode of Induction, Tom takes stock of where the genre has come from, where it is now and where it might be going next with a little help from Neil Farrell from The Leftist Cooks...

Since his death in 1616, William Shakespeare has often been held up as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) English-language writers. Nevertheless, the world in which Shakespeare was writing was clearly a very different on to that which we live in today. So, what is it that keeps audiences, creatives and other thinkers coming back to his work? In today's episode of Induction, Tom chats with P...

For a long time, one's 20s were viewed as the defining decade of a person's life. The cultural norm was that this was the decade in which one would find a partner, get married, settle down and buy a house. But, even for those who want to pursue such a life plan, the economic shifts of the past twenty years mean that such a route now looks all-but impossible. In this fortnight's episode of Inductio...

In this audio-exclusive episode of Induction, Tom is joined by Unlearning Economics to chat a little bit about inflation: what it is, why it's currently so high, and what can be done to bring it down again. (Also contains a lot of talk about Freddo Frogs.) Watch or listen to every episode of Induction two weeks early at http://go.nebula.tv/induction Check out UE's videos at https://www.youtube.com...

It can be difficult to be optimistic about politics. With a climate crisis in full swing and inequality getting worse, it can be easy to slip into a distanced doomerism. But, what if that's bad, actually? In this fortnight's episode of Induction, Tom chats with Andrewism about the importance of utopias and utopian thinking even in the darkest of times. Watch or listen to every episode of Induction...

In this fortnight’s episode of Induction, Tom chats to Dr. Rohin Francis about how the internet has changed our relationship with our own health. *The Induction Team* Hosted by Tom Nicholas Edited by Georgia Burrows See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .