RE:Balance with Kamahl Santamaria

16 MAY 2025: Air Force One is the official plane of the United States president - a literal White-House-in-the-sky.  So what happens when a country wants to give the current president a jumbo jet to use as HIS Air Force One?  

This week we look at Qatar’s $400m gesture to the United States - why it can’t work, why it perhaps should work, what may well stop it from working, and what Qatar gets out of it.

Be sure...

2 MAY 2025: Fairness, balance, and accuracy are the cornerstones of journalism - which is why it’s so extraordinary when a news outlet breaches them, and in such spectacular fashion.

This week we look at a decision from the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which shows how ThreeNews blew through those tenets of reporting in a story about an anti-smoking group and its supposed links to the vaping industry.

It’s an almost-perfe...

4 APRIL 2025: How much of 2025 can you actually remember? Sorry, let's rephrase - how much of 2025 can you actually remember which DOESN'T involve America and/or Donald Trump? We're only three months in but there's been plenty happening all over the world. So in this podcast, we're doing a quarter-year review - and it's a Trump-free zone.

AUDIO CLIPS COURTESY: CityNews, CBS News, BBC News, SBS News Australia, Sky News

For mo...

27 MARCH 2025: What on earth just happened?? Some of the most senior people in the Trump Administration used Signal to communicate sensitive information about a strike against the Houthis in Yemen, AND invited a reporter from The Atlantic into the group chat? In this edition of RE:Balance, Kamahl breaks down the seriousness and the absolute lunacy of the situation, but also raises issues from the chat which are flying under the r...

14 MARCH 2023: Donald Trump’s plan is to run the U.S. economy (into the ground) with tariffs.  Which is stupid.  Or is it? (no, it IS stupid).  But his long-term plan doesn’t not make sense either… if that makes sense?

Just listen to the podcast and you’ll see where we’re going with this.  Because long-term economic plans are extremely important, but tough to make happen.

Audio clips courtesy: ABC News, MS...

7 MARCH 2025: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is a hero; everyone says so.  But is that why he’s a hero - because it’s the prevailing narrative?  This week we look at the overlooked geopolitics from before the Russian invasion, where Zelensky was perhaps more puppet than paragon.

Audio clips courtesy: MSNBC, AP, The Sun, The London Standard, Sky News Australia (all via YouTube).  AI voiceover provided by TT...

21 FEBRUARY 2025: When Donald Trump was inaugurated, we talked about learning from his first term and finding ways to limit our Trump intake.  Turns out that’s a LOT harder than expected.  

In amongst all the talk of authoritarianism and the end of democracy, we attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff; the stuff you can ignore, from the things that could change so much in our world.

Audio clips courtesy: NBC N...

THIS WEEK: It turns out video pieces can make good audio too, so here are two recent Viditorials from The Balance, exploring current events with a balanced lens.

First, it's the Gulf of Mexico/America, and how the White House has turned what is basically a vanity project into a vendetta against the Associated Press. It's extremely worrying that media organisations which don't conform with the 'Dear Leader' are now being banned ...

THIS WEEK: An occupation of the Gaza Strip by the United States?  Well it’s what the President wants - only he calls it ‘ownership’.  

Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to level and then rebuild Gaza, while forcing Palestinians out into Egypt and Jordan, is as outlandish as it sounds.  

So we’re taking some time to go through Trump’s announcement in detail… not necessarily to see how it could work, but...

THIS WEEK: With the ceasefire in Gaza holding, Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the deal.  But what makes the Israelis ‘hostages’, and the Palestinians ‘prisoners’?  

Plus Donald Trump’s confusion over the two words, in a completely different context.

Audio clips courtesy: CBC News, DW, CBS News, The Independent, CNN, Newsmax (via Youtube and Substack)

For more, vi...

THIS WEEK: the truth behind the TikTok “ban” and the company (i.e. TikTok!) that was in on the whole thing - this was more an orchestrated stunt than any real ban.  Plus the second Trump Administration and what you can do to limit your intake - because do you really believe the media won’t still be covering his every word, no matter how outlandish they might be?  

Audio clips courtesy: TikTok, ABC News, Crooked Me...

RE:Balance is back and rebooted!

News stories can get big very quickly and take on a life of their own, fuelled by social media and hot takes. So each week, RE:Balance will take those stories and give them context and new perspective - because you don’t have to agree with all sides of a story, but you should understand them.

THIS WEEK: Meta’s decision to end fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads has caused all so...

With things winding down for Christmas, Kamahl shares an update on the legal action he's taking against TVNZ at the Employment Relations Authority. The new year is going to be busy (and expensive!) but in this podcast, you'll hear why he's going to such lengths to set the record straight.

Included in this podcast is a portion of an interview Kamahl gave to Duncan Garner on his podcast Editor-in-Chief. They discuss mental healt...

This is an audio version of the latest VIDCAST from The Balance, looking at the Israel-Hamas war. This week, we look at the issues of justification, proportionality, and collective punishment - and how, very simply, two wrongs don't make a right. We also pay tribute to the family of Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh, whose family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.

The video version of this podcast can be fou...

The story of an initially-unnamed BBC presenter - accused of paying a young person thousands of pounds for sexually explicit pictures - took on a life of its own this past week. It was equal parts shocking, unbalanced, engrossing, farcical, and unpleasant. And it raised a lot of questions about privacy, speculation, who knew what and when - and of course who the presenter actually was. This week on RE:Balance, Kamahl picks apart ...

The Balance has been online for 10 days, and what a busy 10 days it's been! There's been plenty of feedback - from the supportive to the mildly abusive to the revelatory - and in this mailbag episode Kamahl shares the good and the bad, and answers questions which readers and listeners have had.

For more, visit thebalance.website

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