Mehdi Hassan

Read his columns and our coverage of the quintennial and more at theguardian.com.

Do also check out our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America, because they are taking a look at exactly how Trump is using some of the world's most popular sporting events as his own personal stage.

And that's it for today.

This episode was presented by me, Nosheen Iqbal.

It was produced by Tom Glasser and Mae Robson.

Sound design is by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Huma Khalili.

We'll be back this afternoon with the latest.

Zotero is a company I launched in 2024 in the US after I left MSNBC.

It's an independent media platform, all singing, all dancing.

We do documentaries, podcasts, op-eds, shows.

We've built a pretty big team in the US, 2 million subscribers on YouTube, 700,000 on Substack.

So we thought, where do we expand next?

And obviously I'm biased.

I want to expand in my old home country in the UK.

And you both know more than I do that there's a lot of news to cover in the UK right now.

It's a little bit of a crazy place.

Yes, exactly.

I thought the US is so busy, and the US is so chaotic, let's go to a less chaotic country.

But I do think genuinely, I got the same feeling when I visited the UK earlier this year, that I got in 2024, that there is a gap in the market, that there is a desire for something different when it comes to media consumption, especially on the left, but not just on the left.

And I think just as people have been rejecting establishment politics in this country, I think they're rejecting establishment media.