The Know Daily - Tuesday 3 February 2026

_{Read in 4m 19s ∙ Listening to Noah Kahan ∙}

A fun New York experiment has shown how a shared moment can turn strangers into friends after flyers were handed out across Manhattan with a simple request – come watch the Champions League with me. The result? Hundreds of people who didn’t know each other turned up to hang out with a fellow fan and bond over the shared experience 👯‍♀️

🎓 The student loans debate

A group of Labour MPs are pushing Chancellor Rachel Reeves to rethink parts of the student loans system, reopening a long-standing debate.

Tell me more.
A group of newer, younger Labour MPs have publicly criticised a recent Treasury decision to freeze the student loan repayment threshold. That threshold is the amount you earn before you start paying anything back. By holding it in place while wages rise, MPs argue more graduates will end up repaying earlier and for longer – increasing the overall cost for people who took out loans in the 2010s.

So how will the changes play out?
The key issue is the freeze on the repayment threshold for people on Plan 2 loans (covering most students in England and Wales from 2012 to 2023), which is set to rise to £29,385 in April 2026. From April next year, the threshold will stay fixed at this for several years rather than rising with inflation. This means repayments will kick in sooner as pay increases, even if living costs rise too. Nothing else about the system changes: repayments are still income-based, set at 9% above the threshold, and any remaining balance is written off after 30 years.

Why now?
Student loans have become more politically sensitive as more graduates realise they’re unlikely to repay their balance in full. Analysis highlighted by The Guardian suggests many middle-earning graduates could end up paying back more over their lifetime because of interest rates and frozen thresholds. At the same time, figures like Martin Lewis have helped push the issue into the mainstream, arguing the system increasingly behaves more like a graduate tax than a conventional loan.

What’s the other side?
The system still has built-in protections: repayments rise and fall with income, and lower earners may pay little or nothing at all. The government says freezing the threshold helps keep public finances stable while protecting the lowest earners, and stresses that no-one ever has to repay if they can’t afford it. But critics argue the balance has tipped too far towards graduates quietly paying more over time.

Does this matter beyond graduates?
Yes. Student finance shapes who feels able to go to university in the first place. Some economists say the current approach risks undermining trust in the system and hitting middle earners hardest. Others warn that frequent rule changes – especially after people have already taken out loans – make the system harder to understand and defend.

So where does that leave us?
No immediate U-turn is on the table right now, but the conversation is definitely a hot topic again. What was once sold as a background system is now back in the spotlight, and the pressure on the Chancellor suggests this won’t be the last conversation about how graduates contribute, and how fair the system really feels in practice.

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💬 AI bots now have their own social media site where they can post, comment and interact with each other.

• The bigger story: Moltbook is a Reddit-style platform designed for AI systems rather than people. Humans can watch what’s happening, but can’t get involved. Its creator says the aim is to study how different AI models behave, communicate and influence one another when sharing the same space. Yesterday, the site revealed 1.5 million AI agents had signed up to the service.

🐀 The Venice Carnival kicked off with a giant rat leading the floating parade through the city’s canals.

🇫🇷 France has finally passed a budget for 2026, following a series of no-confidence votes in parliament during a long-running political saga that has been unsettling financial markets.

🌠 Cosmic dust could hold the answers to how life on Earth began and researchers in Sydney are recreating it from scratch (in a bottle!).

🏠 House price growth has been declining across London, with values falling by 0.1% in the last year. These postcodes are seeing the biggest reductions.

🪙 Archaeologists have discovered thousands of Roman objects in Germany, uncovering camps hidden from view for 1,800 years.

😎 The European countries with the fewest tourists have been revealed – any guesses who came out on top?

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Trivia answer: C) The soft toy was originally made in error after a worker sewed a smile on the horse upside down, but has since become a viral bestseller ahead of Lunar New Year.

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