MU Podcasts IMar 13, 2026

1.05 - Inescapable - Divided Loyalty

MU+ Extended

The war with Iran is supposedly over according to the victory speeches coming out of Washington, but the situation on the ground looks anything but settled. We unpack the latest developments, from triumphant claims of air supremacy to missile strikes, drone boat attacks on oil tankers, sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and a Pentagon strike on an Iranian school based on outdated targeting data. We also cover what the insurance market collapse around the Strait reveals about the real levers of global power, the sentencing of the middleman behind Sydney's antisemitic attacks and the unanswered question of who ordered them, China's new ethnic unity laws, falling birth rates from Singapore to Australia, two-tier policing in Ballarat, and the uncomfortable data on where Muslim voters across Europe place their political loyalties.

Then in the Plus+ extension we dig into the Ellison media empire, how Larry Ellison's son David has assembled one of the largest media conglomerates in history and why the motivations appear to have far less to do with business than with controlling the narrative around Israel. From there we turn to the catastrophic water crisis that may have been the real driver behind pre-war unrest in Iran, before stepping back to consider the deeper forces that shape history beyond human control, from dysentery that crippled Persian armies to fog that saved George Washington's revolution, and ask why, if we are living well and doing right, there may be little point worrying about the rest.