The Iran War Is Spreading

You're listening to American Power.

“I'm your host, Nat Tauson, stand up comedian, political speech writer, many other forms of writer,”

and most likely to give me a weird series of write-offs on my taxes, podcast host.

I am joined as always by my panel of experts, our expert on foreign policy and the military,

Chad Scott, Chad, how's it going? That's going really well. I'd just like to point out that Matt talked a lot of trash about my football team last week, and they won, and Oklahoma lost. So how that turned tables, as they said on the office, there you go.

[LAUGH] And laughing along with me right now is our expert on all things energy, renewable oil, markets all around the world, you know him as Mr. Global, losing football predictor of the week,

“crying and shame onto the mic, as you can hear, Mr. Global Matt Randolph, how's it going Matt?”

I'm disgusted about those turn tables. I thought a Chad, when we lost, I thought, yeah, I'm going to hear it from Chad, but you know, that's part of college football. So, yes, I'm sure you're getting used to all the tastes of the crow you've been eating, Chad, congratulations.

We have, we are recording this on September 14th, 2026 in the evening. If you need the year, I would recommend listening to a more recent episode because you're in the future. [LAUGH] Logo and on, we had a great conversation last week with Professor Omar Bartov about Israel, and it's

genocide in Gaza and the history thereof and the definition of genocide. And if you have not listened to that, I highly recommend giving it a listen. It is an episode we're really proud of, but we have not talked about current events as a result, nearly as much in the past week or so. And I want to talk to you guys about what's going on in the Middle East right now,

and specifically the Houthis invasion and attacks on the Red Sea.

“And the attack on the study East West Pipeline, how is this impacting oil right now?”

And is the Middle East preparing for a broader war? Chad, can you fill us in on what's been going on in the past few days with past week? Yeah, basically over last several days, as you said,

the Houthi forces have pushed down Yemen's western coastline and captured some pretty critical cities,

the port city of Mocha, they moved in to Dubab, they've reached Paramilin, which is probably the most problematic because these are the islands that control and train exit to the Babamendip Strait. And that's a narrow passage connecting the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea to Suez Canal. It's a throughput point similar to how Hormuz is, but it does connect to Oceans. So it's a little bit more critical in total cargo,

but not as much for oil as Hormuz's, and I know Matt can speak to that. But the Houthis are now sitting right on top of the Babamendip Strait. Ships are still moving through somewhat. The focus is on Saudi Arabia, the beef, the Houthis have is with Saudi Arabia. But similar to the Strait of Hormuz, they don't actually have to close the Strait completely to create problems.

We've already washed this happen in 2023-24 when they conducted attacks on Red Sea shipping in response to Gaza when Israel was in the initial stages of their strikes on Gaza. But by 2024, the entirety of the shipping had fallen. Now, at the same time, a lot of these ships have to now move around the southern tip of the Cape of Good Hope around the southern tip of Africa. And because of this, it's going to cause a lot of more issues with shipping, a lot more issues with prices,

and we originally saw that Hormuz was the primary problem.

Saudi Arabia had somewhat of a solution. This brings me to the second problem that you brought up.

And that's the East West Pipeline that moves oil in it, across the 1200 roughly 1200 kilometers to from the eastern oil fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea. And they were able to bypass Hormuz. This was something that was potentially in Matt and speak to this, because I'm not as well versus he is, but potentially was the ability for us to continue to get some oil out of the Persian Gulf region. But drones launched from Iraqi territory struck the pipeline and Saudi shut it down.

The initial belief was this was just going to be a repair over a few days, but as they've been expected, it's a lot less reassuring. This could be out for five or six weeks.

The Saudis do have oil stored around Yanbu, but they may not have as much as necessary

“to counter out counterbalance this pipeline being struck. And this is now showing that Iran is widening”

the theater here. The the Houthis have seized territory overlooking the waterway that Saudi Arabia needs to get out. Saudi Arabia has responded by dramatically increasing air strikes. They've launched long range missiles and drone attacks. And the back and forth here is now somewhere beyond what we saw in that 2023-24 era. And we're going to see more strikes, more problems. And as of right now, the United States is sitting on their hands. The the Trump administration,

the US military doesn't want to touch this because they're hyper-focused on Iran.

And it's also creating a multiple front problem for many people, whether it's the Saudis,

whether it's the US, and the Israelis are sideline because the US doesn't want them involved because anything they do undermines work with Iran. And this just is exacerbating a massive humanitarian situation, more than 85,000 people have been displaced during this latest round of fighting, including 82,000 since the beginning of September. And that's kind of where we sit right now. From an overview of the broader Houthi Yemen Saudi situation that probably the US is going to

get drawn into eventually. Thank you. I have a follow-up question there. I want to go to Matt in a moment for an energy perspective on this. But I wanted to clarify something that you said. You're talking about how this is a sign that Iran is expanding the theater of the conflict right now. And also talking about the US being hesitant to engage the Houthi as well, the administration is clearly very focused on Iran. To what extent, obviously if Iran and

Houthi have been sympathetic to what extent is this coordinated? To what extent are they acting out of mutual interest, literal coordination, or are the Houthi's pursuing their own agenda right

“now? And it's just benefiting Iran. What level of connection is there?”

So it's the Houthi's sit in a different kind of hierarchy than say Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a direct kind of rolloff of Iranian policy when it comes to their efforts to counter what Israel's doing in Gaza. However, the Houthis, they have their own goals, their own policies, but do you rely heavily on the Iranians? The weapons and technology sharing, for instance, that's probably the biggest, the ballistic missiles, the Iranian cruise missiles, attacked drones, anti-ship missiles. The Houthis

would not have those things if it wasn't for Iran. Iran also sent trainers, the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps, specifically their coulds forces are training Houthi fighters and how to

use these more advanced weapons. They aren't just saying, here's some ballistic missiles, here's some drones, go figure it out. Now, they're sending people over there to help the Houthis fight. And this is because this broadens the war for Iran. It keeps the focus not off the state of Hormuz, at least temporarily, as we now have to focus on the Red Sea and the Babel Mendeb. Iran is providing intelligent sharing as they help track ships through the Red Sea.

They identify military targets and prove missile targeting, things like that. And then the kind of the last two items is they do fund somewhat the Houthis and enable their smuggling networks pretty significantly through Oman Somalia and the Arabian Sea. So there is support there. It's not like a direct proxy where they are fully directing the Houthis hit this target at this time. They're giving the Houthis kind of the freedom of maneuvered execute as they see fit.

But it does kind of beg the broader question of what is when Saudis doing this, they just signed a pact with Pakistan and Turkey. And now we're seeing the Houthis strike into Saudi territory. They were supposed to have some sort of pseudo article five NATO-esque type of agreement with these other countries in Pakistan and Turkey have backed away saying we're not involved. And it undermines the whole thing. So a lot of this has to do with the fact that, yeah, when Iran

is involved, not a lot of people want to be putting their stamp of approval or disprovelling any direction because there's just such a volatile situation. And the Houthis are no different. What's so funny, Mr. Global?

“Oh, I was Pakistan's response to Saudi Arabia requesting assistance under that. I believe it was”

called the Mecca agreement. Yeah, yeah, the other defense pact. I don't know if you heard this not, but Pakistan's response was to Saudi Arabia was the Houthis or a pre-existing condition.

welcome to the American healthcare system because it was just so hilarious.

They're like, they're like, they're just in the combination of them. Like Pakistan and Turkey, they have this huge agreement. It was international news. Defense pact, you attack one, you attack us all. And then Pakistan's like, yeah, that's sort of a pre-existing condition. We're going to everything. This just passed, that everything's a pre-existing. It was all this. Oh, you think you're telling me that the political alliances and tensions in the

Middle East go back up more than a couple of years. That's so interesting. Apparently only a month, it's earlier this year. Pardon me. Yeah, sorry, a month or so ago. I was pretty much smooth sailing up until then in the Middle East. No, not complicated. Pretty much smooth sailing. That's new. I like how I heard it. That is really four, but yeah, HM. It's like Trump's motto. Yeah, kind of. We worked it out. Oh, everything was fine until this one.

That is very HM vocabulary. Oh, we're so sorry. I thought you were. Your claim has been denied.

“We reviewed the terms and we don't agree that that's what they say.”

You can feel free to apply for a re-opraiseful that we will just wait a week and design. That's how they handle it over at United Healthcare. I have a question that is format though. How can you give us a broader energy perspective on this? What is this doing to oil markets right now? It's it's bad. It's really bad. I don't know if you cut onto that, but it's really bad. So Yeah, I got the real positive negative charge. I just hope that you can get a little more depth.

First of all, yeah. First of all, we've been lied to the whole time. Like we all knew

that this pipeline had been hit. We were watching the satellite imagery. They were telling us it was operational flaring. And this was coming from SENTCOM. And I'm like these lying son of a bitch. It's like so it took them an entire 24 hours to admit that this pumping station had been hit. And that was followed up with a few days, temporary shut down a few days. And then the next day, we get the high res image of the pumping station that is just completely gone. There's nothing left of it.

“And then they had to admit it would be like maybe up to six weeks. And what did we get today?”

We get two more satellite images of two other pumping stations to get hit. So this was a broad attack across a large swath of the pipeline. It wasn't an isolated strike on one station. It was three stations, which oh by the way, most of us already suspected more had been hit. Because one pumping station doesn't shut down an entire 12-hundred mile pipe line unless you actually part the pipeline. And but so they've been lying to us about this the entire time.

And it's so frustrating trying to report this out to people when you can't trust anything even SENTCOM says that's that's really bad. I expect it from the Trump administration. But I don't expect it from SENTCOM. One thing that's really important to remember, Nat, is that about half of the oil flowing through this pipeline was oil that flowed through it before the straighter form was closed. This wasn't some empty pipeline that they just utilized for the straight. So not only do you

have the loss of whatever's short in the straighter form is, you have the loss of the bypass amount. And you also have the loss of the original amount. So this is actually twice as bad as they're

trying to claim it is. They keep saying it's a four million barrel a day pipeline.

It's not. It's a seven million barrel a day pipeline. That's another way they're trying to put a cap on lid on oil prices. It's really bad. And six weeks without this oil in a few days for the first time. And I don't know since the wheel was invented, Saudi Arabia is not going to be exporting oil. And if you just say that out loud, Saudi Arabia is not exporting oil. Like that, that's just the craziest thing I've ever heard. So big, big draws and oil supplies around the

world are coming. Trump spent all day on the internet trying to job on prices down, you know, fake announcements of deals, stuff with Ukraine, blaming it on Ukraine, talking about a deal with a run, talking about the straight being open. Just whenever the more he posts about oil, the worse it is,

“that's really all you need to know. The more Donald Trump talks about anything, the worse it is. So”

if he's posting a lot about oil and gas prices, it's really bad. Like it's it's bad. So yeah,

because I think part of the strategy may be to stretch United States thin a little bit and weakness

“in the straightaway form is like, I don't know if we have what we need to cover both of those areas,”

or even if we would because Donald Trump seems to be kind of telling Saudi Arabia they're on their own, you know. And when you said that they were, they're saying it's a fore, sorry, the little capacity of the pipeline, they're just misreporting. You're saying, uh, fore instead of seven, they just say the wrong figure every time. Um, but yeah, I'm just curious. That's intentional. No, sorry, they're just hedging every piece of information from it. Okay. So only one pumping state that was hit. It's actually

four billion. Okay. So it's, uh, and it's just like intentionally trying to, that's a very pathological

liar strategy of just like, oh, I was almost going to do, I was basically did that. And then we were here and, and you learned that like everything has been like exaggerated by 20% include as, as well as this flat out lies. I just sort of like, creating this more sympathetic reality. It's very familiar.

“It is the same thing with casualties. That's real. Yeah, that's why I came to this administration”

specifically. Yep. It in this war specifically. Yep. I doesn't know. Yeah, but that's the, the storage piece that Chad brought up. So Yombo, the port. This is these, so the East West pipeline is actually two pipelines that are side by side. Um, they go to Yombo, the port, right? And all ports have some storage there, right? So there's roughly, depending on how many ships get into the Red Sea, there's probably four or five days of storage there where tankers will still be able to get oil. But after that,

we're done. The pipelines closed. The storage is gone. So four or five days of oil, you know,

probably looking at, um, there's, there's probably 8 to 10 million barrels of oil in storage there.

And so that's just a drop in the bucket. Once that's gone, there's no more oil going to the Red Sea for at least six weeks. And I don't know if Chad would agree with me. But any time Saudi Arabia says something's going to be down, you typically just multiply that times two. Because they downplay that as well, the six weeks. And you also have to consider the fact that they're going to continue trying to hit it the whole time they're working on it, just like they have

it's just on refinery, which has been down since June. And every time they say it's about the reopen, they just hit it again. So, uh, that's likely to continue here. Yeah, Ron wants to exert it. It's, so they're, they're feeling like they're losing some of their, their strength in the straight-of-war moves. So they're wanting to expand to places where they can almost exponentially grow the problem for the United States in its allies. And so what we're seeing is this is an

exponential problem for them. As the United States slowly is able to kind of trickle some additional flow through the straight-of-war moves, because of the, the homony side, the Iranians are now saying, "Well, if you think you're being somewhat successful here, here's another problem, hundreds of miles away here. Here's yet another third problem, hundreds of miles when we are going to activate Iraqi proxies to hit the other, so this is, I mean, Ron, this is a very calculated

step-by-step approach and a plan that Iran has that as something starts to wane or the U.S. and its allies start to figure out bypasses to the problems Iran creates. They are now pushing the buttons in other areas and saying, "All right, figure this problem out

and the bottom line is we can't have the same carrier or strike group that is operating in

the Hormuz cannot simultaneously operate in the Red Sea. It's too far away. So we would have to either redeploy one of the ones that is helping in the Hormuz or we would have to deploy a third carrier group to the Red Sea and the Iranians know this. They know that, and what that's going to do is it's going to pull that asset from somewhere else, whether it's keeping an eye on operations in perhaps the Mediterranean where we still have to deal with what's going on

in the Black Sea with Russia and Ukraine, or as we've just recently had the problems with taking out a Taiwan and China, or perhaps even relieving pressure in a Venezuela situation. If we remove that group out of there to redeploy them to keep the Boba Mendeb trade open, that means we might lose a carrier strike group that's conducting what I've been saying or illegal operations, striking these boats. And it may be this big, interconnected geostrategic

play that Iran and Russia and China in Venezuela all are having in which they're forcing the United States have to make decisions. Where do you want to fight? Where do you want to be? Can you be here

“at the same time you need to be there? And the U.S. is learning real quickly that they cannot,”

especially with their munitions. Where's that carrier for the sailors that we sent to Thailand?

uh. Yeah, they were there for like four or five. Some recreation shall we say and then found

their way out. That ship needs some significant maintenance. I mean, it always has so down.

That always happens. I don't want to like downplay it like saying, hey, these this ship is broken. When you're out on a float or you're deployed that long, the ship is going to need maintenance. Everyone keeps showing photos of it all rested. That just happens. It happens because it's on salt water and it'll come back all shiny and new. But to be honest, it is a great propaganda piece for Russia or China to take pictures of our rusty carrier and say, look at how degraded the U.S. is.

But give it a month and it'll be back to fully running. But that's exactly what they're trying to do. They're trying to also play on the American people and how we're not taking care of our soldiers

and sailors, which we weren't quite frankly. Hickset wasn't. Absolutely not. And you know, it's

interesting, uh, it's funny. I'm sorry. So, it's saying, uh, well, actually sorry, uh, if we can edit out my stammering there, I have a different question as I was going to go in a different direction. Chad, I have a geographical question. Um, just back on the red sea, specifically, we're talking about much like the straighter formus, the who these don't need to physically blockade the bottom end of straight in order to prevent traffic or to make as we've discussed many times in order to make traffic

unfeasible or expensive to make insurers not want to insurers ship it. You know, to make it, uh, chaotic enough as to harm or halts commerce. That's all they really need to do. Now, what I'm curious about is they've captured in the past week a lot of territory on that east coast

“of the Red Sea. And you, as you mentioned, they're sort of marching downward through important”

parts of the, you know, many coasts there. Um, do the who these as, as the, you know, the Red Sea narrows to the bottom end of straight. Do they need to control the territory directly around the straight itself or have they already captured enough territory to interrupt commerce, to interrupt, you know, to, uh, to disrupt in a way as to be effectively closing it. They, if they have enough of forces on ground there, they've taken, uh, enough of the territory

of the islands and things to completely disrupt if they want. The bottom end of the retreat to push farther south. Yeah. Okay. No, they don't, they don't need to do anything more. What they're doing is they're going to control over there because they end up want to wanting, they want to push further into Yemen and try to, uh, head towards an on, things like that, which is the capital. So, and the Yemeni government is completely east into Yemen. Yeah. They want to, they're completely unprepared

to fight the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, who these, which is why they rely on Saudi. So, the, this, the bottom end of straight is only about 20 miles across. Put that in perspective, the home, straight of our moves that believe is 21 miles across. So, this is not a hard problem for them to, to disrupt. There's really just a two-channel situation where you have an island and

“then boats going one way go, uh, I think to the eastern channel, they go north and then the south”

goes around the western channel, but either way they, they are looking at a situation where they have the capability of the weaponry to reach out and stop shipping. And as I said before, they don't even have to really fire a whole lot. Just the threat alone is enough to make insurers go, yeah, we're not messing with this. I don't want to lose an entire ship. I'll rather go around the, the bottom of Africa that the people could hope and instead of dealing with this. But now,

like Matt was losing, we've closed down two massive straights that serve oil and other commerce, uh, including things like fertilizer and such, as well as now we're dealing with containerized cargo going through Suez, which Egypt controls into heading towards the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. And that, it's becoming this multi-faceted shutdown where the, the Iranians are now pulling

a lot of strings that we never would have thought that they could do. Or if we did think about it,

we didn't plan to have a contingency to deal with it as the, as we're just kind of letting it fly right now. And Matt said it, there's, the Trump administration is not doing anything. The Saudis, Mohammed bin Sontan bin Sontan has requested directly Trump, please intervene. Please use your airpower to help us out. And Saudi has a lot of air power themselves, but, um, the theme of the Middle East is to use the US, you know, Israel's playbook. They love that. And so the US is flat out said,

“uh, no, we're not doing that. And it's a capability problem. I believe at this point. We just don't have”

the assets or the munitions. So it sounds like Iran and its allies or, uh, you know, mutually beneficial arrangement countries have the US pretty hamstrung here and have really realized how, if not

completely lose, you know, capacity, but to the degree where morale is, and public image are severely

damaged, which is obviously already happened. That strategy doesn't seem to have a lot of, uh, obvious flaws in it going forward. What can we look at as the future of this conflict? What are we,

“what do you expect to come next? Well, there's really only, I think, three possible scenarios”

maybe for, um, but the, it could be a repeat of what we saw in the past, uh, the Houthis tend to really try to take advantage of speed and they end up getting out ahead of themselves. Previously, though, where we're different now, a Saudi could rely on Yemeni allies that they had their own proxy groups, the Yemeni government, as well as the last time this happened under the Biden administration, the US did respond. We had the capability and we did assist the Saudis

and that drove the Houthis back significantly. When the Houthis kind of rush out and they do these rush tactics where they try to take territory, they do kind of outrun their supply lines traditionally. So we could see a situation where if Saudi can, can pay enough, let's be honest, they're just paying people to help them out. Pay enough people to help them out. There might be a way to turn this around. But I would not assume that because the, we've seen them care, the Houthis have captured

more territory than they have in the past and they could absolutely hold a lot of the territory. It could be a two steps forward, one step back, but if they keep taking that two steps forward, one step back, they're still gaining ground and still is holding the BoboMendip straight at risk. The other problem is, as I said, the Houthis are now trying to do what Iran is doing to us to Saudi Arabia, they're trying to spread their focus. The Houthis are massing in and around Marie,

which is hugely important that, as Matt probably knows, has massive oil and gas infrastructure. And if the Houthis take that, they would effectively own the entirety of the supply chain for oil and gas coming out of Yemen. They have, while they have the ability now to hold territory,

they've taken while standing up forces to try to take additional territory in critical infrastructure

within Yemen. This means that Saudi is going to have to split their forces and if that's the case, it's going to be less effective. So there could be some success there. That would be scenario number two is if they could be successful. Saudi, the scenario one would be Saudi kind of reconciles their forces, buys enough mercenaries and pushes them out. Scenario number two is the Houthis because the US is not assisting because Iran is. There's a big push to get them, get to get more territory

and the Yemenis just are not equipped to do anything with this. And then really the third scenario is the status quo. They feel they've taken enough, they've got leverage, they can just disrupt shipping

“if it's similar to what Iran's doing. If you want to strike us, fine, we'll close the entire”

straight again and we'll force everyone to pay extra going around the Cape of Good Hope. The biggest questions though is what is the US going to do? As I said, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has asked Trump for help. He's declined. The US is providing intelligence. We are assisting in some ways. This set and Matt talked about the Central Command Commander Brad Cooper. He went and is helping and has provided the US contingent in jitta. But there's a massive difference between

just intelligence sharing and US actually conducting precision strikes on known Houthi targets. So we're looking at a fundamentally different situation now where the outcome and the leverage that the Iranian-backed Houthis have is significantly greater than they've ever had in history. And because the US is in this severely degraded position, I just don't think we're going to be able to drive the Houthis from their positions easily anytime soon.

It doesn't sound like any of these scenarios is likely to resolve neatly and cleanly in a short time frame. No, no, absolutely not. There's another story I want to talk about and it's more of an energy story. Obviously, we know that the price of diesel has continued to increase and recently, Trump has claimed that the Russia Ukraine war is responsible for higher

diesel prices. And we have talked a lot about how strikes on crucial plants in and sites in

both Russia and Ukraine have affected energy prices overall. But it's Trump accurate in saying

“that's what's causing diesel to get more expensive right now. It's not accurate to blame”

the whole thing on Ukraine. The war was going on before the Iran war started and diesel wasn't that high. As you mentioned, this was a pre-existing condition, right? So Russia has stopped the export of diesel

constant manipulation of the oil markets and not allowing the markets to hit that really quick

“price spike which creates the demand destruction which brings everything back down and keeps”

inventory levels where they're supposed to be. To me, that's the biggest contributor. And then of course, if he was so concerned about Ukraine and diesel prices, maybe not start another war in the middle of that one, you know, that was sure to take out more refining capacity. I will also say this, the oil and that is best suited for producing diesel is the oil that we're losing out of the middle east. That is literally the perfect oil to produce the most amount of diesel. So this is

obvious, there's obviously a lot of things contributing to this, but the notion that one that Ukraine will just stop hitting Russian refineries is a little ridiculous. They're not going to do anything unless

Russia does it first, but to the idea that that'll fix this problem. It's too late for this

“problem to be fixed by that. And I think he's also getting some advice about the fact that we're”

literally the second half of September through October is when the demand for diesel in the United States rises the most in any given year. It's very seasonal, heating oil demand, harvest time, holiday shopping time. You know, we may not be doing our holiday shopping yet, but the shit's already being delivered on the trucks, right? So a biggest time of the year for diesel demand, the lowest inventories ever, high oil prices, Ukraine stopping the targeting of refineries

could help maybe in three months a little bit, but it's not anything that's going to fix anything. So I mean, if this were really the primary cause, wouldn't we see Trump advocating more strongly for Ukraine to accept terms of, you know, to accept a deal or to broker a deal between Russia and

“Ukraine, I don't see him necessarily prioritizing that if that's really the cause of our energy”

wells here. Yeah, I mean, he got up. Look, the East West pipeline got hit. We knew oil prices were going to go through the ceiling today. We knew wholesale refined fuel products were going to go through the ceiling. He got up today and just started making any excuse he could. And I actually think the first time he mentioned Ukraine thing was yesterday. But yeah, I mean, diesel prices was a concern four months ago, right? Like, you know, if he was that concerned about it, I guess if he had

ended that war on day one, like he said he was going to, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But yeah, why did you wait for diesel to get to six dollars in 23 cents a gallon on a national average to figure out who you're going to blame it on? I don't know. But yeah, there's a myriad of things that are causing high diesel prices that are not going to be solved by fixing any one of those things. Chad, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, it's just, it basically is a, his, his scapegoating,

his excuses of blaming. And he's, he's, as we all know, he just loves to be the victim blamer. He just blames the victim. Ukraine of all of the, the geopolitical situations is the biggest victim on this entire stage. And the fact that he continues to say that they're the ones

that are, the problem is just him deferring to Putin, who is obviously pleased and also,

him trying to distract away from his own created problems in Iran. And as Matt said, like, some of the numbers, we've seen diesel rise 60% since the Iran war. That's not Ukraine. That's not Ukraine. Ukraine is not the cause of that. Ukraine striking the Russian refineries plays a small part, a fractional part. It does play a part, but the reason it is because it's a global oil market, but largely this, this is just him trying to find ways to distract from his problems leading

up into the midterms. The midterms are, he's going to get crushed because there's like,

there's a, I would, this is something I never thought I would ever say. There's a chance

we're going to see $7 a gallon diesel. I didn't correct me if I wrong, but there could be a chance at the midterms. We're walking to the voting booth. People are paying $7 a gallon for diesel. That's wild. And it, and it is largely because of the compounding factors that literally we just talked about in the first block about the straight of Formus caused by Trump's foolish unplanned,

which has spiraled out of control to include now the Babam end up straight. And the fact that

unplanned is fair. Yeah, I mean, basically, yeah, just completely. A plan needs to be more than one step.

“I think even more than two. I call it bumblefuck. He bumblefuck this whole thing out. So then,”

then on top of that, you have amateurs and negotiating. We saw a Kushner, and I watched Kushner and it talked to Zelensky, and it was, I was like, this is a stupid person. Like, he just is an amateur and doesn't know what he's doing. And it's, I truly believe it's just showing a detriment to it's creating, causing it, an detriment in perception of what the US can do. And it's all the distraction. Trump knows, or at least I know Rubio knows, that this is all caused by them, and

he just needs to distract long enough for the midterm's best to late. As Matt said, it's far too late. We're going to see diesel rise. There's a good chance we're going to see gasoline rise. I mean, I don't know if you heard this, Matt, this is kind of a huge deal. I just read this earlier today, while I was kind of researching for the show. Apparently Costco is now starting to ration oil. Like, they're like the five court bottles of order, you know, you get they're starting to ration it.

So the price of Costco oil that you bought in the boxes, because you buy everything in bulk of Costco, obviously, it was 30 bucks. It's jumped to 58 bucks since the worn around started. And now they're tapping purchases at two units per customer per week. So now the US is rationing oil. And apparently Walmart is also considering it. And I just was like, that's, I don't care how Trump tries to spin it. Everyone's going to recognize this is a Trump cause problem. And blaming

Ukraine is only going to work on the extraordinarily stupid. And that's just the bottom. I mean, we're rationing oil in this country's wild. And when you say oil from France, you mean crude or canola. Yeah, that's double. But yeah, yeah, actual like five courts of oil, that get for your car. Sorry, Matt, go right ahead. Yeah, I was going to sort of expand on what Chad's talking about. So yeah,

“Costco is rationing oil. And it's, it's not a small amount that you're like, um, I think it's,”

it's, it's two like 10 court cases or something that you can buy at once. So it's, but here's what's

happening. So a lot of your synthetic oils are derived from base oils that come from the Middle East. So if you have a car that has like OW20, uh, type motor oil, synthetic, uh, O30, O40, these types of oil, actually, they have very little crude oil in them. A lot of people don't know this. There's, there's more natural gas. And I'm then crude oil. Anyway, um, so the distributors at say the top level are running low on this oil because it uses products, uh, from the Middle East, uh, Bahrain,

Qatar, mostly. Uh, so initially, they started cutting off, uh, quick loops. So you might go to a quick loop and they sent out statements saying, we can no longer provide, you know, OW20, you can replace it for one or two oil changes with five W20, like they were giving you alternatives. So there's a hierarchy of who gets what motor oil is left. Quick loops are at the bottom of the

totem pole, right? Um, so like your dealerships will always get their oil. Big box stores will get their

oil, um, big auto parts chains will get their oil. So they start with the quick loops. So what's happening is a lot of quick loops aren't getting the motor oil underneath. So they just run down to Costco and buy it there instead of buying it wholesale. So now Costco is having to say, you know, because if, if some guy that owns a quick loop is walking in the Costco and buy in 25 cases, a motor oil, they're like, we can't, we can't do that. So that's basically what's happening. So

Costco's like, no, we have to limit how much oil you can buy because, you know, it to Costco, it looks like there's a run on motor oil. And in a way, there is, but it's from the quick loops. It's, it's not from people buying motor oil. It's from quick loops buying motor oil that they

“can't get from their distributors. So that's what's happening. But it's a down stream of more”

root level rationing. Yes. Yeah. The people that get cut off first go to the next level and then that level starts rationing. And then, because if they don't start rationing, then the next level will start rationing. And so they want to make sure they keep what they need. So yeah, that's what's happening. It's, it's a domino effect. I want to talk while we still have time about a story that I'm

mentioned today, September 14th and just a few hours ago, it was announced that the EPA is eliminating

“a rule that limits greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. It seems pretty devastating. This”

news is very new. And I'm, first of all, matters hoping you could just tell us a little bit more about

this, the situation and what it comprises when we talk about, but what's being removed here, what, what kind of power generation plants are no longer going to be regulated. So essentially, unlimited, unlimited greenhouse gas emissions will now be okay from coal or natural gas powered power plants, unlimited. They, they removed any caps on emissions. And the crazy thing about this, they're, they're talking about the impact, how much money the utility companies are having to

spend on these regulations, all utility companies, by the way, who are currently experiencing record profits. So they're doing this to help big corporations because they're getting strangled by these regulations and these big corporations are, even the ones that aren't having record profits have had their profits double over the last couple of years. So the notion that utility companies who are by law required to have a guaranteed profit margin are struggling due to this.

I mean, it is, it's just ridiculous and it's just another thing. I don't know if this is red meat

“for the base or what it is. I think a lot of people don't quite understand what's happening.”

We've had these different regulations in place since I was at kid in school. I think the first one

was like 1989, 1990. They're wiping away all of this. It's not just a rule that Biden passed in 24 that wanted more emissions reductions by targeted dates in the future. This goes all the way back to the late 80s and early 90s, where it's just, I don't know, because both Biden and Obama did have significant increases in the, or, or significantly increased the scope of these greenhouse limits. So do you think of it a little bit? Or do you think it's just chairman the letter for the

base or once again, trying to, you know, make carve outs for the fossil fuel industry? I don't think it's spite. I think the, I think they hate the EPA, they hate anything that's pro-environmental. They see it as anti-business. When Trump came in to this administration, he was trying to skirt clean water and clean air, you know, regulations. He was telling corporations that could dump shit into rivers like he's been doing this from the beginning of this administration

anyway. And this is just the latest one. And oh, by the way, it's not going to save you one penny

on your electric bill. That's not even a thing. So don't think for a second, he's trying to say

you money. This is putting more money in their pockets. And it's actually hurting another industry in the United States. And that's these companies that manufacture these products that we must use to keep our air clean. Like what's going to happen to the guy that sells the scrubbers, you know, at the coal plant? What's going to happen to the business that makes these different

“filters? Like, and these are very important things because we've seen dramatic reductions and things”

like asthma, cancer, heart disease. Like, you know about this stuff, I'm sure. The stuff we've seen in Los Angeles as far as people's personal health, the improvements. The drop we've seen in these different types of maladies, if you will, are drastic. And now they're just going to say, there's no limit on emissions and noxious emissions. Like, it just blows my mind that they're even sitting around thinking about this stuff. I don't know why they care so much that they

would just destroy something that's that's literally helping us. So I tell people. Pretty horrific. You know, yeah, it's, it's insane to me. I don't know how you even go down that train of thought of, you know, this cleaner air sure is hurting these corporations. We got to do something about that. Like, well, these corporations are doing fine, but we have discussed a lot on the podcast how effectively renewable energy, especially like, you know, newer, newer solar combined with battery

storage, which is advancing rapidly, is actually in many ways cheaper. In many ways is literally

carve out throughout his administration to help, you know, I mean, I hear what you're saying, like,

“oh, they think the EPA is anti-business, but like, quite frankly, it's anti their friends business.”

Like, they are, there is a more profitable model out there right now that will also only continue to become more profitable as battery storage density increases as geothermal as these other technologies become, you know, solar panels, as you mentioned many times, they're there, they're ready to roll off the shelves when you want to buy them right now. But that manufacturing, without, you know, all these intentional roadblocks to the industry, that manufacturing is only going to become

cheaper, the technology itself is going to become more advanced. So even the current level at which

renewable energy sources are cheaper to create than to generate rather than fossil fuels.

Even that level is at advantage, but it's only that, that disparity is only going to increase, because our oil refining isn't going to get cheaper. So he's doing it, it seems to me, like,

“he's, this is like a final, like, what other stops can I pull out to help these people?”

I would, I would encourage our listeners if you haven't to go back and listen, because of a couple things, Mr. Global said, one, to go back to listen to our episode in which we interviewed the, we interviewed Patrick Robbins, who is an energy affordability advocate with a sane energy project, and they talked about a few really interesting things, but one I want to remind you, as you said, is that, you know, these utilities are guaranteed a profit, and the

structure of the way in which their guaranteed a profit is not only so much as they need to be able to, their guaranteed to turn a profit on selling energy, that includes attracting investors that will increase profits. So they actually have to, they set their bills in such a way, or sorry, our bills in such a way that they are, they have to be higher than what it actually covers to cost things to show potential investors how much money there is coming in. So they're

not only guaranteed a profit, they're ready to profit well over what is necessary to generate the energy that we, that we need, because we have to pay extra to attract a profit via investors, which truly blew my mind, but what we were talking about this, these companies are not hurting, like they are, when we say they are guaranteed to attract a profit, it's even more than just what you would imagine from selling the fuel. And another thing, but we touched on in that episode,

is, you know, these plants, some of them are out in fields, some of them are outside of urban areas, some of these are in the heart of urban areas. And one of the things that happens, you know, we talked about this, but I'll explain it again, is that in parts of, in parts of the year where there is extreme use of the grid, especially in urban areas where it gets over taxed by air conditioning, things like that, in the highest heat of the summer, in order to prevent brownouts and blackouts,

they need to turn on these other plants, which are, we call peaker plants. We hit this peak, point of energy, we have to burn these, I mean, you know what I'm talking about, but for our listeners, these peaker plants, burn oil, they are like the most, they are the most polluting form of energy generation that our utility uses, and they are in, of course, the lowest income neighborhoods in New York. So, just to speak to what you're saying, like, those are areas, these asthma

alleys, as they're often called, that they have not only diesel burning trucks going through their avenues, but they also have literal, you know, oil burning power plants in an urban area that comes on in the highest and worst air quality parts of the year. So, I'm sorry, highest temperature, highest pressure on the grid. So, as to what you're saying, these conservation efforts,

“these greenhouse gas caps, they're not only massively important to health and reducing asthma and”

cancer rates, it's also disproportionate across the economic strata in America. Like, if you are poor, this will affect you disproportionately. And if you are, if you are wealthy and you can afford

great HVAC in your building, until live far away from power plants, you know, ultimately,

this flood will consume everyone. Don't, don't, let me think that you think you can just get rich inside of the fascist. But point being, this is yet another thing that is only going to make our massive wealth and disparity of opportunity in this country, you continue to exacerbate. Yeah, and I'm already waiting, I actually wondered today if this was creating a situation to just create an election time talking point in the future, because what they're going to do in the future

is they're going to say, hey, the Democrats want to, you know, impose all of these regulations on your utilities and, and it's going to make your bills go to the roof. Like, it's almost like

going to happen in the future. You know what I'm talking about? Like, and it makes me wonder if this

“is actually like an election strategy, because it makes no sense. Like, even your, your most”

magma magma isn't going to be like, oh, yeah, let's, let's have unlimited pollution. Like, you know what I mean? Like, no one's thinking along those lines, at least not in the universe I live in. So sometimes I wonder if they do this stuff, just to create election talking points for next elections down the road. Because one thing that's true about the Trump administration in magma, from the day they take office, they're already campaigning for the next election. 90% of the

shit they do is trying to get re-elected four years later. And they literally start by laying the foundation and it just makes me wonder if this is just another one of those things. Because this

is ridiculous. You know, we've, we've reduced these greenhouse gas emissions through the

regulations they're cutting back by over 50%. And they're just going to wipe it all the way, because it's strangling these record profit earning companies that make billions of dollars

“and charge you whatever the hell they feel like on any given amount for your electricity.”

So yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't. It's got to be an election thing, maybe. Yeah, would be really nice if the governor of my state hadn't blocked all of our clean energy build out over the past few years, because they are going to start firing up those plants again. I will say, if anyone's looking, um, and you're worried about the price of diesel, an AI data center did spill 5,000 gallons of diesel into the Secocus River. So if you've got like a

long straw, put some water underneath it or it'd be too, you want to get, it's goes out to any of our listeners. A lot of it is probably still there. That's one of those stories. It's a little too on the nose, uh, literally AI data center dumping diesel into the, also if you don't know the Secocus River, Secocus New Jersey is a super fun site. Like they work, they, they can't afford to take steps backwards at this point. It's one of those parts of America. I'm from New York. It's very

easy to mock New Jersey, but I'm going to go factual. It smells very bad. Okay. It's one of those places like Savannah, Georgia with beautiful place next to a sulfur plant. And it's like, but I mean, is if you live there, you don't notice that it smells that way and anyone who goes there knows that it smells that way. Secocus New Jersey is currently being, the Scottish River is being dredged. They are making this massive super fun effort to clean it up and yeah, this AI data center,

just unexplained spell dumped a huge amount of diesel into the water. So not a great story. Not the least worst part of my week. However, silver lining to that story is diesel prices are continuing to increase. So if you live in the New Jersey metal lands area and have empty, uh, oil cans, I would recommend head to the river with a straw as fast as possible. It's time for a siphon. And that does bring us to the end of our show. Unless anyone else wants to comment on that story.

Well, so I do have two things before we jump into that. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

“That's the thing. But so it's fascinating because you're talking about data centers. And I think”

this situation is going to create data centers 2.0 in two years. Because right now, we see this bipartisan effort to kind of push back against data centers. When you have all of these plants, the coal plants, the oil plants, the natural gas plants, and they're dumping sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, all that particulate matter into the atmosphere. So it actually disproportionately if impacts, uh, negatively impacts Republican leading states. And I think what's going to happen is

is that the Democrats obviously are standing on principle of we just need a cleaner environment whereas now Republicans are rolling this stuff back. But eventually these Republican communities are going to say, hey, wait a minute. I live in West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Oklahoma, North Dakota, wherever we're, where the majority of the energy comes from burning something, burning coal or whatever. And they're like, my air is awful now. And this might be one of the

situations where you have now, once again, like, flock cameras and the data centers, joining emerging of interest between Democrats and Republicans because these, it's going to cost

such an environmental damage. And then my second thought is though, I'm somewhat hopeful though,

because this is yet another one of those areas where Trump can move fast and break things kind of borrow the term from from the tech industry, but he doesn't have unlimited power, like courts can step in and fight back because he can't overturn the clean air act, for instance. He can regulate the rules within and how the EPA enforces things, but he can't overtly just come in and say the clean air act doesn't happen. It is not a thing anymore. Congress can act in ways to limit his power

and hopefully that's where the midterms kind of turn us a bit. And like I just said with these

by this new policy, they may start writing their Republican Congressman like, hey, my air sucks,

and I don't want this, or my husband lost their job because he built these scrubbers or whatever,

“like Matt was saying. And then also on top of that, I think it might actually bring a new wave”

of the state, quote unquote, states, right? Situation where states can start implementing their own stricter rules. And I'm hopeful there where maybe they step in and say, hey, feds are doing nothing here. Our people, we're the ones that live here. We're going to now start implementing these rules and see if we can do that. But in the end, I feel like Matt's right. This is an election hearing thing. It's going to be like, oh, Democrats are going to raise your bills. But again, it's just like

Matt said, they're not going to lower your bills. They're going to pocket this. They're going to

pocket this money. They're not going to look, that's not going to happen. And so never has.

All's we can, though, right now, don't go down. That's not how installation works. Exactly. It just slows down how fast it gets higher. They're not going to lower your bills. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's so, it's so foolish to think that. But there are people that believe that, just like there are people that believe that you're going to get a $5,000 check. And I say, well, if you're going to get, why can't he just give it to us now? He's got a way to the election.

I mean, it's just such bullshit. Yeah. Do you not hear that? Well, I was only offering like three,

“I think, you know. And they, and they, they re-neged on that first check. They claimed, you know,”

that first stimulus check account. But yeah, so five hours. Okay. You know, maybe, maybe I do

like pollution. Maybe we should, uh, yeah, maybe we should rethink this whole pollution and wars thing.

But anyway, so I was, I was, I said, I best, this is a two year problem. I'm not really sucks. But it's, it's a internal EPA policy. So the next administration can absolutely reverse it. It's just such a waste of pollution. I know it's a lot of pollution. It's a waste of our time, our money, our, our political effort when there's bigger problems. And it's just Trump distracting again. It's all the distraction. And he's thinking he's going to, it's just finding ways

to lie to the public about getting money in their pockets. And like the $2,000 fund we're supposed to get, the doge checks, this new $5,000 check. It's just not going to happen. It's all bullshit. Yeah. I mean, I, I certainly hope it's dealt with in two years. But this is very based into his strategy, which is just, you know, cause as much damage as possible. So it's hard to even fight for the status quo. I mean, I think a lot of Democrats are still sort of beating this. We

got to go back to the by and near. We got to go back to the Obama era, drum. And I just, you know,

“I can't help but remember that the world felt like it was falling apart in 2015, even with Trump”

running for president. And, you know, not only remembering that moment, but I feel like our narrative around that has, with the Trump has been like, well, we just have to reverse what he's done. It's, you know, we, we have been, especially with the climate at a point of severe crisis for quite some time now. Like we actually have to be moving into the future. We have to be making progress and increasing our clean energy output and, you know, building these technologies, not just in terms

of energy, but in terms of, you know, the growth of our society as a whole of our information society as a whole. And I think, you know, we're, their strategy is essentially to just throw as many, you know, throw as many sticks in our spokes as possible to try to, to impede progress by, by moving backwards. I mean, I hope this has solved in two years, but that's a lot of emissions in the meantime. One thing that you said that I think is really interesting is you rarely see

these states rights argument applied in favor of more regulation. Unless it's like a, you know, conservative state that wants to make, like, breasts and advertisements illegal or something like that, you know, uh, generally, you know, uh, generally, you know, and occasionally, we have the things that we've ever responded. California, yeah, California, generally, you know, the states rights arguments in recent years have been about protecting health care, protecting or protecting

same-sex marriage, deregulating marijuana, uh, you know, in general, the states rights argument is, we should, our state has decided we're allowed to do this thing. We want guns, okay? We don't, we, we don't want to, you know, wash our hands. It's Florida. We've decided it's illegal to wash your hands or whatever. No, so we decided no one can make you wash your hands. Um, just, I had to check on the municipality laws, but I, I think that's correct. But the point being, it's very rare

that it states like states rights, 10th Amendment invoked, uh, greenhouse gas emissions need to be have, like, that's not, that's not generally how we see the 10th Amendment used, but also we don't generally see the federal government develop this deep into disarray, and I don't even just mean into, uh, fascist takeover. I mean, specifically into just dysfunction. No one seems to know what they're doing at the core of our government right now. And I think you are right to say,

my air being clean. And like, I don't even see, I don't like my air being clean. I don't like

my air being dirty. I don't even see this. And I've said this many times in the podcast. I don't see this as a partisan issue. Like, uh, it's weird that we got separated over the environment being somehow a left-right issue. Like, oh, that's a hippie, lefty thing. Most of the people I know who like want to own large swaths of land are conservative. If you're not, that's fine also and you want to be a farmer. But when we think of the heartland, when we think of people who want to own land,

like, the libertarian aspect of Americans, too, who simply want to have, like, protected, you know, protected territory, protected land. Like, that is absolutely a conservationist belief.

“And I think conservationism really intersects the political spectrum, which you know, we, of course,”

shouldn't think of things as a straight line. But when you, I think conservation is one of those

issues where, you know, when you frame it like about being about a electric cars or a cycling or another, you know, annoying issues that only liberals care about. It's easy to split people apart. But when you, when you look at what people actually care about, it's like, yeah, no one wants dirty water and air that you can taste. Everyone wants the stream to be clean. You know, they just don't want to sacrifice driving or feel bad about it. I think that's, you know, or for having good

shipped to you at any moment. Like, that's the only cultural shift. But even that's not a left-right thing. So I do hope that this is somehow uniting. I think you have a point there. Kind of horrifying though. I like pollution. I can't taste. I, I, I, I, I, I was waiting for that. We'll give it a mic. My bro plastics and not water. Yeah, blavorless microplastics in my water. I, I, I don't want to taste the air.

Only carbon monoxide. Thank you very much. There's no carbon monoxide. I can't see it.

“Exactly. There was carbon monoxide in here. I think I would be able to finish a cent.”

So it's time for the final segment of our show. Where we look at something not so horrific as there has been a lot of bad news this week. And it's a segment that we like to call the least worst part of my week. Would either of you like to tell me and our listening audience and our viewing audience on YouTube? I see you. Not really. That's not what works. New channel. The least worst part of their week are new channel. Those of you watching us on the American Power YouTube channel.

This is what my face looks like from graduations on finding us. Now, Matt or Chad, would you like to look these people right in the eyes and tell them about the least worst part of your week? Sure. Matt, what for least was part of your week? It actually happened today about 20 minutes before the podcast. I had a moment of just glory. So this is a personal story.

“But it's a fantastic one. So my son goes to this after-school program thing, right?”

I go pick him up every day. And I'm saying there I'm waiting on my son. And this gentleman comes up behind me. And in this very soft shaky voice. He's like, "Can I speak to you, sir?" And I turn around and I see this little nothing of a man looking at me shaking. Like his eyeballs are shaking even. He's ghost white. And I'm like wondering what the hell is going on with this guy? Like I thought he might have been having a stroke. And he's like, "Can we go over here and

speak in private?" Because there's kids running around everywhere. So he takes me over here. And he starts apologizing to me. And I learned very quickly that this is a gentleman who about six months ago was terminated from his place of employment for sexually harassing a bunch of women that he worked with. One of these women, being a member of my family, one of my daughter-in-law's. So this guy, and he's talking to me. And all I hear is

Tony Suprano and my ears. Like I'm here and check out the balls on this motherfucker. Because I'm like dude, I'm very intimidating. Like I promise I'm gentle, but I'm like six, six, two, hundred, and eighty pounds. So and this guy is like five foot nothing and maybe a hundred and seven pounds. Like he's a little bitty. And he's looking at me and he's trying to apologize to me for all the things he did. And he's just shaking. Like violently. And I am such an asshole

that I am loving every second of this because of the power I was wielding over this man.

And I let him talk and I let him talk and I let him talk and when he got done, I said, yeah,

choke him out and buddy slam him face first. But I just said, well, I guess you did what you had to

do. And I just walked off and left him standing there. Like I didn't know how to respond. But I got to tell you, it was so much fun seeing a man who acts like he acts. Apparently has a long history of this stuff. He's losing everything else. His wife is leaving him because of all this stuff that happened. And he's kind of an older gentleman and these were all much younger women

“who like in their early 20s. So this guy, I think he's about my age. But just to see and be”

able to relish in his discomfort and fear and all of the things that he was the emotions that was terrifying him in that moment, I couldn't believe he walked up to me. Of course, we were surrounded

by ten-year-old kids. So maybe he felt it was a safe space. But I felt awesome, honestly,

seeing this little man like just shaking front of me in power because he knows he's not a man. And I had to call my son and say, hey, I talked to dude, you know, and I got home and I got to tell my wife before he came on the podcast and everyone thought it was great. Absolutely, not just the least worst part of my week, probably the least worst part of my year was seeing this guy. I got to give him credit though for apologizing and everything. It really meant nothing to me.

I'm just, you know, I got to give him credit for that. But I don't really mean anything to me. I'll give you shit, but it was fantastic. I wish I could experience something like that more often.

“I mean, I believe in restorative justice, but hard to feel sympathetic for an abuser, a serial”

abuser, especially who, you know, maybe losing everything will make it as what will finally

make him learn his lesson, but it doesn't sound like it. And that's the thing. He is a serial abuser with, um, I think he has four kids. Um, so cool guy. Well, good for you. I didn't know you were six, six. I'm a little more frightened of you than I have been in the past. And for the listeners, I'm a seven foot one and a 400 pounds. The cameras angle that a little hot. Your seven one, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a chair. It's a very cool chair. Yeah. This is like, this is a throne

if you actually can't see the bottom half. My torso is like, way, well, this is, this is only like a, like, you're just sitting on the floor. That's the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sitting flat down the floor. Yeah. Just just waterpick. Um, Chad, what's your weight and height at least worth part of your week? So it's kind of fascinating. I was like, thinking about like, damn, that's big dude, because I'm a big dude too. I'm 6, 3, 2, 50. And like, I was like, man, we, in this, this, uh,

find out tour kicks off. I was like, we're, we need to propose some like, some podcast wrestling

“matches to see who who's the king of the podcast. I think we would dominate that. Oh, you guys”

can have a little, those little, find out guys. Yeah, find out that the other little find out dudes out there would be like just crushing and rich. We're rich could get in the rain with us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a couple scrappy ones in there and stuff. So, but yeah, that's in with Lou Key's angry. No, I know. He's very angry. So they might help you monetize your scrappiness. But, uh, now my, uh, my least worst part, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get a demoralizing

fun, uh, angry little man. But mine's broader, mine's, and it's not personal. It's, uh, I'm, I'm a, I'm a big science nerd. So, I read in the New York Times, because I do, as I said, I subscribe to the subscribers, subscribe to newspapers. It's, uh, it's been life-changing for me to go back to reading physical newspapers, even though it's from a newspaper from across the country. But the Luxe Zeppelin detector detected, uh, dark matter. This is a, a, a particle. I don't know if

it's a particle accelerator or some sort of interesting piece of equipment, like, I'm a geopolitics warfare guy I'm going to assign to this, but it's called a liquid xenon detector and supposedly they detected dark matter. And if this was confirmed, it would be enormous, because dark matter makes up something like 85% of our universe. And we don't know exactly what it is. And the only reason we think it exists is because of the, uh, the effects it has on gravity and on galaxies and things like that.

But if, if we do confirm this, it could reveal some sort of new fundamental particle that is, it allows us to be able to understand the world around us. But not only that, usually when something like this happens, we make huge leaps in technology, like new areas of fundamental physics and technologies, they, they follow decades later. And it had me thinking, you know what this

turn this into a weapon. No, no, I'm, uh, I'm kidding. I'm kidding, but kind of not, I don't know, but that, but that, I don't think we're going to get like dark matter engines or anything anytime soon. But it, it's, it's kind of like in that realm of quantum computing and stuff.

It's, it was, it was stuff that we never thought was possible. And now suddenly we're, we're

right on the cusp of it, or maybe even fusion power and stuff like that. But, um, definitely, just a very cool, nerding out thing that I saw and, um, yeah, we may be on the cusp of understanding dark matter a little better. And we can hopefully do some good with it, not

“making, not make a, the fucking weapon out of it. But, um, yeah, hopefully, uh, I think humanity”

can, can make another leap forward and maybe we'll be able to solve some fundamental problems on energy and, and such. So, yeah, that's my least worst part. That's exciting. What you guys I was, well, I was just going to say on your, on your topic for the, I've said this on the show before, but, you know, I feel like I grew up in a very science as exciting era and, you know, the

past 10 or plus years of science have been very devolution of society and commercial, you know,

prevalence of advertising or military focused in terms of, you know, we used to get very excited about these advances. And, you know, in the, in the early year of, uh, everything becoming interconnected and, you know, I remember sitting in a room with people and watching Google Earth and just like, go from one address to another. But, broader, you know, I think like, I find a lot of stuff really exciting on the, uh, in the energy science level, uh, in, in that world, but you don't,

I, I feel like a, um, there's not a lot of interaction between that and the sort of like hearing like broader quantum physics science and stuff like that. The idea of dark energy being harnessable somehow, I think is obviously like decades in the future, but it is, can't help but be excited about the

potential, um, potential ramifications of that, um, I think it's just having any other knowledge

correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that dark matter is evenly distributed completely throughout space as in, throughout space and time. So it is everywhere. It's not affected by gravity, um, and that understanding, if I'm not wrong, I am by no means an expert on this. So if you're a listener who's about to get really mad at me, um, I don't know you. So that's your own problem. Uh, I believe that, I believe that the understanding the density of dark matter would help us

understand the size of the universe or the degree to it is truly finite or infinite and expanding or attracting, uh, as our understanding of that is still largely theoretical. I know I'm speaking out of turn here, but my memory is that this is fundamental to our understanding of the makeup of the universe, and I find that really exciting. Um, but I do want a dark matter, uh, portal

“gun that I can, you know, walk through and that's how it's used in science fiction. I assume that's”

real. Dark matter, refrigerator. Well, what you guys do? At least we're part of my week. So, uh, as I mentioned last week, I'm a nine-left survivor at a really rough week, and I do want to focus on something unrelated to that, but it was really important to me last week. I went to a visit to my father's house and my father used to live in the city, but moved upstate, uh, to a cabin that he's been gradually greenifying, and removed his oil, heater, he's added solar panels, um, all sorts of

that kind of thing in the process to sort of electrify and greenify this home, which is, uh, really admirable. Um, a couple years ago, some of you may know there was a massive forest fire in New York and New Jersey, and that forest fire ended literally across the street from my family's home, and I thought we were about to lose everything. Those of you who've known me longer, who might know me as a public power advocate, would know that I gave a speech about this. Uh, you can actually

see it on my Instagram or the public power Instagram back in November of 2024, but I spoke to the New York power authority at a public hearing on stage with executives from the New York power authority, and I talked to them about this story of almost losing everything, and finding out that my family's home, accepting that we were about to lose our whole home, and then finding that

“by some miracle, it had stopped 50 feet away. This massive forest fire, and that the only thing that”

I felt in that moment was not relief, but just the feeling that this was the beginning of a series of much worse disasters. And it really forced me to, you know, I really reinforced my commitment to to fighting climate change and to fighting for renewable energy. Um, and I don't want to be fatalistic when I say, oh, I worry that this is the, you know, I know this will be the least, this will be the, this is the beginning of worse events that will happen. One thing that has

given me some hope, and it's, I know it's circumstantial, but I've seen so much progress in spite of what's happening on a federal level in the two years since I gave that speech. We are still fighting our governor here in New York for the renewable energy build out that she signed into law.

of other progress, and I was at the house the other day, and I remember walking up into the

“burn forest, and it wasn't just seeing the trees toppled, but that forest always has this carpet”

of comfortable, like thick moss, and it feels like walking around on a carpeted floor, even though you're climbing up the side of a mountain. It's really beautiful in the sterling forest. And it took multiple seasons, but the forest has started to grow again, and the moss cover has actually returned to the sterling forest, and it's now coating the mountains again. And it was just like beautiful moment. I climbed up there one morning, and it just reminded me that

“the earth wants to survive. The earth wants to live. Nature wants to”

survive, and it's not that it can't live without our help. It's that it would can't live without us, with us suppressing it. And so it's just sort of beautiful to watch, that even just in that vacuum of suppression, it's gotten so much more beautiful there again, and life has returned to that, but was a pretty barren area just over a year ago. And I know that's a tiny, tiny sector of the world, but it meant a lot to me. That moss means a lot to me,

and that is the least worst part of my week. It's very cool. I know I'm getting pretty sentimental about moss, but I was really sad when it was crunchy. I mean, I know, I mean, I feel you on that. I mean, we have forward, I live in the West Coast, so a force fires burn our mountains every year. And when we go up in the mountains and see the tiny tree start to go, it's really inspiring. Yeah, it really, it really does, you know, it does make you feel like you're part of something

larger and remind you that you're, you know, interconnected with all of that.

“And on that note, I think that brings us to the end of our episode. I do want to mention that”

in a very few days, Saudi Arabia will, for the first time in decades, not be exporting oil. So

if you know any barrens, just keep them away from windows for the next few weeks, this could get, you're going to see monocles dropping into martini glasses left and right when they read their stock tickers. So just make sure your windows are double reinforced and locked from the outside. Okay, folks. And that brings us to the end of our episode. This has been American power from Findout Media. Make sure you check out if you are not subscribing our new American power

YouTube channel. We are no longer under the Findout Media YouTube channel. That's American power on YouTube and American power podcasts on other social media for clips of the podcast and more

for our Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph. I'm your host, Nat Townsend. And we're always

As remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts Americanly.