I had dinner the other night with a sharp, well-read woman who laid out two completely contradictory explanations for what’s happening in the world right now — and then told me she could see either one being true. “I just don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said.
She isn’t alone. She might be all of us.
In today’s conversation, Doug and I dig into what I think is the defining condition of 2026: we are drowning in narratives. The old game was narrative control. The new game is narrative flooding — pump out so many competing stories that everyone finds one they like, latches onto it, and stops looking.
We get into:
Why humans are wired to accept any story that’s plausible, comforting, and gratifying — and how that wiring is being weaponized against us
The fund manager call where a genteel discussion about Iran turned ugly fast, and what it says about the battle lines being drawn
The actual math behind the Strait of Hormuz closure — 13 million barrels a day gone, dwarfing the COVID demand shock — and why the consequences are already baked in
Whether Trump knew the Strait would close when he authorized the strike (the evidence is uncomfortable)
The drug boats, the 1988 Vincennes incident Americans have forgotten and Iranians have not, and why the homeland is meaningfully less secure today than it was three months ago
Why China may quietly come out of this stronger than anyone
And the deeper question underneath all of it: when a civilization stops sharing a story about itself, what holds it together?
Caesar was warned the Ides of March had come. He pointed out, smugly, that nothing had happened. The seer’s reply is the one to remember:
Ay, Caesar — but not gone.
Listen above.
