the uae wants you to see luxury towers, space missions, and humanitarian aid. but behind the scenes, it’s funding militias, backing warlords, and quietly helping reshape wars across the middle east and africa.

in this episode, we look at how the united arab emirates became one of the most influential and destabilizing actors in the region. from arming the rsf in sudan’s civil war and enabling genocide in darfur, to supporting separatists in yemen and building covert drone bases, the uae’s foreign policy isn’t about peace, it’s about control.

this is about power, ports, and profit. and the cost is being paid by people in sudan, yemen, libya, and beyond.

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when you buy a bottle of “italian” or “spanish” olive oil, there’s a decent chance it came from tunisia.

the oil, that is, not the label.

in this episode, we trace the path of tunisia’s most important export from ancient olive groves to supermarkets worldwide and unpack how global trade rules, branding power, and consumer habits keep countries like tunisia invisible on the shelf.

it’s not just about olive oil. it’s about who gets to create value, and who gets to claim it.

in september 2024, albania’s prime minister announced a plan to create a new sovereign state inside tirana, the capital of the country.

a spiritual microstate, run by the bektashi order, a sufi-inspired religious group. it sounded symbolic. maybe even strange. but it was real.

in this episode, we break down what the bektashi proposal actually is, where it came from, and why it’s raising questions. about power, corruption, religious identity, and what happens when politics uses faith to sell a bigger story.

most people in mongolia's capital ulaanbaatar don’t live in apartments, they live in ger districts.

entire neighborhoods built from traditional yurts, often without sewage, piped water, or reliable heat.

in this episode, we look at how the collapse of the soviet union, climate disasters, and decades of underinvestment led hundreds of thousands to settle on the city’s edge, and why those areas are still waiting for the basics.

a motorcycle crashes. the rider dies. the bike keeps showing up at the same tree.

so the town builds a temple.

this episode is about om banna, the bullet baba shrine, and how something that makes no sense became part of everyday life.

after 14 years of civil war, assad is finally out, but syria is not at peace.

in this episode, I break down the new power struggle between turkey and israel as both countries move into post-assad syria.

turkey’s backing the new government. israel’s bombing airbases. and behind the scenes, the u.s. is trying to stop its allies from turning on each other because if they do, a much bigger conflict could be around the corner.

this isn’t just about syria. it’s about who gets to dominate the region next.

you see thai restaurants everywhere, but barely any thai communities. from istanbul to nyc, that pattern kept popping up, and i started asking why. turns out, it wasn’t a coincidence. this episode looks at how thailand used food as soft power and why your local pad thai might have more to do with global strategy than migration.

in somalia, you don’t swipe cards or tap your phone. you punch numbers into your phone and pay in seconds, no apps, no banks necessary. this episode unpacks how mobile money took over the economy, the role of the telecom companies, and what hawala, worldremit, and 5g in the middle of nowhere all have to do with it.

since late 2023, over 800,000 afghans have been expelled from pakistan, with millions more at risk. iran is doing the same. many of those being deported have lived outside afghanistan for decades, if not their whole lives. but now they’re being pushed back into a country with no jobs, no aid system, and no real plan to support them. and almost no one is talking about it.

what started as a battle over secularism has become something deeper. this episode traces turkey’s hundred-year struggle between military control and democracy, between religious conservatism and personal freedom and how erdoğan, once the underdog, became the system he fought.

now, with imamoğlu behind bars and protests erupting across the country, the real question is:

who gets to decide what turkey becomes next?