The Continuum

Before Memorial Day became a holiday of barbecues and long weekends, one of the first known Memorial Day ceremonies was held by former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1865, newly freed Black Americans honored fallen Union soldiers who died fighting against slavery by giving them proper burials and holding a massive remembrance ceremony.

This is the forgotten story of how Memorial Day began — and the powerful connection between freedom, sacrifice, and remembrance in American history.

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Oil has dozens of producers. Advanced semiconductor chips — the components powering every smartphone, every AI system, every modern weapons platform on the planet — have one.

Taiwan.

One island. 23 million people. 90% of the world’s most advanced chips. And right now, as the Iran war disrupts the energy supply lines that keep Taiwan’s fabs running, the fragility of the entire global technology supply chain has never been more visible.

This episode tells the full story — from Taiwan’s deliberate government bet in the 1960s to turn itself from a textile exporter into a semiconductor superpower, to the founding vision of Morris Chang and the pure-play foundry model that nobody else had tried, to the extraordinary ascent of TSMC into the most critical manufacturing company in the history of human technology, to the geopolitical question now dominating the minds of every defense planner and tech executive in the world: what happens to the global economy if Taiwan’s chip production stops?

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The petrodollar system has survived oil embargoes, financial crises, and the rise of China. It survived 2008 — when a crisis born in American banks sent investors running toward the dollar, not away from it.

But the dollar just posted its worst performance in over fifty years. And this time, the threat didn’t come from Beijing or Moscow.

It came from Washington.

In Episode 3 of our Petrodollar series, we cover the two events that are changing the architecture of global finance in real time: the Trump administration’s chaotic tariff policy — which shattered the dollar’s safe-haven status for the first time in modern history — and the war with Iran, which closed the Strait of Hormuz and turned the world’s most critical oil chokepoint into a yuan-denominated toll booth.

The petroyuan isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s being enforced at gunpoint in the waters where the petrodollar was born.

In this episode: — How the dollar’s safe-haven status broke down under its own government’s policy — Why the Strait of Hormuz closure is the most direct challenge to the petrodollar since 1974 — Iran’s condition for reopening the strait — and what it means that ships paid in yuan — Saudi Arabia’s quiet departure from the 1974 petrodollar arrangement — What the de-dollarization numbers actually show — without the hype or the denial — The British pound parallel — and what it tells us about how reserve currencies actually die

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In Episode 1, we traced how America replaced the gold standard with oil — and built the petrodollar system in a secret deal between Henry Kissinger and the Saudi royal family.

In Episode 2, we look at what that system actually did.

For fifty years, the United States has run deficits that would have collapsed any other economy. Borrowed endlessly. Printed money. Fought wars it couldn’t pay for. And the global financial system absorbed all of it — because the world needed dollars, and it needed them to buy oil.

That is the exorbitant privilege. And it didn’t come for free.

The same strong dollar that let Washington borrow cheaply made American manufacturing uncompetitive and sent factories overseas. The same recycling loop that kept interest rates low pumped money into financial assets owned overwhelmingly by the wealthy. And the same dollar dominance that gave the US financial flexibility eventually became something else entirely: a weapon.

When the US froze $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves in 2022, every country in the world got the same message: the dollars you hold are subject to American political decisions. Your reserves aren’t savings. They’re hostages.

That decision — more than any other single event — is what is now driving the de-dollarization we’re seeing accelerate in 2025 and 2026.

In this episode: — Why the US can run trade deficits that would destroy any other currency — How petrodollar recycling keeps American borrowing costs artificially low — The strong dollar’s hidden cost: deindustrialization and the hollowing out of the American working class — How the dollar became a geopolitical weapon through sanctions — Why the 2022 Russia asset freeze was the moment the world started building exits — What 2008 tells us about the dollar’s self-reinforcing power — and its limits

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Discover the secret arrangement that saved the US dollar and reshaped the global economy for 50 years. In 1971, the world’s financial anchor snapped when Richard Nixon ended the gold standard. Facing economic chaos and a skyrocketing oil crisis, a secret 1974 deal between Henry Kissinger and the Saudi royal family created a new world order: the Petrodollar system.

We trace the history of modern money from the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to the “Nixon Shock,” revealing how America replaced gold with oil to maintain its status as the world’s reserve currency.

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In 44 BCE, an 18-year-old received a letter in Greece telling him that Julius Caesar — assassinated the day before — had named him his heir. His advisors told him to walk away. He walked straight in.

What followed was one of the most ruthless and brilliant political ascents in human history. The boy everyone planned to sideline outmaneuvered Mark Antony, outlasted Cleopatra, put his own champion Cicero on a death list, and then — after winning a civil war that left him the last man standing — did something no one expected.

He gave the power back.

Or appeared to.

This is the full story of Augustus Caesar — the man who watched Julius Caesar get stabbed twenty-three times for looking like a king, and spent the next fifty years ruling as one while making sure nobody could point to the throne.

In this episode we cover: — How an 18-year-old with no army turned a famous name into absolute power — The Second Triumvirate and the proscription list that killed Cicero — The Battle of Philippi and the death of the Republic’s last defenders — Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and how Augustus turned a love affair into a propaganda weapon — The Battle of Actium and the last war Rome would fight itself — The Principate — the fake republic that actually worked — The Pax Romana, the marble city, and the 200-year peace he built on blood

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The Tanker War remains one of the most volatile chapters in Middle East history, directly shaping the permanent US military presence in the Persian Gulf today. In this deep dive, we explore Iraq’s deliberate strategy to bomb Kharg Island to provoke an Iranian retaliation. By forcing Iran to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, Saddam Hussein aimed to globalize the conflict and force a US intervention. From the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers in Operation Earnest Will to the tragic downing of Iran Air Flight 655, we analyze how these events created the geopolitical landscape of 1991, 2003, and the tensions we see in 2026.

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In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. Saddam Hussein expected it to be over in weeks. It lasted eight years. It killed over a million people. It used chemical weapons on a scale not seen since World War One.

This is Part 1 of our two-part series on the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). This episode covers the ground war — the invasion, the human wave attacks, the chemical weapons, and the economic destruction.

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This week, Senator Lindsey Graham went on Fox News and said “We did Iwo Jima — we can do this” to argue for sending U.S. Marines to seize Iran’s Kharg Island. Republicans and Democrats immediately pushed back. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called it “a lack of respect for life.” Rep. Jason Crow noted that nearly 7,000 Americans died and 19,000 were wounded at Iwo Jima. Rep. Nancy Mace said Graham “needs to be removed from the Situation Room.”

Kharg Island and Iwo Jima are not the same. But when a U.S. Senator uses that name on national television to justify a military operation — the name deserves to be understood fully. Not as a symbol. Not as a slogan. As a specific, documented, devastating thing that happened to real people.

This episode tells that story — through the numbers, through the terrain, and through the words of the men who survived it.

In this episode we cover: — Why Iwo Jima was strategically critical — and why Japan’s commander built an underground city to defend it — What the beach was actually like on Day One — and why 2,400 Americans became casualties before nightfall — The real story behind Rosenthal’s flag photograph — and the 31 days of fighting that came after it — The Meat Grinder, Bloody Gorge, and the named killing grounds of the northern advance — Survivor testimony: what veterans said Iwo Jima did to them, in their own words — What Graham said, what his colleagues said back, and why the weight of this name matters

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In August 1953, the CIA and British intelligence MI6 overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a covert operation codenamed Operation Ajax. They did it in four days. They did it for oil. And for seventy years, they denied it.

This is the full story — from the 1901 British oil concession that handed Iran’s resources to a foreign company, to the global embargo that strangled Iran’s economy, to the CIA operative who crossed into Tehran under a false name with a million-dollar budget and a plan to manufacture a revolution.

And it’s a story that didn’t end in 1953. The coup that brought the Shah back to power laid the groundwork for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis, decades of sanctions, and the Iran-U.S. conflict that continues today.

In this episode we cover: — The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and 50 years of exploitation — Why Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s oil — and why the West couldn’t allow it — Operation Ajax: the three-part CIA playbook of press, streets, and army — The first coup attempt that failed — and the three days that changed everything — The Dulles brothers’ conflicts of interest and who really profited — The direct line from 1953 to the Iran we know today.

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