Also: the Sydney Roosters

Quite telling that on X right now there is a heated debate over which idiot the Iranian Navy is referring to

We’ve done many episodes on the history of Israel…

This needed a warning to ensure you had taken your blood pressure pills prior to listening.

A song about someone stealing natural resources!

How the Iran war exposed Australia's energy mistakes | If You're Listening YouTube video by ABC News In-depth

I am fairly certain we have never made an episode of If You’re Listening that has made more people more angry than this one youtu.be/lxwXKkHcgwM?...

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

HSBC CEO “The highest I’ve seen, and I’m hoping we don’t see more of that, but the highest I’ve seen is $286 for a barrel of oil that reached Sri Lanka”

That’s a delivered barrel so includes shipping, insurance, etc.

But it’s still an eye-watering price to pay.

FT full quote:

If you're wondering how the blockade is landing, this has been making its way around the naval nerds today

What’s in there? Is it crude? ULP? Diesel? LPG? Pop it in your tank and find out!

Signs warning of an underground high pressure oil pipeline in Newcastle.

Pro tip for Novocastrians: Dodge high fuel prices by tapping this bad boy

Oil prices look set to jump back up today after Donald Trump announced a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
We will be recording a snap Q&A episode of If You're Listening in a few hours - @ me with questions or email ifyourelistening[at]abc.net.au

Has anyone considering getting a guy named something like “John America” to run for President of the United States?

Hang on… are you telling me that the name of the guy Viktor Orban is running against in the Hungarian Election translates to English as “Peter Hungarian”?

Great piece on scam centres, human trafficking and regional politics in Asia by @mattbevan.bsky.social

The “this is all a distraction” thing is very wrong and often peddled by people who want to influence what we’re focusing on. “Please ignore the new thing and continue focusing on the thing I care about more”. There’s definitely no strategy.

Time for Queensland to whack a toll on the Torres Strait and split it with PNG.

(I deleted an earlier post which said the pics weren’t from Artemis. They were, but not of the far side of the moon. Thanks @gergyl.bsky.social for the detailed pictures of what they actually show) bsky.app/profile/gerg...

NASA Artemis on X: "Approaching the near side of the Moon. The Artemis II astronauts have surpassed the record for the distance from Earth at 1:56 ET (1756 UTC). This record was previously set during the Apollo 13 mission when the astronauts traveled 248,655 miles from Earth. The Moon continues to https://t.co/OapAGgGMex" / X Approaching the near side of the Moon. The Artemis II astronauts have surpassed the record for the distance from Earth at 1:56 ET (1756 UTC). This record was previously set during the Apollo 13 mission when the astronauts traveled 248,655 miles from Earth. The Moon continues to https://t.co/OapAGgGMex

Here’s NASA’s original post with a better description of what the pictures actually show. x.com/nasaartemis/...

I love dunking on Naomi Wolf too, but right now it’s a 3/4 moon on earth, meaning the sun is almost entirely on the “near” side of the moon. So… I hate to say it but curiosity over the light source for these “far side” pics is warranted.
(The answer is the pics are not of the far side)

Yeah ok it’s not fully full, but it was full 5 days ago and will be new 10 days from now. It’s hardly new.

“Commander Wiseman! You’re a great-looking guy. Very strong. Are you the strongest one up there? Who’s the strongest? Definitely not the Canadian guy, right?”

What happened last time we ran out of oil | If You're Listening YouTube video by ABC News In-depth

Good stuff from @mattbevan.bsky.social.
youtu.be/-rR1zDCB8tI

Nightmare blunt rotation

The funniest part of this to me is the fact that Rob Schneider looked at a war being entirely fought by long range missiles and suicide drones and went "You know what we need? More infantry".

This might be the most frustrating conversation I have ever heard on a podcast. Caldwell comes in and says he thinks the Iran War is the end of Trumpism, then while Ezra does his best to get him to explain why that is, Caldwell spends an hour basically contradicting his own argument.

I am! Available to pre-order now.