September 16, 2026
Pod Save The World
Don Jr.’s Big Fat Russian Wedding
In This Episode
The Houthis seize control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Trump rolls a grenade into Northern Ireland’s politics, and a Russian oligarch funds Don Jr.’s wedding.
Tommy and Ben break down some of the most alarming expansions of the Iran war: Houthi rebels have captured roughly 80 miles of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Iranian-backed militants have blown up a Saudi pipeline in Iraq, and Iran’s targeting has improved thanks to Chinese satellite imagery. An exclusive first look at a new Eurasia Group poll finds the Iran war’s approval sitting at 34% nationally, with disapproval among independents jumping 13 points.
Then Trump visits his Irish golf course on the taxpayer’s dime and casually upends decades of US policy on Northern Ireland in an impromptu press conference. This week also brings multiple stories of brazen grift: ProPublica reports that a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for portions of Don Jr.’s Bahamas wedding, and The New Yorker does a deep dive on how much Jared Kushner’s diplomacy is colored by his personal financial motives.
And finally, a Russian drone strikes a Ukrainian train station minutes after trains carrying the national security advisors of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy passed through. At the end of the show, Tommy speaks to Hamza Chaudhry from the Future of Life Institute about the crazy last week in AI, how to judge tech leaders’ calls for a slowdown in development, and what to expect from Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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