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This was yet another jam-packed conversation with James Matthewson that got into some raw, honest areas I didn’t expect.
We opened on Iran, where the Pentagon is actively covering up both the financial and human cost of a war now on its eleventh consecutive night of strikes after the ceasefire failed. We moved to Andy Burnham’s first week as UK Prime Minister, where he announced one of the more ambitious policies I’ve heard from any Western leader lately, ending homelessness in Britain within six months, even as parts of his own coalition tried to paint him as something he isn’t. And we closed with something bigger picture: a real conversation about the need for everyone to develop better radars for egomaniacal grifters.
I appreciate those of you who tuned in live and contributed so much to the conversation. This is truly the best community on Substack. If you’re just catching it now, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below. And, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.
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Iran’s War Grinds On And The Costs Are Being Covered Up
James and I opened with Trump threatening to strike Iranian civilian infrastructure again, and from there the conversation became less about the war itself and more about what the Pentagon isn’t telling us about it.
We’re on the eleventh consecutive night of strikes, and I called it what it is: the same headlines on a loop. Oil is climbing back toward $100, the Iran-backed Houthis are now threatening the Red Sea, a second crucial waterway, after the ceasefire collapsed exactly the way everyone expected it to.
I laid out the financial cover-up in detail. Defense Secretary Hegseth testified to Congress this week that the war has cost $37.5 billion, but I cited more credible estimates putting the real number closer to $80 to $100 billion, money I noted could otherwise cover things like the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies several times over, while households are already eating roughly $1,100 in estimated added energy costs tied to the conflict.
Then there’s the human cost, which is being hidden even more directly. Three US service members were killed this week alone. The New York Times revealed three additional strikes the Pentagon never disclosed, injuring close to 100 service members and damaging helicopters and infrastructure, information that only came out because reporters forced it, not because the Pentagon volunteered it.
A Sky News documentary explored the US strike that killed 156 people at a school in Iran, 120 of them students, most of them girls, along with an unborn child. Sky expanded on The New York Times’ earlier reporting, which found the US strike was responsible. Sky’s own conclusion was that it was a mistake, the result of bad intelligence and a lack of interest in confirming what the site was actually being used for before hitting it.
James connected the dots on why almost none of this is getting real scrutiny: the press pool itself has been hollowed out. He pointed out that Bush and Cheney still had to stand up and call civilian deaths “collateral damage.” This administration doesn’t even have to do that anymore, because the Pentagon press pool has been narrowed down mostly to friendly right-wing outlets.
This War Has Gotten Us Nothing
Once we got past the cover-up itself, the conversation turned to what this war has actually accomplished, and the honest answer, from both of us, was very little.
I connected the Saudi angle directly to the Kushner family’s financial ties. The US struck a deal letting Saudi Arabia enrich uranium without a robust inspection regime, which I called a major step backward, especially arming an unreliable rival to Iran with nuclear capability. I noted the deal lines up suspiciously well with Jared Kushner’s investment fund, which draws money from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
I connected this to a bigger shift in global power dynamics. With the previous, comparatively more moderate Khamenei gone and an emboldened IRGC now calling more of the shots, and with Iran demonstrating real leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, I argued Trump has effectively created a new “might is right” world order, one where any country with leverage over a chokepoint, Russia and China included, has been shown exactly how little consequence there is for using it.
James brought receipts from an actual defense industry insider. He’d spoken with a defense editor at Europe’s largest defense procurement event, who told him Germany now openly regards the US as weak on defense.
He kept the list going, and it built into a genuinely damning picture. The US can’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It can’t neutralize the Houthis, a rebel group with none of the terrain advantages the Taliban had, everyone knows exactly where they are. And now the administration is ramping up rhetoric on Cuba while ignoring that the suffering there traces back to Washington’s own decades-long blockade.
I drew the parallel to Russia’s humiliation in Ukraine, and it led somewhere unexpected. Just as Russia’s military reputation collapsed once a smaller, more determined Ukraine exposed it, I argued the US is running through its own missile stockpile while Iran retains a striking share of its launch capability despite US claims of having degraded it. Iran is still able to hit Gulf bases, damage US military equipment, kill and injure American service members, and hold the Strait hostage. That’s not what “victory” is supposed to look like.
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Burnham’s Ambitious First Week
I wanted James’s read on Andy Burnham’s early moves as prime minister, and the conversation ended up covering both a genuinely bold policy and the ugly politics already surrounding it.
James described Burnham’s opening act as more ambitious than either of us expected. After the formal ceremony of being invited by the King to form a government, Burnham’s first announced policy wasn’t a safe, symbolic gesture, it was a pledge to end homelessness entirely within six months, which he called a disgrace to society.
I asked directly whether that meant real housing or just clearing encampments, and James’s answer traced back through decades of British housing policy. Burnham’s plan centers on rebuilding council housing, the state-supported housing system that flourished after World War II, which James’s own grandparents benefited from as working-class newlyweds. Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Right to Buy scheme let residents purchase those homes cheaply. James cited a friend’s grandparents who bought their council house for £16,000, now worth roughly £495,000, which built real wealth for that generation and shifted many of them toward voting Conservative. What never got rebuilt was the housing stock itself, which is why young families today can’t get access to it at all.
I pointed out the policy does double duty. Housing the unhoused population is one benefit, but adding housing supply broadly also brings costs down for everyone else, directly undercutting the scapegoat narrative that blames immigrants for housing shortages. Scarcity is what breeds scapegoating in the first place, and solving the actual shortage takes real wind out of Nigel Farage’s sails.
I connected it back home, noting Congress recently passed a housing bill Trump refused to sign but that became law anyway, calling it a solid first step that the US still needs to build much further on.
The “Zionist” Smear Aimed At Burnham
James brought up how parts of the UK left are already smearing Burnham as a “Zionist” within days of taking office, and it’s worth hearing directly what he found when he actually pushed back on it.
James said the label doesn’t survive five minutes of scrutiny. When he pushed friends on why they call Burnham a Zionist, the answers kept circling back to “he still believes in Israel.”
He pointed out Burnham’s real positions are more progressive than the caricature, not less. Burnham backs a two-state solution, further than the current US administration or Israel’s government will go, and considers West Bank settlements illegal. James said he’s withholding full judgment on foreign policy specifics until seeing where the new Foreign Secretary lands.
James brought his own credibility into it too. He claims he’s currently banned from traveling to Israel, and still finds himself getting labeled unfairly over language rather than substance, which he said says more about how loosely the term gets thrown around than about anything he or Burnham has actually done.
My one addition was a simple filter for cutting through this kind of debate: any country that currently exists has a right to keep existing, because it exists. That doesn’t extend to unlimited military budgets or a pass on how Gaza and the West Bank are being oppressed, but it’s a useful starting point before the conversation gets more complicated.
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We Must Demand More From Our Own Side
We closed, as we have before, with a hard look inward at the media ecosystem James and I are both part of, and this time it went further than usual, into a specific and troubling example.
James made the case that grift isn’t a right-wing exclusive. He pointed to unnamed left-leaning streamers who whip up their audiences the same way, building an echo chamber instead of an argument. His point was that grifters specifically avoid holding nuance because it doesn’t generate the same outrage or income.
I connected the incentive structure directly to Trump’s own playbook. Stripping out nuance is what creates the outrage that generates the dollars, the exact same binary, everyone’s-out-to-get-you formula Trump uses to keep his own base locked in. I mentioned a tweet I’d written recently about needing better radars for egomaniacal grifters, and named Graham Platner again specifically as someone I was skeptical of from the start and who turned out to be exactly what I suspected.
A viewer asked me to name the grifters directly, and I declined on air, for now. I said naming names outright would “start some wars,” but that I’m considering doing a more thorough, evidence-based investigation into this at some point, rather than calling people out without receipts.
I tied it back to something I’ve been sitting with during this stretch of paternity leave: independent media needs to do better. I said plainly that I’d rather keep building slower, on curiosity instead of outrage, than take the faster path some creators are taking.
Bottom Line
The Pentagon is hiding what this war actually costs, in dollars and in lives. Parts of the UK left are smearing a prime minister days into office over a label that doesn’t hold up to five minutes of scrutiny. And plenty of media on both sides of the aisle, ours included, has a real incentive to keep things simple, loud, and profitable instead of nuanced.
James and I don’t have a clean fix for any of it. What we do have is a standing commitment to say the complicated version of the truth out loud anyway, even when it’s the harder sell.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the ongoing right-wing takeover of mainstream media and the media we actually deserve. I wrote a Substack note with my thoughts in more detail if you’re interested in reading more:
