Mark Gagnon

Guangzhou or Shenzhen or wherever you are on the planet is decided by currents and coastlines and the calculations of the empires that want a piece of this tiny piece of water.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief abridged history of the Strait of Hormuz and why it is so vital today.

I really think one of the most impactful books I've read in my life is a book called Prisoners of Geography by this guy, Tim Marshall.

It's just an excellent book that basically takes this kind of geographical determinist view of the world and says, hey, let's just look at the geography of each country and how that affects their foreign policy and how the citizens are and all of that stuff.

I mean, there's so much where it's like, you know, like America being more Christian in the South is because of like fossil deposits a million years ago because it creates a more fertile ground and then that predicates the slave trade and then that predicates Christianity and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

It's like, you can look at a butterfly effect from millions of years ago.

That's just like, hey, because of Pangea, all of a sudden this neighborhood is like this.

Like it's just crazy.

So I think that that book has been extremely formative for me because it helps me understand like, oh wow, if you're able to control the shipping lanes and the geography that you have, having a port, having a warm water port, having a deep port,

Having a river is going to massively affect how audacious you can be as a country militarily, geopolitically, what kind of pressure you can put on the neighboring countries.

I mean, it's just fascinating.

And the Strait of Hormuz is no different.

And you can see why everyone kind of wants a peace.

And it's really interesting from Iran's perspective because, again, they don't need the, you know, fight America.

They just need to be crazy enough to be willing to shut it down and to just make it so volatile and make the bloc so hot.

that they do just that.

I don't know.

Christo, is there anything you learned?

To my understanding, again, I'm not an expert in this.

My understanding is that England knew about it.