A Nobel Peace Prize winner just slipped back into Venezuela after seven failed attempts. The world’s most important oil chokepoint has been “closed” for 239 days. And scientists can’t explain a mushroom that makes people see hundreds of tiny humans. Here’s what you need to know, and what our guests saw coming.
Machado is back. Now what?
María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday after ten months in exile, turning up unannounced at a church in Lara state. Seven earlier attempts to get back into the country had been blocked.
The twist is in Washington. US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January, and you’d expect America to roll out the red carpet for the opposition leader who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, President Trump said he didn’t know she was coming and suggested the US will keep backing acting president Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, called her return a result of US-backed reconciliation talks. No election date has been set, and it’s still unclear whether she’s even allowed to run.
A year ago, before any of this, Colonel Douglas Macgregor gave me a very different read on Machado. When she promised to move Venezuela’s embassy to Jerusalem if she took power, he asked why anyone in Caracas would care. His answer: “I think she knows where the power lies. I think she understands the audience that she’s playing to.”
▶ Watch Colonel Macgregor on Machado and Venezuela from 7:52
You don’t have to agree with the Colonel to see the lesson playing out this week. In regime change, the person the crowd loves and the person Washington backs are not always the same person.
Hormuz: day 239
Iran still says the Strait of Hormuz is closed, 239 days in, and the US has been blockading Iranian ports since July. Ships are still getting through, but only along a protected route hugging the coast of Oman, and CNBC reports those flows now depend on a major US military commitment. Last week crude climbed back to its highest level since May, and roughly a fifth of the world’s oil normally passes through this one stretch of water.
I live less than 200 kilometres from that strait. When I asked Dr Marwan Alzarouni, one of the people building Dubai’s digital future, how the UAE keeps its head in a region full of warships, he didn’t give me a policy answer. “We live in a tough neighborhood,” he said. You focus on what you can control, you set your goals, you keep building. “Hope is the greatest power in the world.”
▶ Watch Dr Marwan Alzarouni on living next to Hormuz from 15:50
That’s a pretty good description of life here right now. The headlines are about tankers and missiles. On the ground, people are still moving here, still building and still opening businesses.
The mushroom that makes you see tiny people
Now for something completely different. For nearly a century, people in three corners of the world have reported the same strange experience after eating one wild mushroom: dozens or hundreds of tiny, brightly dressed people, usually somewhere between 3 and 30 centimetres tall, walking around the room. About 90% describe them as elves, clowns or fairies.
Scientists at the University of Utah have now pinned it to one species, Lanmaoa asiatica, eaten in Yunnan in China and in the mountains of the northern Philippines. The strange part: they found no psilocybin and none of the known psychedelic mushroom compounds. Whatever is causing the visions, nobody has identified it yet.
Dennis McKenna has spent his life studying plants that change the mind, and when he sat down with me he made a point I’ve never forgotten. People certainly do encounter entities, he said, but what you meet is, in his view, “an aspect of the self, basically.”
▶ Watch Dennis McKenna on the entities people meet from 40:58
Science just found a door it can’t explain. Dennis has been describing what’s on the other side of doors like it for fifty years.
The week ahead
Big week for markets. Alphabet and Microsoft report on Wednesday, Amazon on Thursday, and the Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday too. The big cloud companies are on track to spend around $800 billion on AI this year, and after the Nasdaq’s worst day since June last Thursday, investors want to see it paying off. Futures put the odds of a rate hike this week below 10%, but around 80% for December.
Which of these stories are you watching? Tell me on X at @brianbrose.
P.S. If you want to be in the room before the AI headlines, our members hear a private AI founder pitch live every Monday in the London Real AI Investment Club. And if you’re one of the families moving to Dubai, take a look at what we’re building in the Luxury Property Investment Circle.
This is commentary, not financial advice. Do your own research.
