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Promethean Updates

Promethean Updates is the video podcast of Promethean Action: political and economic commentary on the fight to rebuild the American economy and end the era of financial empire.

Four shows a week. The Monday Brief and The Midweek Update are 15-minute reports on the week’s decisive events with Barbara Boyd and Susan Kokinda. The Thursday Q&A is a live two-hour broadcast hosted by Adam Sturman with Barbara Boyd and Susan Kokinda answering viewer questions. The Saturday Wrap-Up looks back at the week.

Regular topics: Treasury and Fed policy, tariffs and jobs, energy and manufacturing, Ukraine

Latest Episodes:

Monday Brief: Did Trump and Putin Just Kill London’s Oil Game? Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

Barbara Boyd opens with President Trump’s Sunday announcement of an energy ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and what led up to it: his remarks to the press that it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president, and Friday’s agreement for Russia to supply diesel to the United States and the world, with a Treasury license authorizing Russian diesel through April 2027. She argues that Trump and Putin have exposed the game being played by the City of London: Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russia’s refineries, which the Washington Post examined, keep fuel prices high ahead of the November 3 midterms, while the Financial Times reports the administration threatened to cut off weapons and intelligence if the attacks continued, and members of Congress move against the deal. After President Zelensky’s interview on ABC’s This Week blaming high prices on the war in the Middle East, the episode turns to the energy wars: Russia’s ban on fuel exports, U.S. diesel above $6 a gallon, no major new U.S. refinery since 1977, and Europe’s emergency diesel stocks, held mainly by Germany and France, until Trump’s export threat brought a G7 release of 100 million barrels of oil and diesel. It closes with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Operation Economic Outcast against Iran’s regime, the petrodollar system and London’s commodity markets since the 1971 collapse of Bretton Woods, President Putin’s case for long-term contracts between producing and consuming nations, the Conservative Treehouse’s argument that the world’s biggest economy is aligning against the financial schemes of London while retaining the dollar, and Secretary Bessent’s chart on prices under Biden and Trump.

00:00 Monday Brief Intro
03:05 The Trump/Putin Trap
05:53 The Energy Wars and the City of London
07:24 Is A New Economic Order at Hand?

Credits
Photos
- Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Anchorage, Alaska, August 15, 2025: U.S. Department of Defense / Benjamin D. Applebaum, public domain
Video
- President Trump speaking to the press, October 10, 2026: The White House, public domain
- President Zelensky on This Week, October 11, 2026: ABC News
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Fox & Friends Weekend, October 11, 2026: U.S. Department of the Treasury / Fox News
- President Zelensky with a U.S. congressional delegation, Kyiv, October 9, 2026 (x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2108607485342790142)
- President Nixon’s address to the nation, August 15, 1971: public domain
- U.S. Navy footage (U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, DVIDS), public domain
- Stock footage: Storyblocks
Articles, posts and documents quoted: on Truth Social: @realDonaldTrump (October 9 and 11, 2026); on X: @ZelenskyyUa, @SecScottBessent; U.S. Treasury, OFAC General License No. 135 (October 9, 2026); The Washington Post (October 11, 2026); Financial Times (October 11, 2026); Ukrainska Pravda (October 11, 2026); International Energy Agency (September 17, 2026); U.S. Energy Information Administration, “When was the last refinery built in the United States?”; Reuters (October 1, 2026); BBC News (October 2, 2026); TASS (October 21, 2021); The Conservative Treehouse (October 10, 2026)
Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly U.S. retail diesel prices

Saturday Wrap-Up: Soros Panics: Trump Cuts Russia Deal Oct 10, 2026

Show notes

Susan Kokinda opens with two Friday announcements: President Trump’s Truth Social post on his call with Vladimir Putin, in which Russia agreed to immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global market, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court. She argues both are part of the administration’s war on the post-war globalist system and on one of its architects, George Soros. The episode follows the pressure campaign since the strikes on Iran seven months ago, from shipping insurance in the Strait of Hormuz to diesel prices going into the November 3 midterms, the G7’s release of 100 million barrels, the Treasury license authorizing Russian diesel through April 2027, the President thanking Putin, and the objections from Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the advocacy group Razom for Ukraine. It then turns to Rubio’s case against the ICC, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and chair of the UN commission on Gaza, the Nobel committee’s statement on international law, and President Trump’s response. It closes with Rubio’s speech on Western civilization in Athens, set against the philosophy of Soros’s mentor Karl Popper, and the President’s Columbus Day proclamation quoting Pope Leo XIII’s 1892 encyclical on Columbus.

00:00 Saturday Wrap-Up Intro
01:12 The Hunt for Red October's Surprise
05:33 Rubio Guts the ICC
08:29 Athens versus the Open Society

Credits
Photos
- George Soros, May 13, 2014: U.S. Department of State, public domain
- The International Criminal Court, The Hague, 2024: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_International_Criminal_Court_(ICC)_at_The_Hague_(53877987960).jpg
- Paul Kagame, Donald Trump and Félix Tshisekedi, Washington Accords, December 4, 2025: Official White House Photo, public domain
- Secretary Rubio in Athens, October 7, 2026: U.S. Department of State, public domain
- Karl Popper: Franz Barta, LSE Library (no known copyright restrictions)
- The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I (Routledge, 1945): public domain
- Plato, Capitoline Museums: Marie-Lan Nguyen, public domain
- The Acropolis, Athens: Jebulon, CC0
- Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus, Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0
- Pope Leo XIII, about 1896: public domain
Video
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the ICC sanctions, October 9, 2026 (x.com/SecRubio/status/2108565647667904647)
- President Trump speaking to the press, October 9, 2026: The White House, public domain
- Secretary Rubio's remarks in Athens, October 7, 2026: U.S. Department of State, public domain
- U.S. Navy footage (U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, DVIDS), public domain
- Stock footage: Storyblocks
Articles, posts and documents quoted: on Truth Social: @realDonaldTrump (October 9, 2026); on X: @SecRubio, @ZelenskyyUa, @razomforukraine; U.S. Treasury, OFAC General License No. 135 (October 9, 2026); BBC News (October 9, 2026); International Criminal Court press release (March 17, 2023); Norwegian Nobel Committee announcement (October 9, 2026); The White House, Columbus Day 2026 proclamation; Pope Leo XIII, Quarto Abeunte Saeculo (1892)
Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly U.S. retail diesel prices

Thursday Q&A: The Midterms Will Be Won on the Economy, Here's Why Oct 08, 2026

Show notes

Join us for a live broadcast, with your hosts Barbara Boyd, Susan Kokinda and Adam Sturman. Thursday October 8th at 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific every Thursday. We take your questions from both the Youtube live chat and our Newsletter Subscribers!

This week: Trump's economic blitz, and why we're winning. Economics is the midterm issue. The campaign isn't four weeks out as wallpaper; the blitz is underway now. Iowa's planned $15B Mesabi mega mill, Alaska LNG plus the Beluga. Healy Railbelt line, Alabama's $3.2B I-10 Mobile River Bridge groundbreaking, Sparrows Point rebuilt for this century, set against Barbara's short tease: towns that lost their factories versus productive rebuild. Midterms decide which map wins.

On the board: pledges vs shovels, what's firm vs still being negotiated in Iowa and Korea/Alaska, Railbelt timelines (not before 2030), Sparrows Point as the image of building again, and how to talk re-industrialization with neighbors who only hear gas prices. Susan stays on the economic offensive. Midterms starting now.

Barbara Boyd and Susan Kokinda take your questions live. Bring what's on your mind.

00:00 Thursday Q&A Intro
01:16 Trump at Sparrows Point: Taxpayers Get a 40% Stake
02:58 Anduril's $3.7B and the Navy's $2.9B
04:32 Barbara Sets Up Rubio in Athens
05:43 Rubio: Reindustrialize or Accept Decline
10:25 Barbara: Why We Fight, Beyond the Immediate
12:41 Mamdani Shouted Down: Jacobins Eat Their Own
16:04 Susan: Rubio Just Obliterated Adam Smith
21:21 Barbara's Sparrows Point Story
22:33 Why Bethlehem Steel Died
26:08 Susan's Economic Wins: $26 Billion in a Week
28:57 Build Things, Don't Hold Opinions
31:27 Adopt a Founder as Your Friend
33:07 Your Gas-Price Questions
34:40 Light Crude, Heavy Refineries
36:43 Diesel From Europe, Gas Tax Suspended
39:40 NAWAPA: The Water Project We Abandoned
42:20 Early Voting or Election Day?
46:09 Apollo Paid Back $8 for Every $1
49:10 The Race to the Moon's South Pole
50:19 Skilled Trades: 300,000 Workers Short
52:22 Getting the Whole GOP on Board
54:57 Barbara: The Media Block and Our Job
1:01:32 Prices Still High: Fixed Incomes Ask Why
1:05:16 Susan: Vote for Where the Country Is Going
1:08:33 Barbara: How We Got Here
1:12:20 Thumos: Passion Guided by Reason
1:17:58 "I Don't Listen to Old People"
1:22:09 France Burns: A Jacobin Replay
1:30:00 What Comes Next for Britain?
1:36:46 Susan: Find the Republicans in Your Own History
1:39:53 How the Empire Works, and How Trump Flips Wall Street
1:49:14 Rabbit Holes and Secret Rescues
1:51:35 The Cornell Seven and the War on Young Men
1:56:27 Why Trump Doesn't Say "American System"
1:59:40 Bad Republicans? It's a Numbers Game
2:03:25 Closing: Everybody Get 10 People

Midweek Update: Donroe Doctrine Frees Brazil from Commies Oct 07, 2026

Show notes

Barbara Boyd opens with Sunday's first round in Brazil, where Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.03% to President Lula da Silva's 45.16%, a result London's Guardian called a shock, ahead of the October 25 runoff. She traces the battle for Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro's narrow defeat in 2022, the January 8, 2023 riots in Brasília, his 2025 conviction in a case overseen by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's response, and the Bolsonaro family's gains in Sunday's vote, set against the nationalist wins across Latin America that she ties to the administration's revival of the Monroe Doctrine and the shutdown of USAID. She also looks at China's place as Brazil's biggest customer and at who owns Petrobras. The episode then turns to Sparrows Point in Baltimore County, Maryland, once the world's largest steel mill, where President Trump launched Anduril's $3.7 billion Arsenal-2 shipyard on Tuesday, building components for the Navy's Virginia-class submarines with 3,100 permanent jobs. It closes with Mike Benz, speaking with Benny Johnson, on why financier cartels profit when the state runs the economy, from Big Pharma to climate finance, and Chamath Palihapitiya on why Barack Obama is pushing Democrats toward government regulation of AI.

00:00 Midweek Update Intro
01:55 The Epic Battle for Brazil
06:39 Sparrows Point Lives Again
10:12 Why Would Capitalists Support Socialism and Communism?

Credits
Photos
- Lula and Fidel Castro, Havana, 1980: Delfim Martins/Agência F4, via Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lula_e_Fidel_Castro_em_Havana,_Cuba,_em_1980.jpg)
- Jair Bolsonaro, 2020, and Michelle Bolsonaro, 2019: U.S. Embassy Brasília, public domain (flickr.com/photos/embaixadaeua-brasil)
- Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump, 2019: Getty Images, via BBC News
- National Congress, January 8, 2023: security camera, CPMI 8 de Janeiro final report (Senado Federal), public domain
- Alexandre de Moraes, Viviane Barci de Moraes and Lula, January 1, 2023: Ricardo Stuckert/PR, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), flickr.com/photos/palaciodoplanalto/52621635701, cropped
- Carlos Bolsonaro, 2022: Alan Santos/PR, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), flickr.com/photos/palaciodoplanalto/51884655852, cropped
- Jair Renan Bolsonaro, 2021: TOGURO (youtube.com/watch?v=vHdmseDnrEU), CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), cropped
- Liberty ship launch, Kaiser Shipyards: Louis Lee, National Park Service, public domain
Video
- President Trump at Sparrows Point, October 6, 2026: The White House, public domain
- Mike Benz on The Benny Show, October 5, 2026 (x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/2107198915506499684)
- Chamath Palihapitiya on the All-In Podcast, September 26, 2026 (youtube.com/watch?v=cvP_1jmnkmM)
- Stock footage: Storyblocks
Articles and posts quoted: The Guardian (October 5, 2026); BBC News (March 20, 2019); Reuters (August 8, 2021); WYPR (October 6, 2026); BuildSubmarines.com (December 6, 2024; photo: Elonte Davis); on X: @SecRubio, @TheLastRefuge2, @PalmerLuckey, @anduriltech, @MikeBenzCyber
Maps and data: Natural Earth (public domain); election results from AS/COA, Axios, AP, NPR, MercoPress, Michigan Public and Brazil's TSE; exports from Comex Stat (MDIC); Petrobras fact sheet (December 2025) and notice of May 21, 2026 (via CNN Brasil)

Monday Brief: It's Over: IRGC Mistake Confirms Trump's Hit Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

Susan Kokinda opens with the 26-page open letter Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps addressed to the American people weeks before the midterms, which the State Department dismissed as desperate and the Daily Wire read as a call to vote Democrat. She argues the letter tells a bigger story than anyone is reporting: it names the CIA, Israel and the military-industrial complex, but never once the British. After President Trump’s “easy way or the hard way” remark on Iran, and his statement at the U.N. that the election won’t influence his Iran policy, the episode revisits the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, whom the letter calls an “Americanophile,” after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, today’s BP, and cites National Security Archive documents showing the British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration in late 1952 to propose a coup. It then turns to a Foreign Affairs newsletter citing the 1956 Suez crisis as a parallel to the war with Iran, President Eisenhower’s refusal to back Britain and France at Suez, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1955 Foreign Affairs article on how the British ran Egypt. It closes with Richard Haass on Morning Joe, the morning after Trump’s U.N. speech, calling it “the end of 80 years of American foreign policy,” Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox on Europe having to defend itself against the U.S., and Mark Carney telling the New York Times he spent the past year preparing for the “extreme tail risk” of U.S. military action against Canada.

00:00 Monday Brief Intro
01:15 The Easy Way or the Hard Way
05:52 Suez and Hormuz
09:00 Serious, Serious Stuff

Saturday Wrap-Up: Europe Caves Oct 03, 2026

Show notes

Barbara Boyd opens with diesel: as Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries tighten the world’s supply, President Trump threatened to halt U.S. diesel exports unless Europe released its emergency stocks, and the G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels. She presents it as the opening move of a 35-day economic offensive running into the midterms. The week of action includes Trump’s visit to the Peterbilt truck plant in Denton, Texas, where employee Sarah Renshaw credited tariffs for 1,000 new jobs; his Oklahoma rally; a White House luncheon with tech leaders on superintelligence; what the White House calls the largest steel plant ever built in the United States, coming to Iowa; Vice President Vance at the groundbreaking of Saronic’s Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville, Texas; and South Korea’s plans for an Alaska LNG pipeline, a 6-gigawatt power plant in Texas and eight nuclear reactors. On affordability, the episode walks through price increases under Biden (energy up 33% from January 2021 to January 2025), Vice President Vance on the inflation crisis he says the administration inherited, refining capacity, housing regulation and immigration, Secretary Kennedy at the MAHA Summit on AI giving every patient a better-informed second opinion, and the White House fraud task force’s crackdown on Obamacare enrollments. It closes with Michael Shellenberger’s account of the student riots in France, French intelligence tying the movement to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI), and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on a new golden age of space exploration.

00:00 Saturday Wrap-Up Intro
02:04 The Offensive Begins
06:29 The Touchstones of Affordability
11:49 The French Riots

Thursday Q&A: Why Gas Prices Are a Distraction (Two Systems at War) Oct 01, 2026

Show notes

Join us for a live broadcast, with your hosts Barbara Boyd, Susan Kokinda and Adam Sturman. Thursday October 2nd at 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific every Thursday. We take your questions from both the Youtube live chat and our Newsletter Subscribers!

This week: the physical economy build-out is the midterm fight. Iowa’s planned $15B Mesabi Metallics mega mill, mine to mill, Minnesota ore to Lee County steel, and the rest of the economic revolution they don’t want you to see. Then Barbara’s lane: physical build-out versus “gas my ass”, productive identity versus the service-economy jobs talk. Less than five weeks to November 3.

On the board: Iowa steel verified (largest-in-U.S. / mega class, not world #1), EXIM-backed Minnesota iron ore, WH manufacturing/steel stats, and what a productive American identity actually means before the midterms.

Barbara Boyd and Susan Kokinda take your questions live. Bring what’s on your mind.

00:00 Thursday Q&A Intro
00:46 White House App + Iowa Steel Overnight
01:40 Super Intelligence Reframe
05:44 Barbara: Bigger Than the Industrial Revolution
07:21 1971 Break and the Physical Economy
11:00 Susan: City of London, and Unexpected Optimism on Fox
12:16 Brian Kilmeade Clip: Stop Whining About Gas
13:24 Not a Midterm Plan, an American Plan
17:56 Tariff Investments Day After Day
21:19 Susan: Bessent, Democrats Bet Against America
24:54 Productive Spirit Unleashed, Globalist Desperation
29:44 Mamdani Housing vs Trump Build-Out
32:58 Carney Turns Canada Into a Resource Colony
36:00 Kitchen-Table Pain Is Real, Still a Distraction
40:13 Midterm Bootcamp and the Long Game
41:37 98% Refining Capacity, Newsom Still Shutting Plants
46:21 How Tough Are We as Americans?
49:57 Brett: Short-Term Pain for a Real Rebuild
53:16 Barbara: Get Jacked, Don't Get Defensive on Diesel
54:56 Moon-Landing Denial = Manufactured Pessimism
56:46 American System Erased From Schools
1:01:33 Tools Not Clickbait, Real Revolution Pamphlet
1:05:59 Catching Cheaters, Too Big to Rig
1:10:23 Bessent Hires: Judy Shelton and the Money Fight
1:15:08 Can We Build New Refineries?
1:18:08 Trump Meets Refiners, Decades of Sabotage
1:24:08 Bootcamp Recruits New Political Leadership
1:29:07 British Empire vs American System History
1:34:53 What If London Falls, China and Russia
1:41:44 Steel Mill Hiring Boom vs Gas Yammering
1:44:57 Look Around You, Everything Needs Steel
1:54:05 The Lie About Hamilton
2:02:36 Closing: 10 to the Polls, Make Thousands Optimistic

Midweek Update: Trump Unveils $15B Steel Giant as Carney Auctions Canada for Parts Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

This midweek update contrasts two investment stories. On Monday, President Trump announced a $15 billion Mesabi Metallics steel mill in Iowa, supplied by the first new iron ore mine in the United States in 50 years, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Export-Import Bank Chairman John Jovanovic and Mesabi Metallics’ Rewant Ruia laid out how tariffs, government credit and a complete American supply chain made it possible: a crash course in the American System of economics. Two weeks earlier, Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit claimed nearly $500 billion in new investment, but the first thing on the block was long-term concessions on Canada’s four largest airports, and of its 167 projects, 63 are mining and metals while only 8 are non-military domestic manufacturing, as Stelco announces up to 500 job cuts in Hamilton. The episode then turns to Canada’s MAID program, with 16,499 assisted deaths in 2024, and to Sir Julian Huxley, UNESCO’s first director-general, who wrote in 1946 that “much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” It closes with the official U.S. poverty rate falling to 10.2%, record-low child and Hispanic poverty, and a new optimism about America’s future.

00:00 Midweek Update Intro
01:14 Mined, Melted and Poured in America
05:28 Carney’s Summit Sells the Airports
08:47 The Body Count

Monday Brief: It's War: The 250-Year British Plot Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

Get Barbara Boyd’s new pamphlet, “The Real Revolution: The British and the Communists Are Trying to Kill Again”

Barbara Boyd opens with Barack Obama saying he sometimes fantasized about putting women in charge of every government, and a 1998 photo of Barack and Michelle Obama listening to Edward Said in Chicago, then takes a teaser tour of her new pamphlet on British-backed “color revolutions.” The episode argues that Said’s intellectual heroes, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács and the Frankfurt School, shaped today’s Democratic Socialists of America, and that their real target is the American System of Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln and McKinley, which Trump invoked in Louisville in 2017. It traces the pattern back through the French Revolution, which it presents as orchestrated by Lord Shelburne, Jeremy Bentham and Jacques Necker, through Lord Palmerston’s use of Giuseppe Mazzini and Karl Marx, and the 1917 Russian Revolution. It closes with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Daniel Bell’s post-industrial society, Herbert Marcuse and the “long march through the institutions,” arguing that winning the culture war means understanding the American culture under attack.

00:00 Monday Brief Intro
02:34 Donald Trump’s Real Alleged Sin
06:38 How the British Empire Uses Communism and Socialism
11:00 History Repeats Itself

Get Barbara Boyd’s new pamphlet, “⁠⁠The Real Revolution: The British and the Communists Are Trying to Kill Again⁠⁠”

Saturday Wrap-Up: Trump is Erasing 50 Years of Foreign Policy (They Can't Stop It) Sep 26, 2026

Show notes

This episode argues that media outrage over a White House “autopen” joke and criticism of Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping obscures a deeper shift: Trump is dismantling a 50-year geopolitical framework associated with Henry Kissinger. It contrasts Chatham House’s “China Rising, America in Decline?” panel and its Thucydides Trap framing, linked to Graham Allison, with Xi’s evolution from posing the trap as an open question to asserting it “can be overcome” after Trump’s UN speech and claimed actions in Iran, Venezuela, the Shield of America, and the Greenland Treaty, alongside a push for reindustrialization. The script also highlights a UN Board of Peace session on Gaza focused on reconstruction led by Gazans and a new security structure involving Muslim-country troops, presenting it as ending “outside forces” control. It notes Rubio’s permanent dual role as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor and frames his stance as reversing Kissinger’s legacy.

00:00 Saturday Wrap-Up Intro
01:03 China: Xi Rejects the Trap
05:54 The Middle East Pillar, Busting the Imperial Plan
09:58 Rubio Undoes the Architect

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