# The Weekly Hoon: Middle East in crisis; NZ economy stagnant; Peters at odds with Luxon

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hoon-6684157/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis-nz-economy-stagnant-peters-at-odds-with-luxon
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hoon-6684157/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis-nz-economy-stagnant-peters-at-odds-with-luxon.md
Podcast: [The Hoon](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hoon-6684157)
Published: 2026-03-05T17:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://thekaka.substack.com/p/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/189999965/074e3672ef2187c3b089c81e334420d4.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-hoon-6684157/episodes/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis-nz-economy-stagnant-peters-at-odds-with-luxon
Duration seconds: 3077

## Resource

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest historian and author Jonathan Lyons . This week: * Bernard and Peter began with a discussion about deaths of a record 129 journalists reported in 2025 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, mostly in Gaza, and the risks of it worsening in an extended war in the Middle East. * Bernard and Peter talked about New Zealand’s lack of resilience to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for both diesel and fertiliser. * Bernard, Peter and Cathrine talked about the impending dropping of clean car standards and the connections between war and climate change. * Bernard, Peter, Robert and Jonathan talked about the implications from the widening war in the Middle East, including Israel’s role and Iran’s history. Jonathan has written these books on Iran: The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization , and, Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism . The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey. The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in last year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-hoon-6684157/episodes/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis-nz-economy-stagnant-peters-at-odds-with-luxon/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hoon-6684157/the-weekly-hoon-middle-east-in-crisis-nz-economy-stagnant-peters-at-odds-with-luxon.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.