About 20 percent of the world’s oil moves through a waterway that’s roughly 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Right now, that passage is effectively closed amid escalating conflict in the region, and the ripple effects don’t stop at oil.

USC professor and energy expert Michael Mische has spent his career tracking the systems that sit underneath energy markets, the mechanics most coverage skips entirely. In this episode, we discuss what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz, why the impact lands very differently depending on where you live, and how long the current situation can persist before it starts showing up somewhere you can’t ignore.