In Episode 189 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with historian Niall Ferguson about his latest book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” The book is a historical tour de force of epic disasters ranging from pandemics to botched military responses, to nuclear accidents. What all these catastrophes share in common is a striking combination of operator and managerial error resulting from systemic problems that became calamities in the face of predictable, though unimaginable crises. While Doom is mainly a history of disaster, its lessons apply most urgently in our own time, which provided us an opportunity to explore some of the contemporary challenges that we face in western society with someone who thinks and writes about such risks and opportunities regularly. At the top of this list is an emerging cold war between the United States and a coalition of authoritarian powers led by China and Russia, two nations that are increasingly cooperating on matters of national and economic security. This episode also includes a discussion about financial markets, digital assets, and the health of Western economies. In place of an overtime, Demetri recorded a premium-only episode with Grant Williams on endgame scenarios for the economy, including a conversation about the prospects for runaway inflation and how to manage that risk for your portfolio. You can access the premium episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 04/26/2021

Toby Ord, Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University, discusses existential risks and the future of humanity. Topics include nuclear war, geopolitical dimensions, pandemics, biological terrorism, artificial intelligence, asteroid impacts, climate change, and supervolcanic eruptions.

In Episode 187 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Steven Koonin, author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.” Dr. Koonin serves as Director of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress. He previously served as Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy under Barack Obama and as Chief Scientist at BP, where he was a strong advocate for research into renewable energies and alternative fuel sources. The science of climate change has become, like almost everything else, a matter of political identity in 21st century America. A recent Pew Research study found that Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to say that dealing with climate change should be a top priority. And yet, if you ask people independent of party affiliation for their views on climate change and why they believe what they believe, most of them will struggle to give you a coherent answer. In fact, very few people, and this goes for politicians, journalists, and even academics, have actually read the reports put out by organizations like the IPCC and others responsible for doing the actual research that we all cite when we talk about “the science.” And to be honest, can you blame them? Afterall, why would anyone want to spend a minute of their time learning about exactly why we are so screwed? About how we’ve destroyed the planet and “broken the climate?”  We’ve read all the headlines. “Climate Catastrophe.” “Climate Disaster.” “The earth is burning!” But how true is this, exactly? Are we really facing a “Climate Apocalypse?” Is climate science really “more reliable than physics,” something that journalist David Wallace-Wells said in a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Not according to my guest, but more importantly, not according to the science, which, to borrow from the book’s title, is very much “Unsettled.” Before you react to that very provocative book title, you should know that no one is saying climate change is a hoax or that anthropogenic warming isn’t real. The purpose of this conversation is not to surreptitiously undermine the consensus view or to troll those who believe strongly in it. Rather, it is simply meant to help inform those of you who either haven’t read the reports or are simply skeptical about just how bad the situation is and what’s required from us in order to solve it. This is a subject that deeply concerns all of us, but the doom and gloom narrative surrounding it has arguably become counterproductive in helping us actually address the problem. Steven and Demetri spend two hours—between the first half and the overtime—working their way through the data, what it says, and what the models predict about not only future warming, but also the incidences of droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, rising sea levels, climate-induced migration, and pandemics driven by a warming planet.  In the subscriber overtime, they focus most of their attention on the incentives that account for these widely divergent narratives on climate, the importance of morals and values in thinking about how to structure climate policy, and the missing components of costs and tradeoffs that we all need to think about when coming to decisions on how best to adapt our societies and ourselves to the changing climate. Kofinas and Koonin also discuss geoengineering, including carbon extraction and the use of aerosols to dampen the sun’s rays, as well as alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and nuclear, and their respective roles as alternatives to fossil fuels in the coming decades. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 04/12/2021

In Episode 186 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Sergey Nazarov, Co-founder of Chainlink, the leading decentralized oracle network used by global enterprises and projects at the forefront of the blockchain space, which enables smart contracts on any distributed ledger to reliably connect to real-world data, securing billions of dollars in value across decentralized finance, insurance, gaming, and other industries. Chainlink and other decentralized oracles are not blockchains. They are not, in other words, monolithic networks of distributed databases that all operate in unison. Instead, they consist of a potentially infinite subset of networks that support blockchains and operate in parallel to them and to each other by relying on a common framework that is highly customizable and adaptable to the unique needs of their users, who consist of decentralized applications, data providers, enterprises, etc. The purpose of today’s conversation is to help educate you on not only what Chainlink is and its value proposition, but also to help you understand how this industry is evolving, the design choices that are being made at the heart of these critical networks, and the opportunities that have presented and will continue to present themselves to anyone interested in capitalizing on the disruptive efficiencies and novel sets of use cases created by these systems. In the subscriber overtime, Sergey and Demetri delve deeper into Chainlink’s architecture, how smart contracts interface with oracle networks, how such networks come together to service their users, how they come to consensus about events in the real world, and much, much more. Sergey also shares his views on Internet culture, ontology & epistemology, futurism, and how governance is going to work in a world where more and more of our lives, relationships, and experiences are happening online. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 04/01/2021

In Episode 185 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Mariana Mazzucato, a Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). She is the winner of numerous, prestigious international prizes including the 2020 John von Neumann Award, Chairs the World Health Organization's Council on “the Economics of Health for All,” and is also the author of three highly-acclaimed books, the latest of which is “Mission Economy: a Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.”  In it, Mariana argues that if we want to meet the principal challenges facing us in the 21st century, we need to rethink the capacities and role of government and above all recover a sense of public purpose. We need to be innovative, collaborative, and mission-oriented in our thinking, while also taking a stakeholder view of public-private partnerships, which means that when we take risks together that we also share in the rewards that derive from those risks.   The purpose of today’s conversation is to help you think bigger about how we as a community of citizens and nations can mobilize our resources in a way that is bold, inspirational, and oriented towards solving the most ‘wicked’ social problems of our time. This means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government can coalesce around a common set of goals, ambitions, and objectives.   In the subscriber overtime, Mariana and Demetri discuss how the politics of divisiveness impact our ability to work towards shared outcomes, why Western society seems to have become more individualistic, and what we can do to shift our cultural awareness towards a more collaborative mind-set when it comes to value creation in both the public and private sectors. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 03/22/2021

In Episode 184 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Noreena Hertz, a renowned thought leader, academic, and broadcaster, named by The Observer as “one of the world’s leading thinkers” and by Vogue as “one of the world’s most inspiring women.”  Over the course of her career, Hertz has grappled with issues of political-economy, markets, business, culture, and technology. In her latest book, “The Lonely Century,” she draws from this well-spring of knowledge, as well as from her research in the fields of psychology, philosophy, and evolutionary biology in order to help us understand how our growing sense of loneliness and isolation—from ourselves and from each other—is contributing to much of the social instability, political dysfunction, and existential angst that many of us experience in our daily lives. The purpose of this episode is not only to help you understand the scale of the loneliness epidemic and its drivers but also to draw the connections between its more visible effects like mental and emotional illness and those whose pathways and relationships remain largely hidden. As you will learn during the course of today’s conversation, there is good reason to believe that loneliness has a role to play in everything from rising levels of political polarization and social instability to environmental degradation and neglect.   In the subscriber overtime, Noreena and Demetri delve deeper into the health consequences of isolation, as well as how the world of online dating has impacted intimacy in a way that is rarely discussed. They also consider solutions, both at the individual and community-levels that Noreena thinks can immediately begin to help stem this rising tide of loneliness that impacts so many people in society today. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 03/17/2021

In Episode 183 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Karen Petrou, co-founder and Managing Partner of Federal Financial Analytics and author of “Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America.” The objective of this episode is to help you better understand how monetary policy and financial regulations have changed in the years since the great financial crisis and how those changes have destabilized financial markets by transferring risk from the more tightly regulated banking sector to other parts of the system. In the subscriber overtime, Karen and Demetri discuss solutions to this predicament and what policy actions the Fed and regulators can take to rectify the problem. The two also discuss some of the limitations of the current policy and how much more room policymakers have to stimulate the economy before inflation finally begins to pick up or before we start seeing yields in the treasury market rise precipitously. We may already be there. You can access the subscriber overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 03/09/2021

In Episode 182 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nicole Perlroth, award-winning cybersecurity journalist for The New York Times and author of a recently published book on the cyber-weapons arms race titled “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends.”   This is the latest episode in a series that we’ve devoted to the subject of information security and the threat posed to our infrastructure and to our lives by the cyber-weapons industry.   Cyberattacks against individuals, companies, and infrastructure have increased steadily year after year. Attacks like the recent one targeting a water treatment facility in Florida or the Solarwinds hack, discovered last December and which compromised thousands of private and government users — including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, and the NSA — are only the tip of the iceberg. These types of attacks are happening 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, and the costs that they impose on individuals and organizations are measured in the trillions of dollars every single year.   The purpose of today’s conversation is to highlight both the nature and the urgency of the threat posed by the cyber-weapons industry. You will learn details about the market for exploits and vulnerabilities and what measures we can take to protect ourselves individually and as a society. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 03/05/2021

In Episode 181 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor, entrepreneur, and prominent futurist who’s views on crypto, the future of education, and the network state put him at the forefront of innovation and disruption in money, business, and politics.  The two discuss Balaji’s thesis for the rise of the network state, what it means for existing institutions of money & power, and what life will look like for human beings in this not-too-distant future. Demetri’s thesis is that Silicon Valley culture and the ongoing disruptive dynamics associated with social networks, mobile devices, automation, and now cryptocurrencies, are not only restructuring and remaking the commercial world but increasingly encroaching upon the traditional assignments and obligations of government and the state. We see this perhaps most notably in the case of privately issued cryptocurrencies, but one can argue that this culture of disruption runs much deeper and its consequences for society are much broader than most of us realize. In this sense, what we are living to today is nothing short of a political revolution and while our systems of government are ripe for disruption, the solutions being put forward by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, financiers, and the broader commercial sector may not adequately reflect the interests or the concerns of the vast majority of people whose lives would be most affected by these changes. This conversation is an exploration of the methods, opportunities, and consequences of such solutions and their implications for individuals and the state. You can access the first part of this conversation, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/23/2021

In Episode 180 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas provides listeners with a sneak peak into the next 5 weeks of content, including episodes on the networked state, financial warfare, cybersecurity, the loneliness epidemic, and how to rebuild the mission-driven state. You can access the episode overtimes, as well as the transcripts and rundowns to each week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou of Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/21/2021