Hidden Forces

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

In Episode 179 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares the overtime to his 4-hour-long conversation with Radigan Carter, an investor who has spent the last two decades of his life working across five continents as a member of the US military, as a private contractor, and as a special agent for the United States government. In this second-half of their conversation, Radigan shares not only his remarkable insights on geopolitics and foreign affairs, including a long discussion about the security and politics of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, but also his perspective on what’s happening within the United States: the radicalization of the citizenry and the potential for an escalation in political violence over the next few years. The two also discuss the pro’s and con’s of decentralization and what a more decentralized world would look like in practice. A transcript to this episode is available to our premium subscribers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. Write us a review on Apple Podcasts by following this link: http://bit.ly/rate-the-podcast 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 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 01/26/2021

In Episode 178 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lily Francus, a 25-year-old PhD student in bioinformatics who spends her time modeling complex, dynamic systems, trading meme stocks, and writing about options, derivatives, and how stories and ideas spread on the Internet. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t have an Internet connection you will already know that some really crazy shit happened in the last couple of weeks involving the video game retailer GameStop, a number of large, Wall Street institutions, and the online community subreddit r/Wall Street Bets, which has now grown to over 8 million users. There have been so many competing explanations put forward for what happened here that it would be impossible to try and summarize them all. Instead, this episode attempts to explain the mechanics of how it all happened. In other words, how an online community consisting primarily of retail investors managed to pump the price of GameStop’s stock to such a level that institutional investors who were short the stock were forced to cover and in the case of hedge fund Melvin Capital, get bailed out to the tune of nearly 3 billion dollars. In this conversation, we look at how both market structure and the endogenous dynamics of the options market, combined with the proliferation of narrative in the form of Internet memes were used to organize, coordinate, and execute what was effectively a community-sourced short squeeze that caused chaos across wall street and left the financial press and the public, scrambling for answers. While the conversation about options is specific to wall street, the memetic aspect of this story is perhaps the most fascinating, not only because understanding online culture and how narratives spread on the Internet can help you capitalize on trends and monetize momentum, but also because its application extends to pretty much any use-case you can imagine.  This week’s overtime segment is a conversation Demetri had with Real Vision Senior Editor and former CNBC reporter Ash Bennington, who he invited on the program to discuss the events of the last week and what we might expect going forward. The episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode are available through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. Time Codes: 9:38 Summary and update on "what happened" with GameStop, r/WallStreetBets, and institutional Wall Street 21:15 Discussion about market structure and endogenous factors related to options & positioning 41:37 Discussion about role of narrative and Internet memes in driving the price of GameStop 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 r/WallStreetBets Joker Meme mentioned during episode: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l1u036/wsb_gets_emotional_on_mad_money/  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 02/02/2021

In Episode 177 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Radigan Carter, an investor who has spent the last two decades of his life working across five continents as a member of the US military, as a private contractor, and as a special agent for the United States government. He has extensive experience leading large multinational teams -- including a 350-person security force -- in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Ratigan’s love of history, knowledge of foreign affairs, and first-hand experience overseas give him a unique perspective from which to comment on the political, national security, and economic issues facing Western society today. We spent the first two hours of this four-hour long conversation discussing Radigan’s experience overseas, including his participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom, his work as a private contractor in Qatar, and his time spent as a special agent for the United States government in Afghanistan and North Africa. The stories that he shares are inspirational and at times unnerving, but they are always delivered with a wisdom, reflection, and authenticity that you rarely find today. In the second half of their conversation, Radigan shares not only his remarkable insights on geopolitics and foreign affairs, including a long discussion about the security and politics of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, but also his perspective on what’s happening within the United States: the radicalization of the citizenry and the potential for an escalation in political violence over the next few years.  We also discuss his views on financial markets and the macro economy, including a conversation about cryptocurrency, its place in his own portfolio, and how it fits into his larger investing philosophy. 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 01/26/2021

In Episode 176 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares his thoughts on a series of interconnected topics including Tether, Bitcoin, domestic terrorism, generational conflict, and foreign interference. The medium posted cited in this episode is “The Bit Short: Inside Crypto’s Doomsday Machine.” The two Blockchain Debate Podcast episodes cited are (1) "Tether has always been acting in bad faith (Bennett Tomlin vs. Larry Cermak, co-host: Patrick McKenzie)” and (2) "Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators (CasPiancey vs. Matthew Graham)” The episode of the “What Bitcoin Did Podcast” mentioned in this episode is “Questions for Tether with Paolo Ardoino & Stuart Hoegner.” You can access the transcript 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 01/22/2021