Hidden Forces

Latest Episodes:

The 'Restart of History' & How to Invest in a Broken Economy | Demetri Kofinas Dec 20, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 224 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas appears as a guest on the Mining Stock Daily, a podcast by Trevor Hall which focuses on the junior mining and mineral exploration sector. Their conversation centers on the macro, big-picture themes of society, polity, economy, and culture that preoccupy most of Demetri's attention, as well as on his own approach to investing.

You can find more information about Trevor's podcast at miningstockdaily.com where you can listen to the entire, original episode, which mainly includes stories from Demetri's time working in media and his thoughts about the difference between mediums like radio, TV, and podcasting.

There is no overtime to this episode, but you can still subscribe to our premium content and gain access to all past and future overtimes, transcripts, and rundowns through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium 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:

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 12/09/2021

The Power of Independent Voices & How to Make It in the Gig Economy | Doomberg Dec 13, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 223 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Doomberg, an anonymous publisher and the proprietor of a bespoke consulting firm that provides advisory services to family offices and c-suite executives. The firm's principals apply their decades of experience across heavy industry, private equity, and finance to deliver innovative thinking and clarity to complex problems.

In the first hour of today's conversation, Demetri and Doomberg discuss how to build a successful publishing company and what it takes to cultivate an audience in today's decentralized, networked economy and fragmented media ecosystem. They discuss what that process has been like for the Doomberg team, what goes into building a brand from scratch, and the opportunities that have emerged for independent voices, and how to capitalize on them.

In the second hour, they transition into a conversation about cancel culture, the power of platforms vs. audiences, and what it means to have a dedicated group of followers who are willing to go to defend you in the event that you end up in the crosshairs of the censors or a mob of activists. Demetri and Doomberg also discuss some of the topics that he writes about on his doomberg.substack.com page, including America's and Europe's energy policies, why he thinks they don't work, and what it will take in order to fix them. The two end with a more macro-oriented conversation about inflation and the influence of the economy on asset markets vs. the influence of monetary policy and which one is really in the driver's seat.

You can access the second part of this episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week's conversation through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium 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:

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 12/06/2021

How the US Navy Creates Prosperity & Why We'll Miss It | Gregg Easterbrook Dec 06, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 222 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Gregg Easterbrook. Gregg was a staff writer, national correspondent, and contributing editor at The Atlantic and has authored thirteen books about a variety of subjects including climate change, globalization, philosophy, and American football.

Demetri and Gregg explore the subject of Easterbrook's latest book, "The Blue Age." They discuss the extraordinary transformation of the international trading order that we've been living through over the last seventy years and the unique role that the US Navy and advancements in naval architecture and marine engineering have played in making all of that possible.

It's difficult to appreciate just how unprecedented this long period of peace on the oceans has been and how extraordinary the deflationary pressures are that this peace has unleashed. It has also had huge implications for the expansion of credit, the reduction of volatility, and the growth in asset values in Western markets—topics that we've explored from a variety of different angles on the Hidden Forces podcast. What it might mean for our economies and for our lives if the Blue Age comes to an end is a question that is addressed directly during the first hour of today's episode.

In the second half of today's episode, which is available to premium subscribers only, Gregg and Demetri focus on the economic and geopolitical aspects of the Blue Age, the likelihood of conflict on the high seas, the incentives for and against it, and its consequences for the global economy. They also discuss some of the factors driving the current bottlenecks in global supply chains, the shipping industry's contribution to this, and why Gregg feels that those bottlenecks will be largely resolved before the end of next year.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 11/30/2021

Jim Grant on What Inflation Means for Asset Values, Crypto, and Meme Stocks Nov 29, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 221 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jim Grant, the founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer: a legend in the business of investor education and financial media.

What separates Jim from millions of his fellow financial journalists, commentators, and authors is the historical perspective that he brings, informed not just by the immense volume of books and periodicals that he's consumed over the course of his lifetime, but primarily by the wisdom of his own lived experiences and lessons learned from the experiences of others that he's had the privilege to know and interview over the course his life.

Given the ongoing controversy around inflation—its causes and consequences—we couldn't think of anyone better to talk to than Jim Grant. Jim has been warning his readers about the unintended consequences of overly-accommodative Fed policy and dollar debasement for as long as we have known him and he is uniquely positioned to provide us with the historical context to understand where we find ourselves in the present cycle.

What we came to this conversation wanting to know from Jim, as someone who has lived through at least 3 major credit cycles, is if in fact he feels that this inflation is not transitory. If in fact, he thinks that we are in the process of up-anchoring inflation expectations and what this means for the Fed's policy options, with important implications for assets like stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, etc., whose prices have depended on the free-flow of credit that becomes less readily available in an environment of rising consumer and producer prices.

This is a phenomenal conversation that will help you integrate the history of inflation and what we know about its causes into the unique circumstances of our modern political-economy, which is characterized by historically high debt levels, aging demographics, and technology-driven deflation, in a way that can make you a better, more thoughtful investor.

Topics discussed during the Overtime include precious metals, cryptocurrency, meme stocks, ethics in journalism, and more. You can access that part of the 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 premium 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:

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 11/18/2021

What Happened to the American Economy & How to Fix It | Julius Krein Nov 22, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 220 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Julius Krein, the editor of American Affairs, a quarterly journal of policy and political-economy that delves into the deeper sociopolitical, cultural, and economic issues facing America and other Western countries.

The episode is broken into two parts, the first hour of which focuses on issues of political-economy, policy, and market dynamics that have driven the American economy into a state of "proletarianization," where its citizens are increasingly ruled by an oligarchy of global elites whose insatiable appetite for wealth and power is endangering the very systems of free-market capitalism and liberal democracy that this kakistocracy claims to uphold. It's an outcome that Julius Klein would refer to as "capitalism without competence and feudalism without nobility."

The second hour of today's conversation is, unsurprisingly, the most satisfying insofar as Demetri and Julius tackle the socio-political and cultural dimensions and manifestations of the problems created by the perversions of what was earlier described as the "proletarianization" or conversion of the American economy and political system into a more corrupt, upwardly sclerotic, and extractive system of governance than anything experienced in America since at least the Gilded Age.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 11/15/2021

The Lab-Leak Hypothesis & the Origin of Covid-19 | Alina Chan & Matt Ridley Nov 15, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 219 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Matt Ridley and Alina Chan. Alina is a Canadian molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Matt is a British science journalist who has written countless bestselling books on subjects ranging from evolution, to innovation, to genomic science.

They are the co-authors of an electrifying new book titled "Viral" that grapples with the mystery of how Covid-19, a virus whose closest known relatives live in bats residing in subtropical southern China, somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometers away in the city of Wuhan, while leaving none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create. Instead, nearly two years into this pandemic we're presented with a trail of evidence that increasingly points towards the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the so-called "Lab Leak Hypothesis" as the most plausible source of the outbreak.

This is a critically important conversation to be having and Matt and Alina have made an invaluable contribution to it by working tirelessly and at great risk to themselves and to their careers in order to bring clarity to many of the facts and much of the evidence in support of the lab leak hypothesis—a theory that was consistently attacked and discredited by various actors, both wittingly and unwittingly, in the earliest days of the pandemic.

We normally release the second half of our episodes for our subscribers only, but because of how important this conversation is and because of how much Matt and Alina have sacrificed in order to educate us all on the origins of Covid-19, we thought it was only right to do as much as we can to share as much of their work as possible.

If you enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to write us a review on Apple Podcasts and consider being a premium subscriber, if you haven't already. There's no commitment. You can cancel at any time and the entire library of Hidden Forces subscriber content going all the way back to Episode 1 becomes instantly available to you, including the transcripts, and rundowns, to this episode and every other episode we've ever done.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 11/09/2021

The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future | Eric Schmidt & Dan Huttenlocher Nov 11, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 218 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Eric is co-founder of Schmidt Futures and the former CEO & Chairman of Google and Daniel is the inaugural dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. They are the co-authors, along with Henry Kissinger, of a phenomenal new book titled, "The Age of AI And Our Human Future," which explores how Artificial Intelligence is transforming human society—and what it means for all of us.

Eric and Dan spend the first hour discussing the technical dimensions of artificial intelligence—what it is and how it works—as well as how it will continue to shape and transform our social and physical realities. The second half of the conversation focuses on the national security dimensions of artificial intelligence, as well as the profound philosophical challenges that it poses for humanity, specifically our need to find meaning in a world where machines will provide answers to more and more questions but without the ability, in many cases, to provide us with a rational or methodology by which they arrived at those answer.

For those of you who are interested in the field of blockchain and DLT-enabled applications and smart contracts, Demetri had a chance to ask Eric about where he thinks these technologies fit in an AI future, what the main hurdles are going to be, and what some of the interesting projects in the space are.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 11/08/2021

A Memoir of Illness, Discovery, & the Body Politic | Ross Douthat Nov 08, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 217 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with New York Times Op-Ed columnist Ross Douthat about his five-year struggle with a disease that in his own words, officially, doesn't exist. It's a story about personal suffering but also about what happens when we become terribly ill only to realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat us can only do so much.

Demetri and Ross spend the first half of their conversation discussing the book and its lessons for not only those dealing with chronic illnesses like Lyme disease, which has afflicted Ross, but for anyone who feels the need to challenge or circumvent the medical establishment in order to treat an illness or cure a serious disease. Unsurprisingly, this leads directly into a conversation about Covid-19, a disease which has inspired its own set of alternative treatment modalities and which has afflicted tens of millions of people with symptoms that the medical establishment is still struggling to understand.

In the second hour, Demetri has a chance to ask Ross about a number of political and social issues and questions surrounding the upcoming elections, the enduring popularity of Donald Trump, the ongoing transformation of the news media, the Biden presidency, and much more.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 11/02/2021

Index Funds, ETFs, & the Passive Investing Revolution | Robin Wigglesworth Oct 25, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 216 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robin Wigglesworth, the Financial Times global finance correspondent and author of "Trillions," a book which chronicles the origins, history, and future of the index fund, arguably the most disruptive financial innovation of the last 50 years.

Robin and Demetri spend the first half of their conversation exploring the history of passive investing and its evolution into what some argue has become a market-distorting phenomenon that is making markets less efficient by inhibiting price discovery and concentrating power in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of index fund managers and purveyors of indices.

In the overtime, the two switch gears to discuss some of the timelier stories concerning investors, including inflation, whether or not it is transitory, and what central banks are able and prepared to do in order to curb it. Robin and Demetri also discuss the ongoing trading scandals at the Federal Reserve and what they say about the extent of corruption in government, the loss of faith in public institutions on the part of investors, and how that loss of faith is reflected in the casinofication of markets and the speculative manias we've seen in meme stocks and cryptocurrencies. It's a phenomenal, hour-long overtime that you will not want to miss.

You can access the second hour of this week's episode, as well as the transcript and rundown through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium 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:

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 10/18/2021

Andrew Yang on His Forward Party and the Rise of a New Political Consensus Oct 18, 2021

Show notes

In Episode 215 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with 2020 Presidential candidate and Founder of the Forward Party, Andrew Yang. Yang is perhaps best known for popularizing the idea of universal basic income, what he called "the freedom dividend" during his run for president in 2020. He recently launched "the Forward Party," a political party focused on breaking what Andrew sees as a two-party duopoly that is no longer working and whose members and policies have fallen increasingly out of favor with the majority of Americans. He details many of his policy proposals in his new book "Forward," including ranked-choice voting, open primaries, term limits, campaign reform, and of course universal basic income: one-thousand dollars for every man and woman in America.

Demetri spent most of the first half of their conversation asking Andrew Yang about his experience on the campaign trail, what it was like to run for president, and what it taught him about the American political system and how to go viral in today's attention economy. The overtime is where Kofinas really had the opportunity to dig into Yang's policy platform. They discussed Andrew's UBI proposal, its potential impact on inflation, and how to implement such a policy without making politics even more transactional than it is today. They also discuss how to crack the gerontocracy that currently exists in Washington, the misaligned incentives in our news media, as well as how Andrew Yang thinks blockchain and distributed ledger technology can be leveraged for the public good and why crypto is a potential path to universal basic income.

If you enjoy the free content we produce every week, we encourage you to take the leap and become a premium subscriber, if you haven't already. There's no commitment. You can cancel at any time and the entire library of subscriber content going all the way back to Episode 1 becomes instantly available to you, including the overtimes, afterthoughts, transcripts, and rundowns, depending on your tier.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

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 10/11/2021