Exploring Prosperity- Challenging Pessimism in the US

Education was never designed to fail students. It was designed to solve one of humanity’s greatest challenges: how to provide education at scale to millions of people. The factory model of education succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Standardization, age grouping, and shared curricula helped create the most educated societies in history. But scale came with tradeoffs. Some students sit in cla...

Today's guest is Lyn Alden, one of the world's leading macroeconomic analysts and the author of Broken Money and The Stillguard Incident. We explore one of the defining questions of the modern era: humanity has more information, more connectivity, and more problem-solving capability than ever before, yet trust in institutions is falling and agreement on basic facts appears increasingly difficult....

What does it take for one of the world's largest financial institutions to adopt an entirely new technology? Morgan Stanley's Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Amy Oldenburg, joins Exploring Prosperity to discuss the hidden challenge of bringing crypto, tokenization, stablecoins, and blockchain technology into a global financial institution. Most conversations about digital assets focus on prices, r...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming investing, wealth management, and the global economy — but what happens to human judgment when information becomes instantly accessible? Ram Ahluwalia hosted me as a guest this week and in this conversation we discuss:• how AI compresses the time between information and decision-making• why human judgment still matters in investing• the collapse of t...

Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, but how realistic are the fears about rogue AI, AGI, and machines turning against humanity? In this conversation, a clip from my previous interview with Albert Berdellans, Global Head of AI at Invenium, he discusses some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, AI safety, and the future of large language mod...

Jeff Park joined usfor a deep discussion on Bitcoin, AI, Federal Reserve policy, financial markets, volatility, and the future of the global monetary system. Jeff explains why “money is always political,” why markets are beginning to behave more like wartime markets than peacetime markets, and why the relationship between the Treasury and Federal Reserve may become one of the defining macro storie...

Artificial intelligence is triggering widespread fear about the future of work, white-collar employment, and the long-term value of highly educated workers. After Citadel founder Ken Griffin described feeling “depressed” after seeing the latest advances in AI, many people interpreted it as another warning about technological disruption and economic displacement. But what if we are asking the wrong...

Why are stocks hitting new highs during war and geopolitical instability? Why are Bitcoin miners suddenly becoming AI infrastructure companies? And could sovereign nations eventually adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset? In this conversation, Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Asset Research at VanEck and portfolio manager of the Vaneck Onchain Economy ETF (ticker: NODE), explains how AI, de-globalization...

AI is changing cybersecurity—and it may be increasing the scale of digital threats beyond what banks, platforms, and institutions can manage. In this video, I break down how AI-driven attacks could expose vulnerabilities in financial systems, online accounts, and digital identity infrastructure. Based on real-world fraud experiences and insights from Foundation CEO Zach Herbert, we explore why tra...

Credit stress is beginning to reappear in parts of the economy—especially in private credit markets where institutional capital has surged in recent years. In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I sit down with veteran distressed real estate investor Bill Landis, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Raith Capital Partners, to break down what actually happens when markets stop clearing. We explore...

Artificial intelligence is changing finance, healthcare, education, and the future of work — but what is it actually doing under the hood? In this conversation, I sit down with Albert Berdellans, Global Head of AI at Invenium, for one of the clearest explanations I’ve heard of how large language models actually work, what AI can and cannot do, where the risks are overstated, and how it may reshape...

Are we actually progressing—or quietly getting weaker? In this conversation, I sit down with Aleks Svetski, author of The Bushido of Bitcoin, to explore a deeper question that sits beneath economics, technology, and politics: what actually drives long-term human progress? Many believe that fixing money—through systems like Bitcoin—can restore discipline, align incentives, and solve structural prob...

In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I sit down with investor Ram Ahluwalia to examine one of the most important — and least discussed — risks in the AI buildout. OpenAI reportedly has nearly $1 trillion in committed obligations tied to data center capacity and compute infrastructure. With revenue far below that scale, the key question is simple:Can the math foot? This conversation is not anti...

More than 27 million financial reports are filed each year under the Bank Secrecy Act, flagging ordinary banking activity as “suspicious.” Yet, as the data shows, only 370 investigations were tipped off by these reports. In this conversation, Nick Anthony of the Cato Institute explains how U.S. financial surveillance expanded quietly over decades, why routine cash transactions now generate governm...

Families navigate the college decision process rarely—but the consequences can last decades. In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I speak with Jon Carson, CEO of College Guidance Network, about why the traditional college guidance system no longer works—and why rising costs, declining ROI, and information asymmetry have made the decision riskier than ever. We break down the real math behind hi...

In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I’m joined by Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale, to explore why 2026 may mark the true beginning of crypto’s institutional era. We discuss how regulatory clarity — including the impact of Grayscale’s successful challenge of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — shifted crypto from the margins into mainstream finance, and why Bitcoin ETFs wer...

I sat down with Jordi Visser to discuss a historically new phenomenon: economic growth without job growth—and what artificial intelligence means for the future of work, capital, and capitalism itself. We discuss I why economic growth is increasingly happening without job creation and what artificial intelligence means for the future of work and capitalism. This conversation explores how AI is brea...

Inflation isn’t 3%. In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I’m joined by Stefan Rust, CEO of Truflation, to explain what real-time inflation data is actually showing — and why the official CPI number may be missing what’s really happening to prices. See my essay about this interview here: We discuss how Truflation measures inflation daily across thousands of goods and services, how its methodolo...

In this episode, I sit down with investment manager and author Lawrence Lepard ( The Big Print ) to examine how America’s monetary system actually works—and why its failures increasingly feel moral, not just economic. Larry breaks down the Cantillon Effect : how Federal Reserve money creation and artificially low interest rates disproportionately benefit Wall Street, large financial institutions,...

Ethel Walker head of school Meera Viswanathan joins Exploring Prosperity to explain what’s really happening to today’s students — from the rise of social media, smartphones, and anxiety to the decline of confidence, resilience, and curiosity. Drawing on insights aligned with Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation, and current research on teen mental health, Meera breaks down:- How phones and socia...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy — but will America stay ahead? In this audio edition of Exploring Prosperity , host Robert Dewey examines whether U.S. innovation can outpace regulation, comparing today’s AI revolution to past eras when new technologies reshaped productivity, jobs, and global power. From Silicon Valley’s open-source momentum to Europe’s regulatory headwin...

Gold just surged 30% in only 56 days — its fastest rise since 1979. In this episode of Exploring Prosperity , Bob Dewey revisits a roundtable with Lyn Alden, Bob Murphy, and Troy Cross to ask: what does this record-setting move reveal about the weakness of fiat money and the enduring power of hard money? The discussion explores: * How fiat money distorts price signals and encourages debt-driven gr...

Every generation inherits miracles that once seemed impossible. Childbirth used to be among humanity’s greatest risks—today, it’s routine. In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I look at the extraordinary fall in infant mortality and what it reveals about the quiet triumph of modern medicine. From 1800—when nearly half of all children died before age five—to today’s rates in the US at 0.5%, thi...

In this episode of Exploring Prosperity, I sit down with Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, and Ryan Rasmussen, Head of Research, to unpack their groundbreaking report on Bitcoin’s long-term capital market assumptions. We cover why Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a hedge against U.S. debt and deficits, how institutional investors are approaching allocation, the rise of corporate treasuries adopting Bi...

For nearly 80 years, the world’s leading powers have avoided direct war — a stretch historians call the “Long Peace.” This video explores why peace has lasted so long, what forces have kept it in place, and how fragile it may be in the years ahead. Drawing on my essays from my research, (https://robertdewey3.substack.com/p/g...) we look first at the historical rarity of 80 years without great powe...