Hidden Forces

In Episode 78 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and winner of the 2008 National Magazine Award, about his latest book, Hate, INC . Matt Taibbi is someone who truly needs no introduction. His polemical, but also highly illustrative and expository writing stands apart from his contemporaries, and the significance of his contributions,...

In Episode 77 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Cal Newport about his latest book, Digital Minimalism and the act of "choosing life" in a hyperconnected world. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," writes, transcendentalist author and essayist Henry David Thoreau, in the first chapter of Walden titled, "Economy." "But men labor under a mistake...the improvements of ages h...

In Episode 76 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robby Soave, the journalist at the center of what has become the biggest national news story in America, eclipsing the thirty-five-day-long government shutdown that ended today. This conversation centers on a drama that began unfolding over the previous weekend and which has continued into this week. It concerns a group of Catholic schoo...

In Episode 75 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Pierre Rochard, a self-ascribed Bitcoin Maximalist who co-founded the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute and who has been a researcher, investor, and software developer in the space since early 2013. In addition to developing Bitcoin software, Pierre is an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin's decentralized governance, the operator of one of the larg...

In Episode 74 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Peter Boockvar. Peter is Chief Investment Officer for Bleakly Advisory Group and a regular on CNBC, where he provides market commentary about fed policy, market trends, economic data, stocks, bonds, etc. Every now and again, Demetri brings people from the media onto Hidden Forces in order to get their take on the markets and to hear thei...

In Special Episode of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Haseeb Qureshi of MetaStable Capital about the recent 51% attack against Ethereum Classic, its implications for exchanges that continue to list smaller market-cap cryptos like ETC, Dash, Monero, etc., and what it means for the debate between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. On January 5th, 2019, the digital currency exchange Coinba...

In Episode 73 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Daniel Peris, a Senior Portfolio Manager at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh where he oversees the firm's dividend-focused products. He is the author of three books on investing, most recently: "Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors, and How You Can Bring Common Sense to Your Portfolio." Before transition...

In Episode 72 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with former US Senator and Governor from the great state of Nebraska, Bob Kerrey. Senator Kerrey currently serves as Managing Director at Allen & Company. He is also Executive Chairman of the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship. Senator Kerrey also served as one of the ten members of the 9/11 commission, tasked with investigating t...

In this Christmas Day special of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares twenty-five minutes of never-before-heard audio from his conversation with Howard Marks, but not before announcing the long-awaited-for launch of the Hidden Forces subscription service. Subscribers can gain access to overtime segments, transcripts, and rundowns from each and every episode. Subscriptions require creating a Patre...

In Episode 71 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with James Mulvenon, Vice-President of Defense Group Inc.'s Intelligence Division and Director of DGI's Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. Dr. Mulvenon is an expert on the Chinese military and Chinese cyber issues and has published widely on Chinese military affairs, party-army relations, C4ISR, and nuclear weapons' doctrine and o...

In Episode 70 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andrei Shleifer, professor of economics at Harvard University. Dr. Shleifer is the most cited economist in the world according to RePEc's database. Throughout the course of his career, Andrei Shleifer has worked in the areas of comparative corporate governance, law & finance, behavioral finance, as well as institutional economics. He has...

In Episode 69 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with renowned philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein, about the philosophy of mattering and what makes human life worth living. The question of "what makes life worth living," is something that human beings have been grappling with since time immemorial. Perhaps, nowhere did this question pose a more existential imperative than in ancient...

In Episode 68 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with David Kotok, co-founder and CIO of Cumberland Advisors. David Kotok's articles and financial market commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and other publications.    This is a fascinating conversation that spans a wide range of issues currently facing the global economy, as well as subjects a...

In this week's episode of Hidden Forces ,  Demetri Kofinas conducts an impromptu monologue after a last-minute rescheduling of his interview with a prominent, former US senator, governor, and member of the 9-11 commission. He reflects on some of the subjects he intended to cover with his guest, including the role of the Saudi government in the 9-11 attacks. He also spends a good amount of time exp...

In Episode 67 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Bill Janeway about capitalism in the innovation economy. Janeway is a senior advisor and managing director of Warburg Pincus, where he was responsible for building the investment firm's information technology investment practice. Bill is also a co-founder and member of the board of governors of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. In...

In Episode 66 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with serial technology entrepreneur and host of the Internet History Podcast, as well as the Techmeme Ride Home, Brian McCullough. Brian is also the author of HOW THE INTERNET HAPPENED, published by Liveright, a subsidiary of W.W. Norton. In 2014 he was the co-founder of a startup human named Penelope, and in 2016 he launched Maxwell into bet...

In Episode 65 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with China expert Dinny McMahon, who spent ten years as a financial journalist in China, including six years in Beijing at The Wall Street Journal and four years with Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai. Demetri and Dinny discuss how Chinese malinvestment, massive debt burdens, and a population that is aging faster than anywhere else in the world...

In Episode 64 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with mathematician and public educator, Hannah Fry. Dr. Fry's mathematical expertise has led to the development of several  documentaries on the BBC, where she also hosts her own, long-running Radio 4 program: The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. Already a two-time author, Hannah is out with her third and latest book, Hello World: Being H...

In Episode 63 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with legendary value investor Howard Marks. Howard serves as the co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment management firm responsible for over 120 billion dollars in client assets. This week's conversation centers on the market cycle, its origins and impact. Howard shares his philosophy on risk management...

In Episode 62 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lawrence Fossi, known by his pen name as Montana Skeptic. Lawrence is the portfolio manager for a family office with over one billion dollars under management. A graduate of Yale Law School, he has 30 years of experience as a commercial trial attorney. Fossi started writing about Tesla three years ago under the pseudonym Montana Skeptic....

In Episode 61 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with equity research analyst Gordon Johnson, about a possible bankruptcy of Tesla amid the recently announced SEC fraud charges levied against its CEO Elon Musk. The two also discuss the ongoing criminal probe of its CEO Elon Musk, by the Department of Justice, and the impact that it may have on the company's stock price. Gordon Johnson has b...

In Episode 60 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Bruce Schneier, about cyberattacks, cyberwar, and survival in a hyperconnected world. Cyberattacks constitute one of the most urgent threats facing collective humanity according to Bruce Schneier. History has proven him right. In the summer of 2017, a weapon of cyberwar was dropped onto a world without borders, where the heavy artillery...

In Episode 59 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Grant Williams about the crisis brewing in emerging markets, the collapse in cryptocurrencies, and the palace intrigues of Elon Musk. All of these phenomena exhibit the common feature of "quantum weirdness at the zero-bound," where the laws of classical economics break down, space-time preferences collapse, and quantum entanglements lead...

In Episode 58 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jonathan Haidt about how trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions are setting up the iGeneration for failure on America's college campuses. In the Fall of 2013, the President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Greg Lukianoff, noticed that something odd was happening on America's college campuses. Words were...

In Episode 57 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joseph Lubin about the progress being made at Consensys and precisely how Joe believes that Ethereum will overcome the scalability challenges that have plagued its network since the earliest days of its founding. For the last few years, many blockchain enthusiasts have been eagerly anticipating the release of what many have referred to a...