Hidden Forces

In Episode 208 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Adam Tooze, professor of history and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He's also a prolific public commentator and author of several prize-winning books including his latest, "Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World Economy." In the first part of their conversation, Demetri and Adam work their way through the ch...

In Episode 207 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Daniel Markey, Senior Expert on South Asia at the United States Institute of Peace who recently served as senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and as the academic director of the school's Global Policy Program. He is also the author of "China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the...

In Episode 206 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jonathan Schroden, Director of the Countering Threats & Challenges Program at CNA. Schroden has served as a strategic advisor on Afghanistan to the US military since 2008, ranging from commands in-country to operational commands outside of Afghanistan, as well as strategic elements in the Pentagon, including the Office of the Secretary...

In Episode 205 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Laurel Miller, Director of International Crisis Group's Asia Program who previously served as deputy and then acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the U.S. State Department. Laurel also held the position of senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation and served as a Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secre...

In Episode 204 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with investor and macro-financial strategist James Aitken. This is an over 2-hour-long conversation that ranges from a discussion about the oil industry and the impact of ESG mandates on prices, to the short-and-medium-term impacts of monetary & fiscal policy on inflation, to the post-Covid economy and opportunities for value investing. In t...

In Episode 203 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas answers dozens of audience questions about his process for guest selection, outreach, and preparation, thoughts about certain conspiracies, the business side of podcasting, his experience creating a TV show on RT, and much, much more. All questions were submitted through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page . Premium subscribers gain access to our overti...

In Episode 202 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with veteran BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones about the biggest developments and news stories in tech from the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s to the rise of Google and Facebook. These stories and more are included in Rory's new book "Always On," which chronicles the rise of the smartphone era and how technology has altered ou...

In Episode 201 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Wall Street Journal automotive and technology reporter Tim Higgins, about his new book "Power Play," which chronicles the incredible and chaotic rise of Tesla and its controversial CEO Elon Musk. In the first part of their conversation, Tim and Demetri discuss the origin story of Tesla all the way up until the successful launch of the M...

In Episode 200 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Maureen Farrell, author of " The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neuman, and the Great Startup Delusion ." Maureen, along with her colleague and co-author Eliot Brown, were some of the first reporters at the Wall Street Journal to cover what is arguably the biggest financial debacle in the history of early-stage investing. And yet, this descri...

In Episode 199 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with investor and financial historian Russell Napier. Napier's latest book, "The Asian Financial Crisis: 1995-1998," covers a period of time that many investors are either not familiar with or haven't studied anywhere near as closely as they should given its relevance to the investment regime in which we are living today. Today's investment...

In Episode 198 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lauren Aguirre, an award-winning science journalist whose book "The Memory Thief," tells the story of a team of doctors responsible for discovering a surprising connection between the use of opioids—specifically fentanyl—and memory loss. This condition, first detected in drug overdose victims with severe damage to their hippocampus has...

In Episode 197 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Benjamin Bratton, professor of visual arts at UC San Diego and the author of "Revenge of the Real: Politics, for a post-pandemic world." Bratton's book explores how our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates a critical inability on the part of society to govern itself. The pandemic in this sense serves as a sort of no...

In Episode 196 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas is interviewed at the ETHGlobal HackMoney Summit by crypto researcher and writer Hasu, whose work Demetri has relied to educate himself on some of the most important issues in crypto over the years. In this conversation, Demetri explores many of the same themes of financial nihilism, hyperreality, and transformation that he recently discussed in hi...

In Episode 195 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Norman, an award-winning author, public philosopher, and prominent advocate for the field of "cognitive immunology," which studies the mind's resistance to bad ideas. In this conversation you will learn how mental immunity works, how epidemics of irrationality occur, and how present cultural conditions exacerbate the spread of bad...

In Episode 194 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lukis Burgis, founder and director of Fourth Wall Ventures and author of "Wanting," a book about the power of mimetic desire and how it impacts our behavior in markets, politics, and culture. The goal of this conversation is to help you understand what mimetic desire is and how it operates in your own life and in society at large, wheth...

In Episode 193 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with world-renowned trainer, author, and CEO of Attack Athletics, Tim Grover. Tim has personally trained and worked with some of the most elite, iconic athletes in the world, including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, and hundreds of other sports and business professionals. He is the preeminent authority on the science and art of ph...

In Episode 192 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas shares a recent appearance he made on the Grant Williams Podcast. Grant has been on the Hidden Forces Podcast before, twice on his own and twice as a guest along with Ben Hunt. We have provided links to all of those previous appearances in the related section on the episode page on our website. Grant spent the first 20 minutes asking Demetri questi...

Demetri shares his thoughts about the news cycle and provides listeners with a sneak peak into the next 5 weeks of content, including episodes on the will to win and memetic desire.

In Episode 191 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nikhil Shamapant, the author of a recently published and widely circulated 79-page report that sets an ambitious 18-month price target on Ethereum of $150,000 per ETH—more than 30x the current level. Nikhil believes this will be driven primarily by two upcoming changes to the underlying Ethereum protocol which will reduce the supply of...

In Episode 190 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Josh Rogin, a Washington Post foreign-policy columnist and author of the book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century. Rogin's book explains for mainstream audiences how the Chinese Communist Party works: its history, nature, motivations, operations, and objectives. It does so in a language that is both access...

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 sy...

In Episode 188 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Toby Ord, a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University and author of "The Precipice," a book that focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity's long-term future and the risks which threaten to put a premature end to our existence. The purpose of today's conversation is first, to get you to reflect on this questio...

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...

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,...

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...