In Episode 309 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jacob Siegel, a senior editor at Tablet magazine and the author of a widely shared article about disinformation titled, “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” The ‘hoax’ according to Siegel is the information war itself, which he believes conflates the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by foreign enemies turning the American people into targets of the US government and its intelligence agen...
Apr 24, 2023•51 min•Ep 309•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 308 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Josh Wolfe, co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital about the state of venture investing and how venture capital is disrupting the battlefield and changing the nature of warfare. Josh and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation discussing the rise of narrative warfare and how social media, synthetic media, and historically high levels of public distrust in government and mainstream media institutions have made the pro...
Apr 17, 2023•55 min•Ep 308•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 307 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with the founder and CEO of Betaworks, John Borthwick about the current moment in artificial intelligence. In John’s first appearance on the podcast in 2017, Demetri and he spoke about the challenges and opportunities present in the field of A.I. and how we could progress technologically into an immersive future of superintelligence and simulation without losing touch with our humanity. The incredibly rapid adoption of ChatGPT has caused bo...
Apr 10, 2023•58 min•Ep 307•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 306 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Sacasas. Michael is the executive director of the Christian Study Center in Gainesville Florida and the author of The Convivial Society, a widely read newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. Demetri and Michael discuss how we are engineering society and the human experience in ways that could have irreversible effects on humanity’s future. Many of you may be wondering if this conversation is about A.I. Not nec...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep 306•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 305 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Daniel McDowell, the author of “Bucking the Buck,” a timely new book that seeks to establish a clear relationship between the heightened use of financial sanctions and the rise of “anti-dollar” policies designed to reduce an economy’s reliance on the US currency. Demetri and Daniel spend the first hour of their conversation examining the sources of Dollar hegemony, how the system works, and what allows the United States government to e...
Mar 30, 2023•45 min•Ep 305•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 304 of Hidden Forces, Demetri shares the recording from a Live Q&A he hosted on Thursday, March 23rd with Brent Johnson and Jeff Snider. The three discussed the FOMC’s latest rate hike decision and if the Fed is indeed as clueless as Jeff Snider believes or if there is a method to the madness as Brent and Demetri seem to suggest. They also speculate about what is likely to come after the current crisis and if it will lead to the birth of a new financial and monetary order. How and ove...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep 304•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 303 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with economist David Rosenberg. David is the founder and president of Rosenberg Research, an economic and financial market consulting firm that provides advice to thousands of retail and institutional clients across 40 countries. Demetri and David spend the first hour of their conversation discussing Rosenberg’s economic philosophy. David also shares lessons from his experience working in the finance industry since the early 1980s and what ...
Mar 22, 2023•53 min•Ep 303•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 302 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jeff Snider. Jeff is Chief Strategist for Atlas Financial and co-host of the Eurodollar University podcast where he untangles the inner workings of the global monetary and Eurodollar reserve currency system with implications for policymakers and investors. Jeff Snider has been ringing the alarm bell in anticipation of a panic inducing event like the bank failures we experienced last week for more than a year. In his last appearance on ...
Mar 20, 2023•55 min•Ep 302•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 301 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Steven Kelly about the government's decision to bail out depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and what this decision means for monetary policy and the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation. This conversation was recorded on the morning of Monday, March 13th less than 24hrs after the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the FDIC came out with a joint statement assuring depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that ...
Mar 13, 2023•34 min•Ep 301•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 300 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Iain McGilchrist. Most people know Dr. McGilchrist for having authored “The Master and His Emissary” a book about what we popularly refer to as “the Divided Brain” and its role in the making of the modern world. It is Dr. McGilchrist’s view that we have systematically misunderstood the nature of reality, because we have depended on the aspect of our brains that is most adept at manipulating the world in order to bend it to our purp...
Mar 13, 2023•58 min•Ep 300•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 299 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jon Askonas a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America where he works on the connections between the republican tradition, technology, and national security. Jon is the author of a new series of essays for the New Atlantis titled “Reality: A Postmortem,” where he looks at the forces that have conspired to break consensus reality, and what it means for humanity and the world. The last few years in many Western countri...
Mar 06, 2023•52 min•Ep 299•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 298 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Boston College, Jonathan Kirshner. Dr. Kirshner belongs to the school of international relations known as “classical realism,” which places a unique emphasis on the role played by uncertainty and the need to grapple more seriously with the nuance of historical context, the governing ideologies and perspectives of different states, the quality of leadership, and the character a...
Feb 20, 2023•55 min•Ep 298•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 297 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Paul Tucker. During his time at the BoE, Sir Paul sat on the bank’s monetary policy, financial stability, and prudential policy committees. He was a member of the G20 Financial Stability Board and a director of the Bank for International Settlements, which means he has worked at the highest levels of some of the most important policy-making bodies and research institutions in the ...
Feb 13, 2023•57 min•Ep 297•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 296 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chuck Klosterman, a bestselling author and essayist whose work focuses on American popular culture. His most recent book about the 1990s describes a decade that happened long ago, but not nearly as long ago as it seems. The 1990s happened between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers. During that time, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph N...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep 296•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 295 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Shehzad Qazi, the Managing Director of China Beige Book, which provides institutional investors and corporate decision-makers with market-leading insights derived directly from their nationwide proprietary data on the Chinese economy. China Beige Book CEO Leland Miller was previously on Hidden Forces to talk about the impact of Covid-19 on China’s economy and banking system, the latter of which has been a persistent source of weakness...
Jan 30, 2023•45 min•Ep 295•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 294 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, Barry Eichengreen. In his first appearance on this podcast nearly five years ago, Dr. Eichengreen discussed the legacy of the Great Moderation, a multi-decade period of low inflation and positive economic growth that lasted between the mid-1980s and the onset of the Great Financial Crisis. Since then, developed economies have experienced a period of...
Jan 23, 2023•48 min•Ep 294•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 293 of Hidden Forces, Agathe Demarais, the Global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and author of Backfire, joins us for a discussion about the ripple effects of US sanctions and export controls, how they are reshaping the global economy by weaponizing trade and finance, and the steps that countries are taking to insulate themselves from the US Dollar-based global financial and trading system. This episode is part of a series of conversations that we’ve cur...
Jan 16, 2023•47 min•Ep 293•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 292 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Roger Hirst and Jacob Shapiro. Roger has spent over two decades on the equity derivative desks at various investment banks and is currently the Managing Editor of Real Vision Creative Studios. Jacob is Partner & Director of Geopolitical Analysis at Cognitive Investments and Founder and Chief Strategist of the business and political risk consulting firm Perch Perspectives. Both Roger and Jacob are part of a small and highly talented tea...
Jan 09, 2023•52 min•Ep 292•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 291 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Landis. Landis is the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a widely recognized Syria expert. He was last on the podcast over three years ago to discuss the then-ongoing invasion of northern Syria by the Turkish military and the long-term withdrawal of American forces from the Middle East and Central Asia. The background for today’s conversation are the ongoing negotiations between Turk...
Jan 02, 2023•53 min•Ep 291•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 290 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Edwin Dorsey. Edwin is the author of “ The Bear Cave ,” a financial newsletter focused on exposing corporate misconduct that regularly moves markets and is cited frequently in Bloomberg terminal breaking news alerts. Edwin was recently profiled in Institutional Investor and is part of a wave of new authors on Substack who are changing the landscape of financial journalism. Today’s conversation focuses on Silvergate, a little-known but...
Dec 28, 2022•3 min•Ep 290•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 289 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jeff Snider. Jeff is Chief Strategist for Atlas Financial and co-host of the Eurodollar University podcast where he untangles the inner workings of the global monetary and Eurodollar reserve currency system with implications for policymakers and investors. The public often takes for granted the Federal Reserve’s ability to end economic recessions by engaging in what is popularly referred to as “money printing.” Unfortunately, the real...
Dec 26, 2022•56 min•Ep 289•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 288 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Renee DiResta about the recent revelations stemming from the Twitter Files, why we should care about them, and what we can do to fix the problems of unaccountable censorship and misinformation on social media. Renée is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, where she investigates the spread of narratives across social media and how actors leverage these networks to exert influence. She has advised Congres...
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 288•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 287 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with James Block. James is the author of Dirty Bubble Media , a popular substack account that publishes critical thought pieces about the crypto industry and which was recently featured in an Atlantic magazine article titled, “Crypto Was Always Smoke and Mirrors.” In this conversation, Demetri and James discuss what they believe is a multi-billion dollar criminal conspiracy that involves money laundering, tax evasion, sanctions evasion, an...
Dec 15, 2022•50 min•Ep 287•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 286 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Diana Choyleva and Dinny McMahon, the co-authors of a comprehensive new report that examines China’s plans to decouple from the dollar-based global trading and financial system. In this conversation, Choyleva and McMahon discuss Beijing’s rationale for wanting to transform the renminbi into an international currency, how the Chinese communist party is striving to make that transformation, why it might prove unattainable, and what prog...
Dec 05, 2022•45 min•Ep 286•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 285 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Stephen Findeisen, a fraud investigator who goes by the pseudonym "Coffeezilla” and runs an eponymous YouTube channel dedicated to exposing scams, con artists, and fraudsters. His work has been widely covered in the media including on the BBC and VICE and Coffeezilla himself was recently profiled in a feature article for the New Yorker. Stephen’s investigations into FTX, Tether, Digital Currency Group, and the continued fallout and co...
Nov 28, 2022•57 min•Ep 285•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 284 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Marshall Kosloff, the co-host of the Realignment podcast about the recent mid-terms, Trump’s announcement that he’s running for President of the United States in 2024, the politics of the Ukraine war, and an Ubermensch culture in tech that has influenced conversations about US domestic and foreign policy. The underwhelming performance of republicans in the 2022 mid-term elections has cast into doubt many pundits’ expectations about the...
Nov 21, 2022•51 min•Ep 284•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 283 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Vance Spencer and Michael Anderson about the downfall of FTX, the political back-story behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s legislative push to build a regulatory moat around his business empire, and the path forward for the crypto industry. As the crisis at FTX was unfolding, Vance received a call from none other than Sam Bankman-Fried. The two had never spoken before, but Vance had become recently critical of Sam’s efforts to lobby Washington...
Nov 14, 2022•55 min•Ep 283•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 282 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with famed short seller Marc Cohodes about Sam Bankman-Fried, the recent bankruptcy of FTX, and the bigger story behind the alleged fraud that he and his network of enablers have perpetrated. Marc Cohodes has famously exposing numerous corporate frauds at great personal expense and risk to himself and his family. So, when Cohodes began raising the alarm earlier this year by publicly calling FTX a scam, while describing Sam Bankman-Fried as...
Nov 14, 2022•55 min•Ep 282•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 281 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff. Meghan O’Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is currently Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She sits on the board of directors at Raytheon and the Council on Foreign relations, and is the North Am...
Nov 07, 2022•56 min•Ep 281•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 280 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas shares the the audio from a live Q&A call that he recently hosted for members of the new Hidden Forces Genius tier with Wall Street Journal chief economics correspondent Nick Timiraos. These calls are part of our Investor Roundtable series and include discussions with experts who our members would like to hear more from and who they would like to have the chance to ask questions to directly. We had a chance to discuss some of the news coming out ...
Nov 02, 2022•54 min•Ep 280•Transcript available on Metacast 
