Hidden Forces

In Episode 20 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with political scientist Daniel Drezner about public intellectuals, thought leaders, and the marketplace of ideas. Dr. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of “Spoiler Alerts” for the Washington Post. His latest book, The Ideas Industry, explores the balance that must be struck between public intellectuals and thought leaders in a properly functioning marketplace of ideas. What is the state of intellectual thought in American society? Where does one go in order to find good information? How does one measure the value of an idea if he or she cannot determine its veracity? How have the foundations of Western intellectual development like empiricism and reason been turned into political footballs? Why has trust in institutions eroded? Why has the credibility of journalists, scientists, and experts been brought in

In Episode 19 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with theoretical physicist Geoffrey West about his work studying biological systems, infrastructure, and the socioeconomics of cities. Dr. West's primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics, especially those concerning the elementary particles, their interactions, and cosmological implications. Geoffrey West currently serves as distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he served as President from July 2005 through July 2009. Prior to joining SFI Dr. West was the leader, and founder, of the high energy physics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is also the author of SCALE, a remarkable, and timely book, whose substance and theory we explore today. In today’s conversation, we explore some of the most remarkable insights coming out of the field of computational biology. This is an interdisciplinary cohort consisting of theoretical physicists, biologists, and mathematicians who are all working together to creat

In Episode 18 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Samuel Bowles, about economic man and the moral economy, exploring some of the latest insights from the field of behavioral economics with insights about how incentives and prices convey information and shape perceptions of value in the economy. Dr. Bowles is a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. His studies on cultural and genetic evolution have challenged the conventional economic assumptions of an economic man motivated entirely by self-interest. The author of nearly twenty books, Samuel Bowles has most recently written The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizensand A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution.  In today’s conversation, we follow the archeological record of economic man. We pursue the path towards rational expectations and utility maximization. We take the road from Aristotle, paying heed to his ethics, and to his conviction

In Episode 17 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robert Johnson, about the political economy, inequality, and the failings of our technocratic institutions. Dr. Johnson serves as President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York. Robert Johnson served for many years as a Managing Director for George Soros at Soros Fund Management and was part of the famous team of speculators that broke the bank of England in 1992, forcing the pound out of ERM. He served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire, and before this, as Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici. Black Wednesday was almost 25 years ago to the day. How has global finance, international trade, foreign exchange, and financial deregulation changed the landscape of speculation in the years sin

In Episode 16 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Anne Stevenson-Yang. Anne is the co-founder of J Capital Research, which conducts ground-up, primary research for institutional money managers on stocks, the Chinese economy, and the Chinese financial system. She is also the author of the recent book China Alone: China's Emergence and Potential Return to Isolation, in which she sets out her views on the Chinese economy and political system, arguing that China historically repeats a cycle of expansion and retreat. In today’s conversation, we take a trip around the world to the land of China. Our conversation concerns itself with the contemporary changes in Chinese society that came after the death of Chairman Mao. What was life like in China before Nixon and Kissinger made their famous visit in 1971? Why did modernization and reform in China begin after 1978? Who was responsible for the opening in China? What was the role of Deng Xiaoping, and why is he remembered as "the architect” of a new bran

In Episode 15 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Eric Schadt. Eric Schadt is founder and CEO of Sema4, as well as Dean of Precision Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. During the course of his 20-year career, Dr. Eric Schadt has built genetics and systems biology groups at Merck. He built the computational biology group at Rosetta. He has served as co-founder of Sage Bionetworks and as Chief Science Officer of Pacific Biosciences. He now serves as the founder and CEO of Sema4. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals, and he has contributed to a number of discoveries relating to the genetic basis of common human diseases such as diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s. In today’s conversation, we explore the information technology of biology – DNA – the world of genomics, where big data looms large. We begin by mapping the territory of the human genome and exploring the pathways of disease. We look to understand the ways in which com

In Episode 14 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christian Madsbjerg. Christian Madsbjerg is the founder of ReD Associates, a consultancy group focused on helping companies bridge the qualitative divide between themselves, their products, and their customers. The anthropologists, sociologists, economists, journalists, and designers who make up ReD employ the methods of social science to study human behavior. Instead of minimizing complexity, they embrace the non-linearities illuminated through human experience, helping companies reinvent themselves and their products from the bottom up. In today’s conversation we examine the world from the perspective of human experience. This is what philosophers call “phenomenology.” Rather than objectify reality, we will revel in its subjectivity. Rather than discount our senses in favor of hard data, we will discount the data in favor of our experience. Experience matters. Reality is messy. Data is fuzzy. The problem of consciousness is hard. Try as we mig

In Episode 13 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with James Grant. James Grant is a legend of the financial newsletter industry. Once the editor of the yield column in Barron’s, he would leave in 1983 to found Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, two years after the sacred risk-free rate touched just under 20%. This is a level that seems nearly impossible to fathom in today’s world of near-zero and even negative, interest rates. Having observed, reported, and opined on markets for almost 50 years, James Grant represents a bastion of experience and wisdom. In this episode, we stop to listen. We stop to remember a time, in which the extraordinary measures and unprecedented actions of our monetary and fiscal authorities would have seemed unimaginable. We take a hard look at money. How does this shadow of wealth find its value? How is the rate of interest determined, and what is the role of financial markets in facilitating the discovery of that value? What happened, in 2008 and what are the consequences, r

In Episode 12 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with economist Steve Keen. Steve is Professor of Economics at Kingston University in London and one of a handful of economists to correctly anticipate the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Professor Keen is also the popular author of “Debunking Economics,” as well as the timely book, “Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis?”  In today’s conversation, we tear up the textbook of contemporary economics. We dispense with equilibrium. We embrace irrationality. We internalize economic externalities and drop assumptions about the world that do not comport with the reality of lived experience. We begin our history of economics with the physiocrats, enlightenment thinkers of the early 18th century who concerned themselves with the question: “where does stuff come from?” We move through the classical period of economics, exploring the philosophies of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. We stop to question the assumptions of the Newtonian minded neoclassicists of the l

In Episode 11 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Ray Monk. Ray Monk is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton in the UK, where he lectures on logic, philosophical mathematics and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is presently a visiting Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute. A prolific biographer, professor Monk has written books on the philosophers and mathematicians Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, as well as the theoretical physicist and director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer. In their conversation, Demetri and Ray explore the mysterious and paradoxical world of mathematics. What are the foundations of mathematics? Where did mathematics come from? How did this seemingly infinite body of knowledge arise from virtually nothing? What are Euclid’s axioms? What are Plato’s forms? What did the Pythagorean mystery cults worship? How did our notions of mathematics evolve from the time of the Ancient Greeks? What were Imm

In Episode 10 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Carne Ross. Carne is the founder of Independent Diplomat, which advises dozens of democratic countries and political groups on using diplomacy to achieve their foreign policy goals. In his former capacity as a British diplomat, Carne worked on the Middle East, the global environment, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. He served in British embassies within Germany, Norway, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York, where he was Britain’s Middle East expert. Carne was also chief speechwriter to the British foreign secretary. Carne Ross resigned from the UK Foreign Service in 2004, after testifying and giving secret evidence to the UK’s first official inquiry into the Iraq war. Author of two books on world political affairs, Carne is a frequent commentator on international affairs on the BBC, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera and elsewhere. Carne has also written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Nation and

In Episode 9 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas explores the history of the Federal Reserve under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan with biographer Sebastian Mallaby. Sebastian is a writer, commentator, and chronicler of financial and economic history. He is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. His interests cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues, including central banks (the federal reserve), financial markets, and the intersection of economics and international relations. Some of his books include More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, The World’s Banker, and The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, Winner of the 2016 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Alan Greenspan is one of the most consequential and yet, least understood figures in American history. He was a libertarian turned technocrat. He was a

In this SPECIAL EPISODE of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas plays part of a documentary about him, created by CBC Radio One’s “The Current.” The documentary is based on of an article published by Demetri dealing with his experience of, and subsequent recovery from, severe dementia and anterograde amnesia caused by a Craniopharyngioma. Demetri is the very fortunate survivor of a brain tumor for which he underwent both surgery, as well as radiation therapy in the summer and fall of 2013. He lived with his brain tumor for four years before it began to cause him serious symptoms, most notably, dementia and anterograde amnesia. After his surgery in June of 2013, Demetri experienced an unprecedented reacquisition of memories previously thought to have been lost forever. The tumor had not disrupted the formation of new memories, but rather the retrieval process. Once the surgery removed pressure from his hippocampus and other cognitive areas of the brain, Demetri was able to reacquire and reassimilate those lost memo

In Episode 8 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with cybersecurity expert and cyber safety advocate, Josh Corman. Josh is the founder of I am The Cavalry, an advocacy group actively engaged in addressing some of the most pressing issues of public safety and threats to human life on the Internet today. He is also the Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Josh Corman is part of the 2016 Cybersecurity Task Force commissioned by the United States Congress to address the growing risk to our hospitals, medical infrastructure, and connected devices, from cyber-attacks. Gone are the quaint, innocent days of the early Internet, with its pesky Trojan’s, Macro Viruses, RATs, slammer worms, and blaster worms. Today’s cybersecurity landscape features a wide assortment of easily accessible and robust attack tools that exploit software bugs like Shellshock and Heartbleed. This is a cybersecurity landscape littered with DDoS and PDoS attacks like the Mirai Botnet and the recently rel

In Episode 7 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with one of the pioneers in complexity science, W. Brian Arthur. Brian Arthur has long been associated with the Santa Fe Institute, having served on its board of trustees and its board of science. He has been described by Fortune Magazine, as “one of the country’s leading economic thinkers,” and he is best known for his pioneering work on the operation of high-technology markets. He is the author of numerous papers and books, including The Nature of Technology: What it is and How It Evolves, and Complexity and the Economy, a collection of papers on economics and financial markets examined from the perspective of complexity theory. In this episode, Brian Arthur educates us on the emerging fields of complexity science and chaos theory. The history of complexity science is replete with the works of mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, ecologists, and biologists. It is a field defined by the imperfections of the natural world. In this conversation, D

In Episode 6 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joan Johnson-Freese about space warfare and the weaponization of outer space. Joan Freese is a professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College. She’s been a faculty member at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and the Air War College, which emphasizes the employment of air, space, and cyberspace in joint operations. Professor Freese has also served on the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Science and has often testified before Congress on matters of space warfare and space security. She is the author of multiple books on space warfare and space security, among them, Heavenly Ambitions: America’s Quest to Dominate Space, The Chinese Space Program: A Mystery Within a Maze, and her latest book, Space Warfare in the 21st Century. In this episode, we go into outer space. We don’t just stay in the low earth orbit (LEO) of the international space station, but move all the way to high (HEO), geostationary orbit

In this Market Forces segment of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Ben Friedland, Vice Chairman and Co-Head of CBRE’s Alternative Investments Practice (AIP), an industry-specific practice group focused on advising private equity firms, hedge funds, and other Alternative Investment companies on their real estate strategies throughout New York City and around the world. Throughout his 18+ years with CBRE, Ben has distinguished himself by developing exclusive relationships with many of the world’s most prestigious financial services companies. Partnering closely with his clients, he shapes and implements creative real estate strategies that align with their goals, helping them further efficiencies and achieve significant savings. Ben has consistently been recognized as one of CBRE’s top producers globally and is in a unique position to provide insight into how the forces of technology and globalization are changing this age-old, multi-trillion-dollar industry for the 21st century. Producer & Ho

In this Market Forces segment of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Emerging Markets Analyst Rachel Ziemba. Rachel leads Emerging Markets coverage for Roubini Global Economics and writes extensively across all three EM/Frontier regions, as well as about commodities. She has a particular interest in the macroeconomics of oil-exporting nations, including the management of oil wealth, energy-sector supply risks, and China. Rachel has served as an expert member of task forces in the U.S, and the UK on issues ranging from economic sanctions, Chinese security challenges, Egypt and sovereign wealth funds. Today’s conversation begins with a look at North Korea and the geopolitical crisis that is unfolding on the Korean Peninsula. Why are financial markets so bad at pricing geopolitical risk and do governments even have a firm grasp on the evolving threat of a nuclear exchange between the United States and the regime of Kim Jong-un? Our conversation eventually shifts to the matter of the falling dollar. W

In this Market Forces segment of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with the investor, commentator, and editor of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report, Marc Faber. Though Dr. Faber has been dubbed "Dr. Doom," by the financial press, he is perhaps most famous for his very accurate timing of the US stock market bottom in March 2009. A veteran of the financial industry, Dr. Faber worked during the 1970's for White Weld & Company Limited in New York City, Zurich, and Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong in 1973. He was a managing director at Drexel Burnham Lambert Ltd Hong Kong from the beginning of 1978 until 1990. In 1990, he set up his own business, Marc Faber Limited, acting as an investment advisor and fund manager. Marc Faber now resides in Chiang Mai, Thailand, though he keeps a small office in Hong Kong. In this nearly hour-long conversation, Marc Faber speaks with Demetri Kofinas about the growing wealth and income disparity across the world, with particular emphasis on the United States. They examine the

In Episode 5 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christopher Cole about political and financial volatility. Chris is the founder of Artemis Capital and the portfolio manager of the Artemis Vega Fund, which seeks to profit from periods of financial volatility, dislocation, and systemic crisis in financial markets. His core focus is systematic, quantitative, and behavioral based trading of financial volatility derivatives. What is volatility? What accounts for the unprecedented levels of mean reversion in implied volatility that we have seen in financial markets? What accounts for volatility persistence? Demetri and Chris compare spot (historic) volatility to implied (forward) volatility. They look at volatility-of-volatility (vol-of-vol). Christopher Cole presents his opinion that modern portfolio and system rebalancing strategies actually dampen financial volatility. Demetri sees these strategies as increasing volatility in the long-term, which Chris agrees with. Christopher also makes the furt