Hidden Forces

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, whether that be in financial markets, politics, or the broader economy. In practical terms, this means understanding the forces that shape how we come to want the things that we desire, from fancy degrees to high-flying stocks, to political ideologies, so that we can learn how to extract ourselves from the systems of wanting that leave us exhausted. Mimetic desire is not something we can eliminate, conquer, or transcend. It’s a power, like gravity, that we have to find a way to live with—and thrive in. This episode reveals how we can tune into our mimetic desires to counteract their destructive forces and learn to desire d