Hidden Forces

In this episode of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas shares part of his recent conversation with Bruce Schneier, a renowned American cryptographer, on the subject of cybersecurity and the NSA. Demetri also speaks with Leemon Baird, the inventor of Hashgraph, the future of privacy and freedom. Demetri starts the show with a personal commentary on Carpenter v. United States, the landmark privacy case currently before the Supreme Court. Follow us at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 25 Demetri Kofinas speaks with former Chief US Economist for HSBC, Lacy Hunt, about the macro forces driving the global economy in the 21st century. This conversation relies on a panoply of data, statistics, and econometrics – bank lending, money velocity, monetary aggregates, disposable income, liquidity coverage ratios, and credit spreads - as we examine the forces of debt deflation, structural demographics, and historically low savings rates. Follow us at @hiddenforcespod

In this special edition of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas spends the first two-thirds of the show breaking down the latest trends in media, society, and culture. He focuses his discussion on the failing mainstream media landscape, its social media echo chamber, and where Hidden Forces intends to go next. Demetri brings on producer David Loewenthal for the final 15 minutes of the program for a breakdown on the latest price action in Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space.

In this Techno Forces segment, David Kirkpatrick joins Demetri Kofinas for a conversation on the evolving landscape of our technological society. How do we protect our privacy and freedom in a networked world controlled by a handful of tech giants? How will advances in AR, VR, and brain-machine interfaces change the human experience? How do we improve our cities and infrastructure with technology in mind? How do we prepare for a future where most of today's jobs will be done by machines? @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 24, Demetri speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator. Their conversation examines the landscape of constitutional law in the 21st century. How do we interpret a more than 200-year-old document in an age of empire, terror, and technological futurism? Can this enduring document safeguard our liberty, autonomy, and freedom, in the digital age?

In Episode 23 Demetri speaks with Heather Berlin, a cognitive neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about the neural basis of consciousness. The two consider a theory of mind rooted in a materialist perspective. Is there really nothing more to the experience of consciousness – to life itself – than the observable firing of billions of neurons jumbled together in an atomic stew consisting almost entirely of empty space?

This is the complete audio from “The Future Is Not Blockchain. It’s Hashgraph” panel hosted by Demetri Kofinas on Thursday, October 19, 2017. In it, members of the hashgraph consensus algorithm’s founding team, including the CEO of Swirlds, Mance Harmon, speak with Demetri Kofinas about the future of the Internet.

In Episode 22, Demetri speaks with Leemon Baird, the founder and creator of Hedera Hashgraph, a distributed ledger technology that may have solved the problem of scale in distributed consensus. Its properties of speed, security, and fairness could expand decentralized use cases to complex markets, auctions, crypto-currency micro payments, live games (even MMOs), and much more. Follow us at @hiddenforcespod

In this Market Forces segment, Demetri Kofinas speaks with financial analyst and best-selling author Jim Rickards about the upcoming IMF and World Bank meetings taking place this week in Washington, the prospects of war on the Korean peninsula, and the future of US-China relations. Jim also shares his thoughts about the changes he expects to see at the Fed over the coming months as Janet Yellen's term comes to an end. @hiddenforcespod

Mid-Week Interview with Jim Rickards, Breaking News on Blockchain, and More!

In Episode 21 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with John Borthwick about design philosophy, superintelligence, relativism, and simulation. How do we develop a design philosophy for our machines without losing sight of our humanity? Who are we designing our world for? And, what do we hope to achieve as we dissolve into this immersive technological future of superintelligence, disembodied consciousness, relativism, and simulation?

In Episode 20 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Daniel Drezner about 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 has the wealth gap, partisanship, and information overload created a landscape welcoming to thought leaders but hostile to the very types of public intellectuals that would have been celebrated less than 50 years before?

In this Market Forces segment, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Emerging Markets Analyst Rachel Ziemba. The conversation begins with a look towards North Korea and the geopolitical crisis unfolding there. The conversation then shifts to the falling dollar and the forward volatility of the carry-trade. They end their discussion with energy markets, specifically the chronically low price of oil and its effects on Saudi Arabia, with its dwindling foreign exchange reserves and fragile geopolitical position.

In Episode 19 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Geoffrey West about some of the most remarkable insights coming out of the fields of complexity science and computational biology. Are there limits to growth? What are the universal costs associated with our cities and our lifestyles? What can interest rates and human time preferences tell us about our relationship to nature? What role do we play in the universe’s inexorable procession towards entropy, and how much time do we have left?

In this Market Forces segment, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Gil Luria about the economics of bitcoin and the role that governments and regulators will play in this emerging market. Gil is the director of institutional equity research at D.A. Davidson and one of the earliest sell-side analysts to cover Bitcoin. How can we use information about supply dynamics and business cycles in mining to help us determine the fair market value of a given cryptocurrency?