Hidden Forces

• Diagnosing the Metacrisis: Reality & Meaning in Modern Life | Iain McGilchrist

  In Episode 452 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Iain McGilchrist, a neuroscientist and author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things. His work on the divided brain has helped millions of people find wisdom, meaning, and guidance for living in the modern world. Iain and Demetri begin their conversation exploring McGilchrist's core thesis about the divided brain, how the left and right hemispheres attend to the world in fundamentally different ways, where we see evidence of an increased preponderance in left-brain thinking, and how this has impacted the way we conduct science, reason through problems, use our imagination, and apply wisdom to the world. Iain believes that our civilization is caught in what some have described as a metacrisis, exacerbated by the encroachment of the left hemisphere onto more and more areas of lived experience. We see it in the procedurally abysmal manner in which modern medicine goes about formulating diagnoses, the ever-increasing obsession with process over outcomes, the commodification of writing, the rise in depression, the policing of language, and the reverence for machine-like efficiency and profit maximization at the expense of almost everything else. The two discuss the importance of self-actualization in the context of community and why Iain is inspired by the change of heart he sees in younger generations who are no longer satisfied with furthering a broken paradigm and are willing to imagine something different—a different way forward that makes room for our humanity and which provides people with a relational sense of meaning and purpose.  Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 12/01/2025

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• China Shock 2.0: State Capitalism at the Frontier | Dinny McMahon

  In Episode 451 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with author and long-time China analyst Dinny McMahon about the Chinese leadership's efforts to redesign China's economic model in the face of structural headwinds to growth, mounting trade barriers, and growing concerns in Western capitals about Chinese economic and military domination. The first hour is spent exploring why McMahon believes that China is at a transformational moment. He details the kind of economy that Beijing intends to build by 2035 and the internal debate over whether China should rebalance toward household consumption through welfare and redistribution or double down on its investment-driven growth model as the primary mechanism for raising household living standards. The second hour is devoted to understanding China's evolving industrial strategy that Dinny describes as a potential "China Shock 2.0" driven by legacy industry upgrading, innovation at the technological frontier in sectors like batteries and electric vehicles, flying cars, and humanoid robots, and import substitution in areas like machine tools and semiconductors all while pushing intermediate manufacturing offshore to circumvent Western trade barriers. McMahon lays out his best and worst case scenarios, as well as what China's economy is most likely to look like by the middle of the next decade; he and Demetri examine the risks of further deindustrialization and strategic dependency by the United States and Europe on Chinese manufacturing; and discuss how all of this collides with global climate goals, the energy transition, and a world in which China's state-driven capitalist model is increasingly setting the pace for innovation, growth, and material abundance. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/24/2025

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• How to Navigate the New Investment Paradigm | Lawrence McDonald

  In Episode 450 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lawrence McDonald, the founder of The Bear Traps Report and the author of a recently published book about the risks and investment opportunities present in today's radically reshaped economy titled "How to Listen When Markets Speak." In today's conversation, Demetri and Lawrence discuss how social media and the gamification of investing have amplified behavioral biases and fueled the AI boom, as well as the growth of crypto and other "tertiary" assets. They then zoom out to examine how the macro environment has changed since the Covid 19 pandemic, and how the government's response to both the GFC and covid crisis have sent investors scrambling for new frameworks to help them understand government's role in the economy and how to position themselves and their client's portfolios for a radically new world—one that you will not learn about in financial text books or most macroeconomics courses. Kofinas and McDonald also explore the "dark side of passive investing," the extreme concentration risk present in a handful of AI-linked mega-caps, the risk to markets of more capricious government trade policies, and why Lawrence McDonald believes that one of the most underappreciated opportunity sets in AI lies not at the intersection of semiconductors and AI companies, but in the physical energy and delivery infrastructure needed to power them. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/17/2025

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• Investment Implications of the AI CapEx Boom | Chase Taylor

  In Episode 449 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chase Taylor, head of research at Bulwark Capital Management and founder of Pinecone Macro Research about investment opportunities around the buildout of the new "electric stack" and the AI CapEx Boom that relies on them. Chase and Demetri spend the first hour of this episode exploring his methodology, how he extracts signals from noise, and why a multidisciplinary approach to investing is especially important during periods of disruptive sociopolitical and technological change like the kind we are experiencing today. They then apply these ideas to two important technological trends underway in the global economy: (1) the transformation of the so-called "electric stack" or electro-industrial stack and (2) the AI CapEx Boom that relies on it. They begin with a deep-dive exploration of the dramatic cost declines happening across the entire electric stack, beginning with the addition of new sources of energy, advancements in battery technology for storage, the use of magnets and motors that turn electricity into mechanical motion, power electronics that shape it into the precise force needed by today's technologies, and the embedded compute that orchestrates and decides how and when to put that force into action. They discuss the sources of China's dominance in this industry, the horizontal complementarities in its manufacturing ecosystems, the advantages of vertical integration, and what America and Europe need to do in order to remain competitive in this new industrial ecosystem. The second hour is devoted to exploring the implications for investors of the current AI CapEx boom, how the USD might behave in a growth slowdown scenario post-Liberation Day, and what the Trump administration's military and covert action threats against Maduro's regime in Venezuela can tell us about his foreign policy and whether we are returning to a more colonial phase of domination by the American empire over the Western hemisphere. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/10/2025

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• Investing on the Front Lines of the AI Arms Race | Nathan Benaich

  In Episode 448 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nathan Benaich, founder and general partner of Air Street Capital and the creator of the annual State of AI Report, an open-access compendium that tracks advances across AI research, industry, policy, and geopolitics. Nathan Benaich and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation exploring some of the most important AI breakthroughs of the year. They unpack the DeepSeek moment, dig into some of the advancements made by the latest reasoning models, and discuss why there appears to be a regression in capabilities across certain domains in artificial intelligence at the same time as we are seeing marked improvements in reasoning-heavy use cases like coding and scientific research. The second hour turns to a conversation about the commercial implications and geopolitical dynamics of the AI arms race, including China's strategy to become the leader in open-weight models and tooling. They look at what industries, sectors, and professions may be most ripe for disruption, where the investment opportunities are, whether we're in a bubble comparable to the 1990s Internet boom, and how export controls, energy constraints, and regulatory red-tape could play an outsized role in shaping the trajectory of the current arms race. Lastly, Kofinas and Benaich examine where along the AI stack most of the value is likely to accrue—from the underlying picks and shovels, through the foundation models, to the apps that ride on top of them—and what all this means for labor markets, education, and the cadence of scientific discovery. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/29/2025

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