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 many other publications. Carne helps us explore the world of modern diplomacy, from the end of the Cold War and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, through the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, all the way to the Syrian Civil War and the rise of ISIS. We consider the limits of modern diplomacy and how national politics constrain our capacity for addressing global problems. We address the legitimacy of the state and question our relationship to authority. How much are politicians, technocrats, and global elites responsible for the populism and outrage on display in the Western world? Is there a better way forward, and what can history and technology, teach us about the possibilities for new forms of self-governance and organization in the 21st century? Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 self-described “side-man” who, nevertheless, managed to place himself front and center during one of the most crucial periods in the remaking of American finance. His early days in politics were spent as an active supporter of the Republican Barry Goldwater. In his later years, he became a fixture in the Ford administration. Later, he took on the role as an advisor to Ronald Reagan. Alan Greenspan’s role in public policy long predates his almost 20-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. His chairmanship lasted from the crisis of 1987 all the way through to the peak of the American housing market in 2006. How responsible was he for the prosperity of the 1990s? How much is he to blame for the catastrophic, financial meltdown of 2008? Most importantly, what can the story of Alan Greenspan teach us about the limits and dangers of human intervention, foresight, and power? Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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 memories into his life. This documentary was originally produced by Leif Zapf-Gilje. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 released Brickerbot. The use of ransomware tools like CryptoLocker and SamSam have become billion-dollar criminal industries. Cybercrime is estimated to cost the global economy hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars a year. Yet, we accept the losses as the simple cost of doing business. But what about when the cost of these crimes escalates from dollars and cents to flesh and blood? What are the risks to our industrial control systems? What about our aviation and emergency response infrastructure? What are the vulnerabilities in our connected devices, cars, and hospitals? The threats posed by cyber criminals, terrorists, and hackers are no longer fringe concerns. They strike at the heart of our increasingly interconnected, exposed, and vulnerable society. In this episode, we explore what to do about them.  Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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, Demetri and Brian Arthur stray far from equilibrium. They cover the booms and the busts of Joseph Schumpeter. They examine the information-laden price signals of Friedrich Hayek. They circle the chaotic orbits of Joseph Ford. They scale the infinite fractals of Benoit Mandelbrot. Demetri asks Brian Arthur about information theory, cryptography, and quantum potentiality, while examining the mystery of why markets and life are so volatile. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor: Connor Lynch Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 orbits (GEO) more than twenty-six thousand miles (35,786 km) above the Earth’s equator, where some of our most valuable and vulnerable satellites operate. We look at what the United States, China, and Russia are doing in the area of space warfare. We look at what our militaries are doing to weaponization outer space. We learn about ASAT’s, Kinetic Orbital Strikes, and Kinetic Kill Vehicles. We learn that any significant use of anti-satellite technologies could create a wall of space debris around earth orbit so thick, that we would be unable to launch anything into space including satellites, our space station, and any space missions to Mars and beyond for generations. Any and all satellite communications would go dark. Global distribution networks – including our food supplies, energy, and transportation – would grind to a halt. The global banking and financial system would collapse. Our communication infrastructure would be devastated. The implications of space warfare are catastrophic, and yet, the public is largely unaware of the dangers orbiting right above our heads. It’s high time we take notice. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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. What has been driving the fall in the dollar since the beginning of 2017? Have we seen a bottom or could the dollar fall another five, ten, or even twenty percent from these levels? The greenback has fallen despite a further drop in yields on 10-year and 30-year US treasuries. This is particularly relevant in light of the dollar carry-trade, which has benefited from the Federal Reserve's policy of low interest rates in the United States. How has the dollar's role as a funding currency for emerging markets played a role in the recent rise in equities and bond prices in some of these markets? What can forward volatility and the price of currency swaps tell us about the risk of a snap-back in the dollar carry-trade? Finally, Rachel and Demetri discuss energy markets, specifically the chronically low price of oil and its effects on the oil and natural gas industries in the United States, as well as those abroad. In particular, the two discuss the case of Saudi Arabia, with its dwindling foreign exchange reserves and fragile geopolitical position. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 role that central bank policy, government bailouts, and ultra-low interest rates have played in exacerbating this trend towards inequality and financial system instability. The two discuss Uber, where Demetri draws a parallel between the technology company’s practice of subsidizing its customers at the expense of its investors to the practice of Asian savers subsidizing American consumers during the 2000's housing boom. Marc Faber expresses a negative outlook for the US dollar in the near-term, taking a strongly bearish view of equities, in particular, the FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). He believes that the Federal Reserve, rather than succeed in its efforts to shrink its balance sheet, will be overcome by deflationary events in the market and forced to begin expanding its balance sheet once again. Marc Faber believes that western central banks will look to buy more than just government bonds, CDOs, and government-backed mortgages. He is of the mind that just as the Bank of Japan has come to own two-thirds of the ETF market in Japan, so too can western central banks. Indeed, Marc Faber believes that central banks will do whatever they need to do in order to prevent the financial system from collapsing, and this means “printing more money.” Demetri Kofinas also ask Marc Faber about Bitcoin, and what his views are on cryptocurrencies. Marc also gives his views on gold, structural demographics, populism, and the potential for war in Asia. The two end their conversation with best Marc Faber’s investment advice for anyone looking to navigate the ensuing years of financial turmoil and market volatility. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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 further point that stocks are overvalued when looked at from enterprise value to EBITDA, Case Schiller PE, Price to Book, Price to Sales, etc. He also believes that financial volatility could come from either the left or right tail of the distribution. We could have inflation or deflation, according to Christopher. His objective is to profit regardless of whether we get a move upwards or downwards in prices. What is the best way to carry volatility and go long uncertainty? The concepts discussed in this episode may appear complicated, but they are really rather simple. What listeners need to remember is that volatility is just change. Volatility reflects uncertainty, and we live in uncertain times. This episode is about learning how to embrace this uncertainty. It is about learning how to embrace change. It is an episode about learning how to profit from risk by capitalizing on the unknown. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor: Connor Lynch Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 4 of Hidden Forces,host Demetri Kofinas speaks with famed historian of television culture, Gary Edgerton. Professor Edgerton is Dean of the College of Communication at Butler University. He has published eleven books and more than eighty book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries on a wide assortment of media and television culture topics. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television. His award-winning book, The Columbia History of American Television, was named the 2008 John G. Cawelti Award winner for Outstanding Scholarly Inquiry into American Cultural Studies by the American Culture Association.  In their conversation, Demetri and Gary discuss the history of television as a technology and storytelling medium that fundamentally transformed American society and culture from the end of World War II until the present day. They explore the ways in which the growing aspirations of Americans – their changing norms, their victories, as well as their tragedies – played themselves out on their flickering, analogue screens. They consider the various ways in which American society dealt with the tragedy of Vietnam through shows like MASHand the A-Team. They explore the coming of age story through shows like MacGyver, Nightrider, and The Wonder Years. Gary comments on the significance of protofeminist programs like I Love Lucy and later, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The two discuss Baywatchand The Cosby Show, as examples of the power of international syndication. The subject of racism in America is also discussed through the example of shows like Amos ‘n’ Andy, as well as All in the Family. Demetri and Gary also discuss some of the more technical innovations of television, including the origin of the “close-up” as a tool for aiding character development and its successful implementation in the popular soap operas of the day. Finally, Gary Edgerton provides his thoughts about how television has (and will continue) to transform itself in the digital age of the 21stcentury. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor: Connor Lynch Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 3 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with philosopher and theologian Mark C. Taylor. Mark is Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life. A leading figure in debates about postmodernism, Taylor has written on topics ranging from philosophy, religion, literature, art and architecture to education, media, science, technology and economics. He has authored 30 books, among which include Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, and Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left. In this episode, we cover topics in religion, finance, art, and technology. Most importantly, we take this journey as individuals, exploring the paths blazed for us by Martin Luther and his Protestant Reformation. We build on the works of Ockham and Thomas Aquinas. We learn about economic philosophers like Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, who addressed the problems of non-linearity, information networks, and how complex systems create order from chaos. We look at how technology, for all its benefits, still leaves something to be desired. Perhaps this stems from a fundamental contradiction in its application to the human experience. Lastly, we ask, “what is it all for? What does it all mean? Where are we going, and why the great hurry?” Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor: Connor Lynch Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod