The Hundred Year Pivot | A New Podcast Series by Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams

Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams have teamed up to launch "The One Hundred Year Pivot https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/the-one-hundred-year-pivot-demetri-kofinas-and-grant-williams," a new podcast series that explores the once-in-a-century economic, political, and geopolitical reordering currently underway. These transformational changes demand that we develop new maps and investment frameworks to help us navigate the challenges ahead. Over the course of the series, Grant and Demetri will be speaking with the smartest and most plugged-in people they know to help us chart a path through this gathering storm and position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the changes to come. You are invited to join them on this journey as they explore the implications of: The breakdown of existing political, monetary, and social institutions The emergence of new economic and financial trading blocks The reprioritization of national and economic security The channeling of national savings into a new military and technological arms race The development of a new investment paradigm with historic implications for investors Premium subscribers to the Hidden Forces podcast and the Grant Williams Podcast will have early access to the episodes in this ongoing series. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://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 https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces, SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces, CastBox https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539, or via our RSS Feed http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334 & Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP 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 https://hiddenforces.io/. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/, and Twitter https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas https://twitter.com/kofinas Episode Recorded on 04/08/2025

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Demetri Kofinas?

  What's up everybody? I have some very exciting news to share with all of you. My friend and fellow podcaster Grant Williams and I have teamed up to launch a new podcast series we're calling The 100 Year Pivot. It's a joint effort based on a shared understanding that we are living through a once in a century economic, political, and geopolitical reordering that will require us to develop novel maps and investment frameworks to help us navigate these incredibly consequential times. Over the course of the series, Grant and I will be speaking with the smartest, most plugged in people we know to help us chart a path through this gathering storm as we seek to position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the

• 0:44Demetri Kofinas?

  changes to come. Premium subscribers to the Hidden Forces podcast and the Grant Williams podcast will have early access to the episodes in this ongoing series. Go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe to access our premium feed so the episodes in this series will download automatically to your mobile podcast app whenever we publish. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to [email protected]

• 1:27Demetri Kofinas?

  and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. Lastly, because this conversation deals with investing, nothing we say on this podcast can or should be viewed as financial advice. All opinions expressed by me and my guests are solely our own opinions and should not be relied upon as the basis for financial decisions. And with that, please enjoy this first in a long series of conversations on the 100 Year Pivot with my friend and co-host, Grant Williams.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Welcome everybody to the first episode of The Hundred Year Pivot. Joining me as co-host on this is my great mate and podcaster supreme, Dimitri Kavinos. Mate, how are you?

• 2:13Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm so happy that we're doing this.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we've talked about collaborating for quite some time and we never figure out what to do, right? But this little project of ours is something that's grown completely organically. We didn't sit down with a pad and pen and come up with some kind of great idea we could do. It just happened. And I think that's such an important component of this whole idea.

• 2:32Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, and I love the name that we've chosen. I feel like, you know, that name resonated with both of us. We threw out a few titles when we were storming, brainstorming over it. I think it was just the same day, within the same hour or so, we came up with this name. And I feel like it really captures both the secular trends that are so powerful, the forces that I use that term for my show, whatever the analogous term that you use. You guys obviously talk about the end game with you and Bill Fleckenstein. And then the pivot, which I think is the actionable part that speaks to investors.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And since we came up with the idea and the title, I mean, the pivots are happening left and right. There's so much to talk about. But I think it's worth, before we kind of just have a little look at the world now, it's worth us talking about what we aim to get out of these conversations. And the beauty of that is, as we set out, nothing, right? That's, that's, that's one of the beauties of it.

• 3:21Demetri Kofinas?

  We're like the Seinfeld of financial podcasts.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Right, right. You know, the whole idea of this is to, we recognize there's something going on. And you know, the conversation you and I recorded back in February, I'm sure your subscribers are the same, but mine resonated so strongly with them. And in a way that none of them were expecting, you know, that a lot of people said to me, I had the same paraphrased response so many times, I didn't even know that I was feeling this way until Dimitri articulated it so perfectly. And that feeling, you know, that feeling, sometimes you just have to follow those feelings and try and understand what's behind them. And that, I think, is really what we're trying to do here.

• 3:55Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, I agree. And I told you what I love about this also is that so many of my podcasts, my MO is like hardcore prep, structure, and I love that we're going to do something that isn't that way. And quite frankly, some of the most popular podcasts I've ever released are the ones that haven't been structured because at the end of the day, people love, people, I think, don't even realize how much they respond to authentic conversations where they feel like they're actually in the room. So I feel like we're going to be able to accomplish that here. And I'm very excited, I was telling you this as well, that there are people that not only the people that you've interviewed that I haven't, that we're going to be bringing on the show, but also there are people that I've interviewed, that I've really enjoyed talking to, that I don't necessarily want to speak to again, because I feel like I've gotten most of what I want. But the idea

• 4:38Demetri Kofinas?

  of interviewing them with you now makes me so excited to speak with them again.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, the same goes for me. And I think the beauty of this is that not only can these conversations go anywhere and be about any kind of subject that crops up, but my questions are going to lead to places that you want to explore and vice versa. And I think having this unstructured idea of, look, these people are thoughtful, interesting people who have perspectives that you and I are both interested in, where do they take us? Because the world is kind of unanchored at the moment. And so to have a chance to have these unstructured conversations, just explore ideas and try and understand not just kind of what's happening, but how those shifts are happening, why those shifts are happening, and what it means to people. Because I think there's a, you spoke about this so beautifully, and this whole concept of yours of financial nihilism captures it

• 5:29Speaker 01

  so well, this loss of meaning, this loss of meaning in financial markets, this loss of meaning of money, people being unmoored from any kind of grounded center, just leads to conversations, I've had plenty of them over dinner in the last couple of years with people that, you know, you go for a quick dinner and you end up three and a half hours later and two bottles of wine in, sitting there, you know, with your head in your hands, having these own conversations, and every single one of them has been profound.

• 5:55Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, I can't remember the name of the academic who's associated with the term the meaning crisis, but this is a term that we've heard bandied about quite a bit, especially since the pandemic. And I think that sentiment also filters into financial markets and to politics. And I think we are, part of this 100-year pivot is about finding a new source of meaning and a new organizing principle in society. That's what we're sort of trying to figure out in real time.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, it could come from any one of a number of directions. You know, I published this piece in in March with five essays from great friends of mine, many or all of whom will hopefully grace this podcast with us. And I gave them a very, very broad brief. I'd had conversations with them in the last year or so about the world and their thoughts on it. So I knew kind of that they were thinking along the same lines as I was in terms of trying to figure things out, but I gave them a very broad brief. So I'm not going to tell you what to write about. I want you to write about how you're feeling and how you see the world and how it makes you feel, not what makes you think. And, you know, it worked beautifully. I got I got five completely different essays back, each taking a very different line of attack for the problems that the world is facing.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And, you know, when you put them together, it was an extraordinarily rounded set of ideas and also questions, you know, that leave you thinking, wow, what what really is going on? And more importantly, how do I feel about it?

• 7:17Demetri Kofinas?

  I told you that I loved that entire, or would you call it? It was a newsletter, but they were individual essays.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, just just a collection of essays. That's all.

• 7:24Demetri Kofinas?

  It was really wonderful. And my favorite one was Rogers. And I told you that it really spoke to me when he quoted Evita, that line from Evita, that I still need your love after all that I've done. And he asks, whose love?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Demetri Kofinas?

  Whose love do we need?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:38Demetri Kofinas?

  After all that we've done? And I think what he was referring to, if I remember correctly, was forgiveness and grace, the grace of God. And there is a sense in which we're going through a trial, a great trial as a people, as a country, as a nation, as a world. And it's going to shape the future profoundly, perhaps in the same way that World War II, the depression shaped the post-war generation and the war itself and all of that and the sacrifice, the collective sacrifices, something you and I talked about. In fact, it's so interesting that you asked this question in the conversation we had, whatever it was, was it a couple of months ago, Grant?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Ever, yeah.

• 8:14Demetri Kofinas?

  I don't remember when we recorded it. And you specifically asked, you know, could a drop in the stock market cause that collective sense of sacrifice? And my initial reaction was like, not really, unless it was, you know, cataclysmic. If it was so significant that it caused, it necessitated shared sacrifice. And I recently had a conversation with James Van Galen on the show where we talked about the possibility of a wealth-driven recession, a recession that's driven by a fall in the stock market that's so great. That it has such a substantial impact on consumer spending because of the fact that the top 10% or responsible for 50% of consumer spending and because also baby boomers do so much to support their children. So there are knock on effects. And then AI could accelerate

• 8:57Demetri Kofinas?

  that. So I think as I reflected on what you said in the last couple of weeks, I think there may be more truth to that. And we're sort of going to see that playing out potentially here with these tariffs that Trump imposed. Everyone's still trying to figure out how impactful they're going to be because we still live in a complicated, internationalized, global trade world, characterized by global trade. And so there are tons of prices that we can't quite figure out because it's not as simple as, you know, we slap tariffs on China and their goods are going to get more expensive. They're importing parts and pieces and sending their goods on to other third party nations that are assembling the piece. So all of that together is something that no one can really quite figure out. There's so much uncertainty

• 9:39Demetri Kofinas?

  also in the supply chain and the rhetoric and in the policies of the administration. And so this feels like COVID in a sense, right? In the sense of like, this just feels like uncharted territory.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  You know, it's really interesting that that answer you gave there was a microcosm of this podcast because you started off talking about Rogers' essay and religion and you ended up with tariffs, right? And supply chains. And that, to me, is fascinating because that's the strange thing that's happening here. And, you know, as I said in my, the letter I published, and I said in our conversation, I'm not a religious man, but there's a spiritual component to this. And I've been really struck by the kind of swell in talk about religion. In private emails I've had and conversations that those letters and our conversations sparked, it's fascinating to me to see that this idea of religion, and I don't necessarily mean it in the form of a god, but in the form of, as you said, some kind of moral center,

• 10:33Speaker 01

  some kind of compass that gives principles and ethics and morals and guidance and all that stuff. It feels like people are grasping for it. And to go from there to supply chains in the space of a few minutes just shows you how close all this is. And I think how at sea everybody is in trying to figure all this stuff out. And you know, some of the people we've got lined up, when I went through those five essays, there was one thread that ran right the way through them, one reference that was made by each of the five authors, which didn't come as a surprise to me, but I think it's very telling. And that was our mutual friend Neil Howes and Bill Strauss's book, The Fourth Turning.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  You know, this idea of a fourth turning and all that it brings in terms of the things we talked about and morals and ethics and principles, that kind of stuff. It ran through that letter like a seam of gold through a rock. You know, it was really, really interesting and we're going to have Neil join us on the on the podcast as one of our first couple of guests to talk about that. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that as a starting point for this kind of exploration about.

• 11:38Demetri Kofinas?

  I mean, it's right there in the name too, right?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:40Demetri Kofinas?

  I think Neil's generational cycles are 80 to 100 years roughly. I think he's a perfect guest to start this because I think when you, when you study enough history, and I am by no, no means a historian, there are many people who I follow, who I would consider to be people that actually have studied history. But from my superficial understanding of history, there is so much about this time that just feels resonant. It feels like we're playing out something that's happened many times before. And there are many shocking similarities to the 1930s, you know, with these trade wars and potential capital wars and the breakdown of the global order.

• 12:21Demetri Kofinas?

  So I think having on a historian like Neil, who's also developed a framework that tries to put some of that history into a kind of rhythmic order is a very appropriate first episode for the series.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so too. And it's funny, you know, I read that book, I don't know, maybe 15 years, something like that. And I found it profoundly interesting and thought provoking at the time, but it's funny with that in the back of my mind. There've been a few things along the last fifteen years that have, I've kind of added and added and added as a way to, as various lenses to look through things, and that has definitely been one of them. But, you know, I've talked about this before, you brought up the Great Depression and World War Two and all these echoes throughout history around the last fourth turning. And, you know, what's fascinating to me is, you know, when I grew up in the UK at school, history was my favorite subject. And we, we learned about World War Two and the lead up to World War Two, and that was a big focus of history in England,

• 13:16Speaker 01

  obviously it would have been. And the, from that day to, literally a few years ago, the piece that I, I could never really understand properly, even though you kind of read about it, I could never really understand it, was, you think about, how could society reach a point where someone like Hitler could be elected? Elected, you know, not, this is not someone who stole power, this is, this guy was elected in a landslide. And I could never really put myself in that place to understand it. And I listened to a podcast called The Rest Is History, which, which I really, really enjoy. And they did a little five-part mini-series about the rise of the Nazi Party in, in the nineteen twenties

• 13:55Speaker 01

  and thirties in, in Germany. And, and that brought this period to life. And going into it, not understanding how it could happen, I came out of that thinking, how could it not have happened? And I think that's the important thing for all of us today is, is to understand the times we're living through are going to be written about for hundreds of years to come. This is a period of time that is changing the entire way the world works. It's changing every relationship in the world, not just between countries, but between generations and between classes and between, everything is up for grabs here. And we talk about, in our little corner of the world, the financial world, we talk about

• 14:38Speaker 01

  the system being reset and all this stuff. And it's kind of a throwaway phrase, because we're talking about the monetary system or the financial system, we don't really know what we're talking about. We just recognize that things are shifting. And for me, you know, as we go through this journey together, you and I, along with our guests, I think the things I'm trying to really put into place is to help people gain the perspective that they will get in 20 years, but try and get it now by looking backwards. You know, I think it was Churchill that said, the further back you look, the farther forward you can see. And I think that's such an important concept. So hopefully, in these conversations, we can bring ideas and bring thoughts and bring perspectives to the table that will

• 15:23Speaker 01

  help people in real time gather a much bigger understanding, rather than having their heads in the chaos and not being able to step back far enough to see.

• 15:31Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, I love that. Actually, I recently stepped away from Twitter and it's been so good for not just my mental health, but also, I think, also for my, my ability to do exactly what you're describing, because it's so easy to get caught up in the noise and not see the big picture. And I think, you know, when we were talking with Neil about doing the show, we were also talking with Russell Napier, who you and I agree has just been, look, my personal perspective is that when it comes to finance and political economy, there is no one who I have followed these years who has nailed it better in terms of creating the most coherent, complete and accurate framework than Russell Napier.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 16:08Demetri Kofinas?

  And to that point, I was saying to both Neil and Russell that when I started the Hidden Forces podcast, my goal was to try and understand the forces that are impacting the epiphenomena of the world. And we talk about this all the time in markets, you know, what's driving the market. Everyone, no one knows, and you're always trying to extract, we're even talking about this with the case of the supply chains. And no one, no one knows actually what the impact's going to be. The problem is very clear, tariffs, rising in cost of imported goods. Why can't we figure it out? Because it's a complex system. And markets as a whole are even more complex. And I said something to you guys in an email, which actually I want to give credit to Tim O'Reilly, who inspired this with an episode

• 16:50Demetri Kofinas?

  that we had done. And it was sort of a combination of something he had written in his book about the future. It was a book about map making. And what I said was that I feel like, and this applies to the series, what I think I hope to accomplish with the series, is that we are able to draw for our listeners, a map to the future by helping us all collectively, not just helping them, but you and I are trying to figure this out in real time. And we're never going to quite know, we're just kind of trying to figure it out, by understanding the forces that are shaping the present. And I think that's the thing that the people, and for me, that means developing a framework, developing maps. And for me, what that has meant in practice is trying to find the people

• 17:33Demetri Kofinas?

  that have developed either the most accurate map or some map of the territory that is illuminating, that creates that aha moment. And folks like Neil Howe have done that with his generational cycles theory. Russell Napier has done that with national capitalism. And there are others, many that I've, some of whom I've mentioned to you in an email. I even mentioned one who I don't know if she's necessarily for us, but I think it's a great example, again, of this for people to have a sense. When I had Shoshana Zuboff on my show back, this was a long time ago, I think it was episode 79, so this would have been 2018 or 2019, as she wrote her book. Surveillance Capitalism. Yeah. At that time, nobody, I mean, I had read some folks like Sherry Turkle, who had done great work. She had written a book called Alone Together, where she talked

• 18:17Demetri Kofinas?

  about what was going on back in 2013 with social media. But no one had quite nailed it in developing this framework that helped to really explain to folks what was going on. You know, what were the forces that were driving the changes that we were experiencing and putting into a coherent framework? And I think, you know, for our listeners, I'm sure this is true for you, and I know this is true for my listeners as well. My listeners enjoy when they are able to understand something. You know, I'm that way too, right? Like, if you illuminate something for me, if you, if I'm staring at a problem for whatever period of time, a month, a year, 10 years, and someone comes along and they drop something in front of me, that suddenly changes, something shifts in my understanding. It's kind of like moving

• 19:02Demetri Kofinas?

  a three dimensional object in space, right? You're seeing only a two dimensional version of that object. All of a sudden, you shift it, and you see what it is. And that is such a powerful experience. And it's not just valuable from an investment standpoint, it's also just deeply gratifying. And I hope that we can accomplish that with the show. In fact, that, that to me is what I'm most excited about, about this program, Grant, is that you and I together will be able to bring on the people that we feel are the highest signal to noise ratio folks. And sit down and speak with them and in a sense through a series expose our listeners to those people who over the years we have found to be the most valuable teachers. At least that is how I feel.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the beauty of this for me, Dimitri, is that I come into this with only questions. I don't have answers. You know, I have thoughts and I have perspectives, but really I just have questions at the moment. And I think, you know, that it's funny, you talked about that three dimensional object. And I was looking at thinking about this and what we were going to do over the last several weeks. And in my timeline popped up one of those terrific pictures that are taken from the air, it looks like a drone shot, but of animals in a desert walking. And you see, it looks like a big shadow and then it says zoom in, you can actually see that it looks like animals. This was zebras in this case. It looks like a whole herd of zebras, but when you zoom in and look closely, it's the shadows of the zebras and the zebras are there.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  And it's what you just said, just brought that back to me about reexamining this 3D object in in space. And it's that, you know, it's, I don't even know what my questions are at the moment. All I know is I feel this great sense of uncertainty and this great sense of unpredictability in the world. And everywhere you go, particularly this last week has been a perfect example of this, you're surrounded by such faux certainty. You know, everybody is certain about everything, you know, everybody will tell you exactly what these tariffs are going to mean, exactly what's going to happen in markets. And it's utter nonsense, you know, from day one, we're guessing about the future. So you cannot be certain. It's a physical impossibility.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  So I, you know, I think this idea that we can just ask questions and just go where those answers take us. And that that could mean with that same guest, or it might lead us to another guest, or it might lead us down a completely different avenue. And I have no idea where that's taking us. And I cannot tell you how thrilling I find that idea.

• 21:26Demetri Kofinas?

  Hmm, me too, man. Like I said, I, I love, again, for me, my podcast so often, not always, but so often is this like structured teaching experience where I do a deep dive on a guest or a topic and I try to extract ahead of time what I think the most interesting things are. And then I create a kind of outline so we can explore those things so I can share those things with the audience. In this case, what I find especially exciting is that I feel like this is going to be a much more inclusive experience. This is going to be much more about like, hey, why don't you come and join us for this conversation as we all try and figure this out together? And the fact that there's going to be less sort of conscious preparation, I think is a big part of it. So again, I can't emphasize how excited I am, man. This is really going to be an incredible journey.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Well, we talked about Neil and the importance that he's had for both of us in trying to figure this out. But talk a little bit more about Russell, because as you said, you and I both come at this from the financial world. That was our route into this whole podcasting space. But you touched on it a minute ago. Russell has been absolutely spot on in just about everything he's said, and that's why he's probably going to be the second guest in the series to use that as a framework.

• 22:30Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, you know, I can't bring up Russell without first just mentioning that you introduced us. And I have to say, again, it's just important to point out that I think this project is possible because of how generous you are. And you are, and I don't want to go do the whole like, you know, congratulating each other thing where people do that on podcasts. But, you know, you're a very generous person, Grant, and you've been very generous to not just me, but all sorts of folks with your network. So Russell's an example of that. I met Russell through you. I'm sure what probably happened was I heard him on a podcast episode and I reached out and said, hey, any chance you could introduce me? Because this, he's just... And he first came on for an episode on the Asian financial crisis.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:09Demetri Kofinas?

  You know, he had written a book about his experience in Hong Kong through the Asian financial crisis. And I believe it was, the book was diary entries from 1995 to the height and resolution of the crisis, maybe 95 to 98. And I mentioned that first because that was the way that I was exposed to Russell. I was exposed to his methodology. I was exposed to how he thinks. One of the things I really love about Russell, and I look for this in all the high signal to noise ratio people that I identify, there's a process for coming to an understanding. And part of that process involves a baseline level of humility. Now, what I also love about Russell, and the reason I bring this up, actually, in the context of the Asian financial crisis, is because he was looking at his diary entries.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:54Demetri Kofinas?

  He went back and published and analyzed what he thought at the time. Not what he thinks he thought now, but actually what he thought at the time, what he was saying, what he was writing. And that is a level of accountability that I think is something we should all strive for. And it comes across in the quality of his analysis. The other thing I love about Russell is that he's a historian. Again, I don't think it's a coincidence that we're picking two historians. And in fact, you know, I put together a list of names that I shared with you about some people that I think might be interesting guests to have on. And there are certainly historians in there. And of course, Russell's the keeper of the, quote, "library of mistakes," a library of financial mistakes. And I can't tell you how much I've, like I said, I've gotten so much value from him.

• 24:39Demetri Kofinas?

  I also love that, and think this is really important to Grant. I'm trying to think about where I recently spoke with someone about this. But in any case, you know, this, let's go back to this thing about frameworks. Ah, right, it was a conversation I had with George Friedman where this came up. So this is the thing about frameworks, right? Actually, you know, you know that I'm a father. I recently became a father. My son's now seven months or something. And there's been something really magical about watching him awaken. You know, like there's a kind of awakening that happens with every day that he grows older. And what I also noticed, and I knew this already, sorry, I already had a, quote, "framework" around how this works in childhood development. But you can see that he went from being born where everything is just stimuli,

• 25:24Demetri Kofinas?

  unstructured streams of information, colors, light, sounds. He has no way to say, "That sound, oh, that's an elephant," you know, or "That's a door." All he sees is some sort of like, you know, just overflow of information. And what I've read about this, incidentally, is that it's somewhat like being on psychedelics or having a stroke in your left hemisphere. You know, it's like you just lose the ability to have any kind of, everything just kind of melts into each other. And I feel like what happens as we get older is we bring structure to experience. We structure the world around us. And that's what these frameworks are about. It's about, and we need the frameworks. We need frameworks to navigate the world. You know, this is also, brings us back to questions about God and all else, which is that reality is not as it seems to be, right?

• 26:08Demetri Kofinas?

  Because so much of what we do is we bring order to experience. We structure the reality that this chaotic world of information that comes at us so that we can navigate it. But the maps we use to navigate it should not be confused with the territory. And as we get older, we develop these maps and some of us get exceptionally wedded to those maps. And what I think is so special about this series is that what we're doing is We're breaking, we're acknowledging that those maps no longer work and that we shouldn't be attached to them as though they are the territory. And the people, and this is my favorite quote by Russell, is that the worst thing you can do, and I'm paraphrasing now, he doesn't say this exact thing, he doesn't say, he does say the worst thing you can do, but the worst thing you can do in sort of periods of great

• 26:49Demetri Kofinas?

  change, the kind of change that we're talking about here, is to ask, to get all the right answers to all the wrong questions. And what that really means is, what framework are you using? What are the sets of questions that derive from what framework that you're getting answers? And you think you're getting all the right answers, but you're using the wrong framework because those frameworks are outdated. Your models no longer work. Your maps no longer accurately represent the territory that you're seeking to navigate. And when you go through these cycles, everything has to change. Your baseline assumptions have to change. So one of the things I really love about Russell as well is that he has that sort of deep bottoms-up analysis, and he's not dependent on a framework. And those people are exceptionally intelligent. They tend to have, if not an academic historical background, they certainly have an appreciation

• 27:34Demetri Kofinas?

  for history because you have to be willing to break the old and to build something new. So that's what I love about Grant, I love about Russell, and I think what's great about Neil, and again, I think he's such a great person to start the episode with, is he helps, his framework and his model helps explain why we're going through this transition. And then again, Russell's is about like building a new model to understand the political economy of a changing global order, of a changing economic order, and what that world looks like, what will increasingly look like, and how to navigate it.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  You know, I can go in so many directions with what you just said. Remind me to come back to the fatherhood thing in a second, because there's a component to that that I want to talk about. But the one piece of that I would add to what you just said there is the time element. You have to be able to change your framework quickly because we've grown up in periods of long, slow-moving trends. Globalization has been a 40-year trend that has now kind of reached its apogee. And we haven't had to really function quickly, apart from if you've been in the markets, you've had the odd day of chaos where you've had to react. But you haven't really had to completely adjust your framework quickly. You've had to deal with a 10% down day in 2008 or deal with whipsaws when the markets have rallied in the middle of bear markets and stuff.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  So you haven't had to really break things down to their roots and then rebuild them again. And that's what we're talking about here. We are talking about a world that we all believe, to your point, we understand how it works and we simply don't. And that has already happened. The world no longer works the way we all believe it does. And so the quicker we kind of figure out how it's changed and what that means for us and what we have to do to adapt to it, the better for all of us. But we want to come back to that fatherhood thing because I know and it's been such a cool thing to watch you on this journey as a father of a young child because I've, you know, I've got two grandkids now. I'm at the other end of that spectrum. But for me, this is such an important part of this because I, I don't really spend much time worrying about me and I'm worrying about my place in this and how I'm going to deal

• 29:33Speaker 01

  with this. Because I am far enough down the track and I've, you know, I've lived a life and I've, I've built a family, I've done all those things. The thing that I spent all my time thinking about and worrying about is how do my kids navigate this? And now I look at this beautiful six and four year old girls who are completely oblivious to this and I, and my questions are all about what's the world they're going to inherit like? And how can we either prepare them for it ideally or try and provide some sort of haven from it if it's really bad? Those are the questions that I really want to dig into because if we can help the people who are going to have to deal with this in ways that we aren't, we're simply not going to have to deal with it in the way that someone who's 15 now is going to have to deal with

• 30:17Speaker 01

  this world, we're just not. We're going to be through that stage where it's the kind of thing that overwhelms your most productive years. So that's a big component to me and that, you know, this fatherhood, the piece. And again, through these conversations and through the, the essays and everything, I keep getting that back, people talking about their kids and talking about their families and talking about, you know, we become inured to this when you're staring at markets, you become inured to volatility really, because it's part of your job. For a lot of people, it's how they make their money, you know, they embrace the volatility. But if we take the last couple of weeks, for example, out of the way, and I'm sure, I won't speak for you, but I've looked at this. Or I've been forced to look at it, I should say, through a financial lens because

• 31:00Speaker 01

  the news feeds that I'm getting bombarded, the emails I'm getting are all from people who are financial practitioners and trying to understand the world through that lens. But if you step back for a moment and try and imagine the last two weeks without headlines about stock markets down 20% and without talk about recessions and without talk about financial aspects of this, what does that world look like to someone who's never read the Wall Street Journal in their lives or doesn't have a 401k or if they do, it's in a company pension plan that's manageable, they don't think about the stock market ever, you know, until it's front page news or until it's on 60 Minutes about the crash, you know? That's a very different world that those people are living in. And that's the vast

• 31:42Speaker 01

  majority of people, you know, we are in a minority. And so again, there are so many different ways that we can take this, but there are also so many different vantage points that you can stand and look at it from that will, to your point about the wrong questions and the right answers, give you a completely different vector upon which to travel towards this thing.

• 32:00Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, well, that also, again, brings me back to frameworks. One of the things that I don't know if you and I talked about it, but I've spoken about it in recent episodes is that, you know, I feel like we've just gotten to the point now where investors have become comfortable with the idea of mean reversion. They've become really comfortable with this idea that, okay, yeah, we had the 2008 crisis, that was really scary, but the markets rebounded. We had COVID, scary, but the markets rebounded every time the markets come back. And I'm not saying that markets don't come back or that the world's going to end. That's not what I'm suggesting. But I think the setup this time could be one where the markets don't revert back to the previous paradigm. And there are a lot of reasons to think that that's possible. One is the baby boom retirement wall. You have people that are going to increasingly be pulling their money out. You have this tariffs

• 32:45Demetri Kofinas?

  and this intention, at least stated intention by the Trump administration, to rebalance wealth and income in society, which also will change those dynamics and will change dollar recycling, which has been a big, huge source of asset price appreciation. And you also have AI, which is something that I just don't think is spoken about enough in this context. And this is again, something that I spoke about recently in my episode titled, Are We About to Enter the First White Collar Recession? And I mentioned the wealth-driven effect, which is that if, you know, stock prices go down, Substantially down if one's net worth declines, especially if they're nearing retirement age or in retirement age, they become much more risk averse about spending. Consumer spending is so heavily tilted towards the higher echelon income brackets that could

• 33:29Demetri Kofinas?

  drive a recession and in a recession, firms that were previously reluctant to experiment with artificial intelligence, large language models, may become more willing to do so because they've already let go of people and they're cost conscious. And so ChatGPT went from being not good enough to maybe just good enough. And so that kicks off, that ignites the beginning of a multi-year, multi-decade reordering of the economy, technological revolution driven by AI. And that also has huge political ramifications. Maybe that finally gives the Democratic Party, whose base consists of white collar workers who previously were organized around the banner of some of this woke ideology, to now being

• 34:12Demetri Kofinas?

  focused around UBI and sort of the effects of losing their jobs and losing economic opportunities. In other words, maybe we end up seeing happen to the white collar workforce what happened to the blue collar workforce. And that has profound implications for politics. Now, I don't know exactly how I got on this train, Grant. I don't know how, I don't remember exactly what your question was and why I got here, but I guess that's in the spirit of the podcast.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, look, exactly right. Exactly right. And like I said, this whole thing is going to be such an adventure. And I'm very conscious of us doing a podcast, talking about a podcast.

• 34:43Demetri Kofinas?

  Again, Seinfeld that keeps coming up.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 34:46Demetri Kofinas?

  Podcast about nothing, a podcast about a podcast.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we won't make this episode too long, but we wanted to share the beginning of this journey with you. And what we're going to do, Dimitri and I will publish these conversations and we're going to make sure that everybody gets to hear them because I think this is profoundly important questions. We will publish them to our subscribers probably a week before they go public, just so they get the benefit of that for supporting our work. But I think, Dimitri, a big part of this is going to be the audience out there, whether they email you or they email me and ask us the questions and then suggest people that they've heard of that brought an interesting perspective to the way they try and order the world around them. Because you and I have our networks and the network effect of those networks is terrific. But I've lost count of how many interesting people I've come across over the years that I'd

• 35:30Speaker 01

  never heard of before. And you have these conversations with them, or you read something they've written. And to your point, right, it suddenly turns a torch on you in a corner that you've been trying to squint into for quite some time. And so, you know, having the audience be a part of this and join us on this exploration is going to be a huge component of it.

• 35:48Demetri Kofinas?

  Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I'm very excited by the prospect of hearing back from people. Again, I go back to this thing of like, there's something really exciting to me about changing the format of the show. Again, I'm still doing my podcast, you're still doing your podcast. But you have actually done series like this before with other people. I have never done anything like this. I've been doing the show for eight years now, roughly speaking. And it's been roughly the same format. It's been me interviewing people, nerding out on their material, constructing an outline, and sort of quizzing them, and occasionally more conversational programming, and occasionally kind of more panel stuff. But it's been more or less the same, and certainly just me. I'm very excited by this idea of doing it with somebody else. I can't tell you how excited I am. And doing it with you of all people.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Well, mate, I agree. As I say, we've both been trying to find the right way to collaborate for quite some time now. And I'm delighted we found it. Well, listen, let's wrap things up there. The first episode of this will be out sometime in the next couple of weeks when we can. Of course, the big problem, Dimitri, with doing this with the co-host is you have three calendars to align, right? That's the single biggest impediment, especially when you're all on different time zones. I've recorded podcasts at four in the morning in Australia, and I've done all kinds of things over the years. You're lucky because you're right in the middle. So you should be fine. So in terms of publishing, the plan is to publish this to the whole world so that everybody gets a chance to join us on this journey because we both believe it's profound. Our own subscribers will get it first. We'll probably publish it a week before it goes public. But anyone that's not a subscriber will have the chance to listen to these conversations.

• 37:17Demetri Kofinas?

  Absolutely. So I think, you know, we were still trying to figure out how we would publish the public feed, but we're going to both publish this on our private feeds, Grant, so your premium subscribers will get it, my premium subscribers will get it. And then what we're probably going to do is we're both going to publish it on our own feeds publicly. We also talked about maybe when we publish it publicly, maybe we'll put it on a, on a regular feed, but we can hash that out for people when, well, yeah, when Neil's episode comes out, we'll, we'll have a lot to talk about and we'll mention that too at the top.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Hey, we did tell people we're doing this on the fly, right?

• 37:46Demetri Kofinas?

  Exactly. There you go. It's authentic. It's exactly.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  All right, my friend.

• 37:49Demetri Kofinas?

  It's in the pudding.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Well, listen, we'll, we'll reconvene when we can pin Neil down and we'll be back with this in the not too distant future. In the meantime, Dimitri, just let people know where they can follow all the great stuff you do at Hidden Forces.

• 37:59Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, you can go to hiddenforces.io to learn more about the podcast. I do have a Twitter feed, but I, like I said, I've taken a indefinite hiatus from Twitter, but my Twitter handle, if you want to go through it, is @Kofinus with a K. And I also have a Twitter handle @hiddenforcespod that you can follow.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yep. And I'm pretty easy to find, grant-williams.com. And my Twitter handle is @TTMYGH. And boy, did I wish I was taking hiatus from Twitter at the moment. It is becoming almost unbearable.

• 38:29Demetri Kofinas?

  It is not a very fun place. I also should mention, if you want to mention it to Grant, I have an email address that you can reach out to, [email protected]. And all the emails get forwarded to me. So feel free to reach out through there if you need to connect.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Actually, and the same goes for me, [email protected] and they will come to me too. All right, my friend, this has been terrific. I look forward to this journey with you. I don't know which one of us is Sancho Panza and which one's Don Quixote, but I guess we'll figure that out as we go along this journey as well. I'll talk to you soon.

• 38:55Demetri Kofinas?

  Awesome. You too. Take care of Grant.

• 38:59Demetri Kofinas?

  If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces.io. You can follow me on Twitter @Kofinus and you can email me at [email protected]. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.