Addison:

Welcome to the Wiggin Sessions. I'm your host Addison Wiggin. I am with my good friend, Demetri Kofinas. And we've just been debating about how to pronounce his last name correctly in Greek.

Demetri:

It's a hopeless endeavor.

Addison:

Yeah. So welcome Demetri. We've known each other for a long time and you have launched a podcast that I'm interested in called Hidden Forces. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And then we're going to jump into your views on the economy and all the dangerous subjects that we get into. So welcome, Demetri. It's good to see you.

Demetri:

It's great being on, Addison. You said we've known each other for a long time. I've known you and Bill way longer than you guys have known me. I used to read The Daily Reckoning. I've told you this and I've told my listeners.

Addison:

When you were in high school, right?

Demetri:

Yeah, man. I was an 18-year-old kid.

Addison:

That's just crazy to me.

Demetri:

Addison:

Oh, what I like to say is it's a labor of love. I say it's a labor of love only because we don't really know until we say what we want to say and then people either agree or they disagree. You must have that same experience with Hidden Forces, right?

Demetri:

Yeah, for sure. Well, in what sense, in the sense of I didn't know what it would become and then it was a labor of love and it transformed into something bigger.

Addison:

Yeah. So let's just go through this story.

Demetri:

Sure.

Addison:

... because it's a funny one. My oldest son was going to NYU and I ran into you on the street nearby, but you went to NYU, right?

Demetri:

I went to NYU, yeah. I went to NYU as a college student in 2000..

Addison:

...and we ran into each other and you're like, hey, I'm starting my new podcast.

Demetri:

I had just started it.

Addison:

Yeah. Yeah. Like a week before that.

Demetri:

Exactly. That was the week that Jim Rickards' episode came out. And that was our second episode.

Addison:

That's awesome.

Demetri:

Yeah.

Addison:

Tell me a little bit about the history and, you can brag about what you've done too, if you want, because I think the interviews you've had are going to be relevant, the Reserve readers are going to be relevant to anyone who is going to pick this up.

Demetri:

Yeah, I hope so. Well as you know I had a career in media before Hidden Forces. Well, the relevant part was I started very briefly in finance and then I quit and started a video game company, which was a skill gaming middleware company, contracted, licensed to develop on the PlayStation 3. And I transitioned from that to the television industry, but on the application, development and design side. So it wasn't until 2010, between '10 and '11 that I transitioned from the product side and the technical side of television and entertainment to the content, editorial side. And that happened.

Addison:

Describe yourself, and this is just for context, is a media entrepreneur, which I find interesting, because we're using media, but we're kitchen table operators. Like that's my kitchen table right there. But you have ventured into spaces that I haven't. So I find it interesting that I know you and that we're in the same space, but you're doing your own thing.

Demetri:

Yeah. So, I mean, there are a lot of angles to that and it's true, I made up that term because when you are an entrepreneur in general, as you guys are as well, you don't really know how to define yourself. But I did feel like there was a narrow area of entrepreneurship that I have done well in and focused on.

Addison:

I remember those conversations we had.

Demetri:

Yeah. So I've had a blog, obviously, and a radio show in New York, on 91.5, a drive-time show, was a 7:00 PM show. I also had a TV show as you know, which had hundreds of thousands of viewers. And a theater company, which I did after that. And I put on off-Broadway shows in New York and I have the podcast now and I'm a student of media. It's not just something that I have adopted because it allows me to focus on the things that I find interesting, which is true. But I also find the medium, the technology, the formatting, the history of media, as something worth exploring in and of itself. And very interesting, the fourth episode I ever did on the podcast was on the history of American television and culture and the interplay between television as a technology, as a format for storytelling, as a business, and how it interacted with and how culture transformed also the stories that we told. So I've always been fascinated by this stuff.

Addison:

So I want to ask you some questions in that vein then, because I've been interested in, we were newsletter publishers, we started in the print medium. And then we moved into email. That boosted our business in a way that was unforeseeable when we got into it. But then we have social media and we have things like Facebook that changed their name to Meta and stuff like that. The influence of media and the communication technology that we have available to us is remarkable to me. And mostly what you hear today is how negative it is. But the positive side is actually more interesting to me, but it's also because it's not dramatic, it doesn't create the headlines that the negative side does. So mostly you hear about dating sites that went wrong.

Demetri:

What was that? Something Ashley.

Addison:

Yeah. Influencing the elections in a bad way or whatever, but for you and me, for average people who are actually thoughtful and want to do something interesting with their lives, it's been amazing.

Demetri:

It's interesting to reflect on this because we've also, you, especially, because I got started when blogs were the way in which a writer on the internet went over the top. OTT, you know. Surpassing institutional media, but you guys started when it was email. So that was a previous revolution. Blogs still afforded people like me the opportunity to hack our way into the mainstream conversation. I think over time that has gotten progressively more difficult to do.

Addison:

Another way of saying that is, it's just more crowded with voices.

Demetri:

It's more crowded, number one. And number two, when you talk about a platform like Facebook, I think that it's constructed to drown out more intelligent conversations. I think Twitter is a social media platform that still benefits those who have something interesting to say. Although again, it's constrained by its character count. It's still constrained by some of the same incentives of outrage that work on Facebook. But there still is absolutely a way to break through and Substack now is actually becoming a really powerful medium for independent writers to disrupt mainstream institutions. And I would absolutely agree that as the years have rolled on, the institutional media, the mainstream press, has become less and less, if not powerful, certainly less and less credible. So that is a dramatic difference from when I started. And certainly when you guys started.

Addison:

Yeah. And so I'm writing a new book and one section of the book is about the impact of social media, basically. I mean, that's the easiest way to say it. And I think the democratization of ideas, like what we're doing right now, smartness.

Demetri:

Smartness. Is that what you said?

Addison:

Yeah. It's the influence of smartness.

Demetri:

Interesting.

Addison:

I actually just thought of that. So maybe I'll write that down. But what I'm saying is that it's the ability of people to connect in a way that we weren't able to do before, because there were gatekeepers and there were producers and all the people that you had to deal with. We don't have to do that anymore. I can have a conversation with you. We can record it. I can send it out. Oh, done. And you're doing the same thing.

Demetri:

Yes. And, indeed. And also, podcasts really are unique. I mean, when you and I spoke, I think one of the reasons that I was so excited was because I did see that there was still this window. I mean, podcasting was still early in 2017. And so I saw what an opportunity this medium was and it was still early enough that, I mean, again, not to suggest that it's never too late, but it certainly would be harder to start one today and it wasn't easy, but it's a different way of reaching people. It's a more intimate way, I think, of reaching people. And you can tell different types of stories. You can have different types of conversations in podcasting that you can't have, let's say, on television. Or in print.

Addison:

Let me ask you a question. So I've written a couple books and I teeter on the line of, am I just writing the book because I want to write the book and I want to see my name on it? Or do I really have something unique to say? So that's a challenge.

Demetri:

That's interesting.

Addison:

And I think the same challenge applies to podcasts as well. Like, are you just blithering because there's a low barrier of entry? Or do you feel passionate about your ideas? And for me, it's about the ideas. And in a way, whatever medium we're using, it could be podcasts, it could be newsletters, it could be conferences. There's a lot of things that we get up to, but what we're really doing, and this is what I believe about you too, is, you're really interested in the ideas. So how do you pick your guests?

Demetri:

Yes. I am very passionate about what I do. And there is a naïve, I wouldn't say necessarily childlike, but there's a childlike innocence to how much I love this show and how much I love having conversations and trying to ascertain the truth behind things, or get deeper down the vector of what's really going on, which is actually the origin of the name Hidden Forces. It's the idea that we engage with the surface superficiality of life, the epiphenomena that are really just the shadows on the cave. And to the extent that we want to be able to forecast more effectively, or be better prepared for the future, we need to be able to understand more fundamentally what's really driving the epiphenomena that we experience in our daily lives.

Addison:

What do you mean by epiphenomena? Just so that we're clear about it.

Demetri:

The narrative, the play, the seeming causal factors that aren't necessarily really the causal factors driving, the things that we see. So, yeah.

Addison:

Demetri:

That's interesting. That's the sort of the Teddy Roosevelt man in the Coliseum distinction of like, whether you're just a talker or whether you're a person of action. And I think what's interesting is that when you engage as an entrepreneur in media, for example, the action isn't actually creating the platform to be able to put your ideas out there and actually being able to put your ideas out there. The vast majority of people use social media just to safely lob invectives and offer really unsubstantiated or thoughtless opinions. Actually, unfortunately, a lot of people have platforms that offer unsubstantiated opinions. So that doesn't actually address that. But yeah, I don't know if I answered your question.

Addison:

I'm just wondering what you think about it. You launched the podcast four years ago, five years, four... Four in 12 months.

Demetri:

Yeah. Four in something. We're close to it. Almost five years. It's hard to believe.

Addison:

What I'm saying is that you've talked to really interesting people.

Demetri:

Yeah, totally.

Addison:

The medium gives you the entree. It's going to consolidate and there won't be that many people who do it anymore, but I'm interested in the people you've talked to. You sent me before we even started talking and like, you talked to Eric Schmidt, for example. So the dude that makes this possible.

Demetri:

Yeah. Yeah.

Addison:

You talked to him.

Demetri:

Addison:

One of the few.

Demetri:

Yeah, exactly. Guys like Kurt in particular. So I understood the business cycle and I understood what we were on the verge of. However, I did not foresee the extent of the Fed intervention and the government intervention. So I was kind of disillusioned by it all. And I adopted the view that I think that you and Bill have enunciated so clearly, which is that the government that governs best is the government that governs least. What is that Bill said his favorite politician was who was the guy that died like on inauguration day, he got a cold and died.

Addison:

39 days.

Demetri:

Right. Right exactly. He's the best president ever.

Addison:

My God.

Demetri:

Yeah. So that was the view I adopted. I was angry and so I had a very-

Addison:

Yeah. So I have an answer to the angry part.

Demetri:

Yeah, sure.

Addison:

It's like, you can't be angry because this charade has been going on for 5,000 years, right? And we are well versed in the classics. We kind of know what's going to happen. We look at the characters that are involved and we say, oh, that's kind of interesting, that makes this or that or whatever. But we can laugh about it. That's what I think is important about understanding history and the way that things have played out is that there's nothing new under the sun. I think it was Mark Twain that said there's only six ideas. What you put together from current events leads to one of those six ideas. So we're not going to discover anything new. What does change though is the media. Like you and I can have this conversation now and we can record it, we can send it out by email to whatever, I think 2.8 million people. Like we can actually have this conversation to do the thing that we're good at, but it doesn't really matter. We're not going to change policy. We're going to have opinions.

Demetri:

I mean, I do think maybe this is a bit, maybe I'm ascribing more value to my podcast than it has, but I have come to realize that it reaches a lot of people in positions of power, whether it's in the private or public sector. There are a lot of policy makers that listen to the podcast. And so I do think it has an influence. And to that point, I think there are other people out there who are engaging constructively with these problems and these ideas. Because I do think that we are closer than we obviously were 10 years ago to a sort of realignment, a political realignment in the United States. And some of that's just driven by, again, a lot of the stuff that you guys have talked about over the years, the unsustainable dynamics of debt and capital misallocation in the economy, the malincentives, the corruption, which has grown. America's become a much more corrupt economy and political system over the last 10 years. I think that's also reflected in the volatility in politics. One of the metaphors I used to talk about.

Addison:

So what I want to ask right there is like, we're engaged in the media, we're engaged in the conversation and people may or may not listen, but do you think anyone actually cares? Because I feel like I've been at this a long time and I've been trying to say like, that's not a good idea, but the political machine, it has its own history. It has its own consultants that say, you got to do this to get votes to do that, whatever. Or like they always draw maps and stuff like that. It's like a science of its own. And actually, I just read this, you have a degree in political science from NYU, which is where my son is about to graduate from.

Demetri:

Yeah. Poli-sci and econ.

Addison:

You study like the way to get votes and the way to get your shit through and all that kind of stuff. So what we do other than expressing our views and writing about things that we think readers should do to avoid it and all that kind of stuff is relatively irrelevant. That's what I feel like. I feel like I get up every day and I'm like, yeah, this is my point of view, but who cares?

Demetri:

Addison:

Well, I interviewed this guy named Mark Moss. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he runs a conference called Market Disruptors. They just held it a couple weeks ago in Miami. And when I talked to him, he expressed this idea that we're at peak centralization, meaning that the technology that we have is going to allow people like you and me to have a conversation and we're going to send it out and we're going to actually communicate with people in a way that doesn't center around whatever Angela Merkel says or whatever. Like it's not going to be centralized, like a bullhorn of information. And I think that's already happening. I think it has already happened, but we don't know how wrangle it in and make it useful to create like the citizen representative or something like some kind of civilized way to use the technology that we have and create a civilized society.

Demetri:

Take a look at a guy like Tristan Harris who was a former engineer at, I think at Google, even though he talks a lot about Facebook. He's had a huge influence and like his work producing, I think he was a producer on certainly a driving force of the Social Dilemma, which was a documentary on Netflix.

Addison:

This is a good tool. We're just using it badly.

Demetri:

Right. But to the point of, exactly. But he's had a huge influence on the public debate. And he recently appeared on Joe Rogan, who again, Joe Rogan is a force in the media. And if Joe Rogan wants to turn his attention to something, it gets a lot of attention. And so what in terms of this social media debate, what you find in just this particular example is that more and more people are coalescing around the view that we need not only to regulate social media, but of what regulation and social media looks like, because early on a lot of what you heard were break up big tech. And that was something that I talked about early on in the show, which was that this is not a solution to the problem because the issue of monopoly is not at the core of the problem in social media. It's the marriage of the business model with advertising.

Addison:

Yeah. That's what I think is the root of the issue is how do we talk about these important things that impact people's lives, but still make the businesses viable? And in the media business, at least the traditional model, you sell advertising space. And we all know that. But how do you actually navigate the situation where you are putting out good ideas and content? Some are critical of the media, some are not. Some are critical of politics, some are not. Some are critical of the monetary system, some are not. Like we can do all of that, but how do we actually make it work? How do we actually talk to people and put our kids through school?

Demetri:

Well, this is kind of what Eric Schmidt and I talked about in our episode, although it was focused on A.I. One of the, maybe even attractive problems in A.I. is goal optimization and perverse instantiation is one of the outcomes of misaligning goals, of having the wrong goal.

Addison:

You're going to have to unpack some of those terms for me.

Demetri:

Yeah, it just means that the engineers at Facebook make choices about what type of content they want to prioritize and what kind of content is rewarded. And those choices not only guide, they do more than simply provide content to their network of hundreds of millions of users. They also increasingly guide those users towards the commercial outcomes that the advertisers seek.

Addison:

Yeah. Yeah.

Demetri:

And so what Google and what Facebook for example is optimized for increasingly is outrage, not because the engineers at Facebook explicitly wanted to optimize the creation or fomentation of outrage among-

Addison:

Right, they found out over time that outrage gets more clicks.

Demetri:

Or they didn't even find out that... We have now surmised that outrage creates more clicks. What they found was just certain types of content. And in many cases, this stuff isn't even done. To what extent is this done explicitly through the code instantiated as such? And how much is it part of what is increasingly machine learning, algorithms at work, and learning in real time and adjusting correctly? A famous example is the 2008 photo of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and their kids. It was a black and white photo that the campaign team A and B tested. A and B tested tons of photographs, and that one for reasons that they still don't understand performed the best. And so it wasn't that they chose this picture because it had certain characteristics that they thought people wanted, they didn't understand why they chose it. They just A and B tested the shit out of it. So that's the world we live in today-

Addison:

Just for ease of use, A and B testing is a direct marketing term where you put up two photos and people click on one or the other.

Demetri:

And that's how these algorithms work too, they learn from people's behavior.

Addison:

When you talked to Eric Schmidt, that's what you were talking about?

Demetri:

We talked about that in the context of A.I. The relevant point in this is that as these systems become more and more proficient and better at making decisions and making predictions that outstrip those of human operators and human deciders, human doctors, human drivers.

Addison:

Yeah, it's all databases.

Demetri:

Addison:

Yeah. I think what we need to do, and this is just my opinion and we're just having a conversation, but we need to remember our humanity. We're not just data, we're not just functions, we have feelings and we care about people and our experiences give life to the relationships that we have.

Demetri:

Mm-hmm.

Addison:

And I actually have not done enough research in A.I., but it feels like, for me, that it strips humanity. It's not just numbers, digits, data and all that stuff. Our life has meaning because we love one another because we have emotions and we get angry, even though we don't want to.

Demetri:

Mm-hmm.

Addison:

None of that is calculated in an algorithm.

Demetri:

Or to the point... Yeah. Go ahead, sorry.

Addison:

No, I'm just formulating an opinion that transhumanism as it's called, when you adapt A.I. into human culture.

Demetri:

Right. The transhumanists.

Addison:

Yeah. It's useful. But also, I think maybe just agreeing with you that it has its value. But at the same time, we can't forget our own humanity because that's what gives value to our lives.

Demetri:

Yeah. Well I mean to that point, I remember I was in a conference in, I think it was 2016. I was at a conference in Half Moon Bay. And I was at dinner with Ray Kurzweil. He was at my table and I was listening to him talk.

Addison:

Yeah.

Demetri:

Addison:

How could it be different? Because we have these myths, we have the stories that go back to the Greek times. Mostly in Western culture anyway, we think about Odysseus and all that stuff. Those myths have carried through the ages because they're important to what we're going through now. So we add technology onto the pile and it makes it more immediate, but that doesn't change the humanness part of us. And again, I'm just expressing my own view because I'm thinking it doesn't really matter if I can record a Zoom interview with you, or if I write an email or whatever, every advantage that we get from technology is useful in our daily commerce. But it doesn't change our humanity. And I'm grappling with that idea myself, because I'm like it doesn't change us, it just makes it more immediate or it makes it more convenient. That's all cool, but we've still got to be good people.

Demetri:

Yeah.

Addison:

And be good to one another.

Demetri:

Yeah. For your listeners who are interested, Edward O. Wilson, the entomologist, who wrote a book..

Addison:

I'm actually going to walk away and bring you back a book. Hold on one second.

Demetri:

Okay, great. Do you want me to keep talking? Or?

Addison:

Yeah, we're going to keep talking.

Demetri:

Okay. Got it.

Addison:

And we're going to grab a cool book.

Demetri:

Sure. So yeah, Edward O. Wilson, the entomologist, well I don't know what you call an inventor or pioneer of eusociality, wrote a book. I think it was his last book which I've read, and I have not just read, but cherished. It was called The Meaning of Human Existence. And he actually has this comparison that he makes in the book or this thought experiment, and he says, "If aliens were to arrive on earth, well what would they find meaningful? What would be of value to them? Would it be our mathematics and our science?" There you go, so you have it.

Addison:

I'm reading it. Look.

Demetri:

Oh, so you're actually reading it. Look at that. I didn't realize that was the book. So have you gotten to that part yet where he draws a comparison. He says, "It's a thought experiment about aliens arriving on earth and what would they find of value?"

Addison:

Yeah. So I actually just got past that part. But I think what you were just describing, and I was toying with the idea of eusociality.

Demetri:

Eusociality, yeah.

Addison:

Eusociality, just because I think it's a difficult word. But I do agree with him. The point that he's making in this book is after consilience. And the company that I founded is called Consilience after E.O. Wilson.

Demetri:

Oh, really?

Addison:

Yes.

Demetri:

Look at that.

Addison:

Yeah.

Demetri:

Look at that.

Addison:

So it's a synergy. And consilience means unity of knowledge, right? So E.O. Wilson in this book is saying, and he uses the phrase eusociality, which is just difficult. It's a lot of Greekness compiled into one word.

Demetri:

It's a unique quality of social organization that very few living organisms actually engage in, one of which is human beings.

Addison:

There's been 12 according to him.

Demetri:

And I think human beings are the only ones that don't engage in it as an autonomic biological mechanism. The way for example bees organize eusocially human beings socialize eusocially, organize eusocially as a result of cultural mechanics that allow for that type of organization on a massive scale.

Addison:

Yeah. But one of the points he makes very early in the book is that we're not going to be able to understand our social systems or our political systems, or why we go to war, that kind of thing, or why we even build the material to go to war, until we understand our biological history. And I don't know, I think the earliest he goes back is two million years and traces the evolution of how we became who we are. And now, we have tools that we can actually talk about on video and stuff like that. We've done an amazing thing. And he's saying, "Let's just understand what it means and stop fighting with each other and actually put something new," which is just amazing. And I'm only halfway through, like I said.

Demetri:

It's a great book. I think I read that in 2016 when I was reading a bunch of books on exactly that, the meditations on life, on meaning, on death. One of the books that I read during that time was Rebecca Goldstein's Plato at the Googleplex. And we had her on the podcast. Actually, that's not true. I read another book of Rebecca's, but I think Plato at the Googleplex came out in 2018. Anyway, I had her on the show subsequently. And we did an episode, for lack of a better word, for meaning philosophy, which was moral philosophy, but focused really on the importance of meaning. What does it mean to live without meaning? Can human beings engage in the endeavor of a human life without the presupposition that it matters? And I think her conclusion, and I would agree with this, is that it has to matter because it's a condition of pursuing a human life that it feels meaningful, that it matters. And I think when life doesn't feel like it matters, people fall into depression.

Addison:

Mm-hmm.

Demetri:

And it's interesting to see. Recently, there was an article in Business Insider called... Gosh, I can't remember now, but it had to do with people quitting their jobs en masse, this recent phenomenon in supply chains... Right. And one of the reasons or the primary reason that was highlighted in this piece was that just people were done with it. They were done with feeling like they just had these shitty jobs, running on this treadmill, this empty existence. And it might be easy for certain people to dismiss that and say, "Oh, look at these spoiled millennials or zoomers," but it may also be possible that the world that we live in today feels for many people much more empty and fairly so than it was 40 years ago when relationships were more analog. The world is totally different, man. I mean I was born in 1981 and the 1990s to me, honestly, when I look back on them with my wife, because we're the same age, we both wonder, it feels like a dream, like it didn't really happen. That world is gone. And that also is a problem.

Addison:

I have to stop you right there.

Demetri:

Sure.

Addison:

I went to my first Dead show in 1982.

Demetri:

To your first what?

Addison:

Dead show. Grateful Dead.

Demetri:

Oh really? In what year?

Addison:

1982. So you were one year old.

Demetri:

Right. Yeah, I was one year old. That was at the peak of the interest rate cycle.

Addison:

That's when gold spiked.

Demetri:

Right. Right. Yeah. Actually, I saw a movie recently called... Not recently, a couple years ago called the Most Violent Year with Oscar Isaac. And it was about the year of 1981 in New York City. And I remember that imagery.

Addison:

It was a hot year too.

Demetri:

I lived in New York City. I lived in Queens as a kid initially before we moved out. And I remember how scary it felt sometimes in terms of things that were stolen. My bike was stolen. I remember when I was a little kid. And the scenes and everything, and that movie captured... The guy had an old Mercedes, talk about amazing cars. I actually saw somebody recently, we had this guy who's one of these rare fixers who can kind of fix any architectural problem. And he was the son of one of these guys' craftsmans and his father had passed away. So he inherited his father's 1991, 560 SEL. And this thing had like 10,000 miles on it. And it was a beast. That's a separate point, but…

Addison:

No, it's a separate point, but I believe we're going through that cycle again, where society is breaking down all around us, and we're going to rebuild it in some new way. We don't know what that is, and the conversation we're having about A.I. and technology and stuff is going to play a huge part in who we become. But right now, I hesitate to blame the pandemic, but I feel like the pandemic just put a light on a lot of things that we're going through anyway. Technology is transforming society at a pace that most people don't understand. I don't understand. And at the same time, I wake up every morning, I still have to get my kids to school, I still have to kiss my wife and be happy and grateful that we have the life that we have. There are certain things that will remain constant and we're grateful for those things, but the world is changing in a way. And politicians aren't going to affect that. They can ruin it by spending too much money and destroying the currency, we already know that's true.

Demetri:

The problem we have is, and I should say another thing, another book for your listeners that I've recommended to people as well, that sort of... Actually a couple books. One is called Speed Limits by Mark C. Taylor, who was my guest.

Addison:

Ah, I know that one. Yep.

Demetri:

Okay. I had him on the show in episode three, but one of the books that Mark introduced me to was, William Leach, I think was the author's name. The book was called Land of Desire, and it's a history of consumer capitalism during the period where consumerism really came into Vogue in the late 1800s, early 1900s up until 1929. And you found something similar, because the technological revolution at that time was changing life very rapidly. So much so that people literally experienced the world go by in a blur. Being on a locomotive was credited in part for actually inspiring some of the abstract artwork at the time because people were able to see the world the ways they've never imagined it before.

Addison:

Can you just name the book again?

Demetri:

Addison:

Yeah. Well, and I think what we're dealing with is the rapid increase of the ability to manage data. And video, for example, is data and it gets transcribed so quickly, and so much of that is happening right now that we're in the same situation. Like, what's a white bear? We don't know. Right?

Demetri:

Right.

Addison:

Because our minds are not possible, we don't have the capacity to manage that much information. But at the same time, you still have to, what? Pick stocks that you like.

Demetri:

That's even harder.

Addison:

Yeah. You still have to.

Demetri:

It's even harder.

Addison:

Make your decisions about whole life insurance, versus some kind of term insurance, or not do insurance at all. You still have to make the decisions that are good for you, they're good for your family, they're good for your future.

Demetri:

Yeah, totally.

Addison:

I mean, that's what we do, right? We're trying to figure that out all the time and it changes and it's changing more rapidly now than ever, which personally, I think it's exciting.

Demetri:

I agree. It is exciting.

Addison:

Oh shit, we're going at breakneck speed into a life that nobody can even envision. That's why I think it's important that you talk to somebody like Eric Schmidt or whatever. I have this one story that I told to Jud, whom you know, right?

Demetri:

Right.

Addison:

I was on the north face of Crested Butte on skis, I was going down. That's where the X Games were actually created. And I was going down really fast. And I was with a younger guy, I was maybe 22 or 23 at the time, and I was with a guy who was maybe 20 or something. And he was skiing with his buddies, and he was going out equally as fast as me, but he was a little ahead of me. And I went to the left, he went to the right. And the last thing I heard was, "Not that way." And so I flew off a cliff and I landed in a pine tree.

Demetri:

Wow. Did you break anything?

Addison:

No, because they went the right way. There were like four or five other guys, including my friend. And they were at the bottom and I was hanging in the tree because I went off a cliff.

Demetri:

Did you break anything?

Addison:

I broke my ski. I didn't break any of my bones.

Demetri:

Oh wow. You were lucky.

Addison:

I mean, if the tree wasn't there, I would've been in serious trouble. But that's what I feel like we're doing as a society, is we're going fast and we're making the wrong turns on a regular basis. I mean, hopefully there's a pine tree in the way.

Demetri:

Well, speed comes with costs.

Addison:

Yeah.

Demetri:

The faster you go, the more mistakes you make, just like the faster you invest, the more you misallocate capital. And this is the world that we live in today, and it's relevant in more ways than one. So, I agree. But this is one of those things where the incentives for speed are so high, it's very difficult for most people to find some way to make a living without actually participating in that, you know?

Addison:

Yeah.

Demetri:

And the more and more people that participate.

Addison:

And I think that's true. And what does it mean to participate? Like, everyone else.

Demetri:

Addison:

Yeah. And part of it is they just describe what the narrative is, in the morning meeting where we're like, "Hey, this is what we're talking about today." You and I would never do that because we'd be like, "What?"

Demetri:

But that's actually exactly what I used to do with Capital Account. Every morning I would sit in my production meeting with my producers and my host, and I would say, "Okay guys, how are central banks in the world today? How are governments destroying the currency," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I had a framing that I used. And one of the reasons that I started the Hidden Forces the way I did was that I wanted to disabuse myself of all those biases, and I wanted to look at the world as honestly and objectively as I could. And that's not easy. It's not easy to grow a show that way, because when you adopt an ideology and framework, you also adopt an audience. It's like a prepackaged group of people that you can target. You can even construct them on Facebook or on Twitter, you can target that particular group, that psychographic. But when you're trying to start something completely from scratch and just go with the flow and what you believe, it's a windier, less certain road, but it's much more fulfilling. And it leads to, I think, character and truth.

Addison:

Yeah. I think it's fulfilling. It's fulfilling for me, it's fulfilling for you. But I mean, what's the relationship that you end up with readers, then? They either agree with you or they don't, right?

Demetri:

Sometimes they hate you, and they curse you out, and they leave bad reviews.

Addison:

Which is also true. We get that all the time. I had somebody yesterday that said, "I never write in because I know that, whatever you say, you're going to get the last word." I'm like, "Well, fuck you, man. Yes, I am going to get the last word."

Demetri:

You guys are an example of benchmark success with subscription businesses. I mean, for those of us... Huh?

Addison:

I'm just saying, yeah.

Demetri:

Next level. When I started.

Addison:

Oh, it's been okay.

Demetri:

Yeah. I mean, when I started my podcast, I was like, you know that I had Agora Financial in my head. I was like, "I want to be in that business. I don't want advertisers. I want a subscription model." And so, I've had people complain. It's rare, but I've had people complain that the content isn't all free. And I think those people, what they fail to grasp is that it's not free when they get it free, and they have all those ads on that content they're being sold, something. That has an impact on the quality of information they get. And if you want quality information, you have to pay for it, especially in the world that we live in today, you know?

Addison:

All right. Let's leave it at that. I want to talk to you more about business models, but it's good enough for today. What do you think?

Demetri:

All right. Sounds good. Sounds good, Addison.

Addison:

All right. Thanks.

Demetri:

So thanks for having me on.

Addison:

Yep.