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Hidden Forces

Get the edge with Hidden Forces where media entrepreneur and financial analyst Demetri Kofinas gives you access to the people and ideas that matter, so you can build financial security and always stay ahead of the curve.
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Now displaying: Category: Science & Medicine
Oct 11, 2021

In Episode 214 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Scott Gottlieb. Dr. Gottlieb is a physician who served as the head of the FDA from 2017 to 2019. He currently serves on the boards of Pfizer and Illumina and is a regular contributor to CNBC where he has become one of the most recognizable faces in America. His recently published book, “Uncontrolled Spread,” examines how the coronavirus and its variants overwhelmed our national defenses and outlines the steps he thinks we need to take in order to better protect ourselves and our country from the next pandemic.

The first half of Demetri’s conversation with Scott was spent examining the systemic failures that Dr. Gottlieb thinks exacerbated the scope of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the economic costs associated with the various lockdowns and shutdowns that were imposed in the very early days of the outbreak. Gottlieb also goes into detail about the biological mechanics of the virus, how it spreads, and what we’ve learned about best practices for protecting ourselves and those around us. The conversation then shifts to a discussion about the various vaccines, their effectiveness, how they work, as well as the risk of taking them and how to evaluate those risks when making your own decision about whether or not to get vaccinated. Demetri asks Dr. Gottlieb about alternative treatment options like Ivermectin and whether or not he thinks the mainstream media is censoring information about these types of alternative treatments.

This week’s premium content is a forty-minute afterthoughts segment that Demetri recorded right after the end of his conversation with Scott, where he reflects on not only what was discussed during the first hour, but also, many of the things that the two didn’t get to talk about like the lab leak hypothesis, the arguments for and against mandated vaccinations, the future of sequencing and genomic epidemiology, new antiviral drugs, the risk of new BSL-4 Facilities, and so much more.

If you enjoy the free content we produce every week, we encourage you to take the leap and become a premium subscriber, if you haven’t already. There's no commitment. You can cancel at any time and the entire library of subscriber content going all the way back to Episode 1 becomes instantly available to you, including the overtimes, afterthoughts, transcripts, and rundowns, depending on your tier. The rundown to this week’s episode is a nearly 30-page compendium full of notes, questions, images, and other materials that Demetri put together to help guide you through this conversation.

You can access the second part of this episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s conversation through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/05/2021

Jul 12, 2021

In Episode 198 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lauren Aguirre, an award-winning science journalist whose book “The Memory Thief,” tells the story of a team of doctors responsible for discovering a surprising connection between the use of opioids—specifically fentanyl—and memory loss. This condition, first detected in drug overdose victims with severe damage to their hippocampus has since led to a series of discoveries about the nature of memory, as well as the mysteries that persist about how we remember—where memories live, how they’re formed, and why we forget most of what happens to us in a day but can remember some events with stunning clarity, years, even decades later.

Perhaps the greatest mystery that Lauren tackles in her book is why Alzheimer’s—a degenerative brain disease responsible for causing dementia and early death—has evaded scientific capture for a hundred years despite afflicting tens of millions of people around the world. It’s one of the questions we explore in-depth during the episode overtime, where Lauren also reveals promising new strategies and developments that may finally lead to an effective treatment and perhaps even cure of this devastating disease.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 07/03/2021

Jan 20, 2020

In Episode 119 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Sean Carroll, a best-selling author and research professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Dr. Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity.  

Our focus today is on the subject of Sean Carroll’s latest book “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Space-time.” The conversation jumps around quite a bit, and much of the discussion bends towards the philosophical. Demetri and Dr. Carroll discuss ontological questions dealing with the nature of reality and the possible limitations of science as an epistemological tool for making definitive statements about our own conscious experience. They also delve into some of the core theoretical aspects of quantum mechanics like the measurement problem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, entanglement, and nonlocality. Sean Carroll also explains some of the various interpretations of quantum theory such as the Copenhagen interpretation, Many Worlds, Be Broglie–Bohm, Spontaneous Collapse, and QBism. 

For subscribers to our Hidden Forces Overtime feed, Demetri and Sean spend the balance of their time discussing more off-the-wall subjects such as the impact of quantum mechanics in culture, the fascination with time travel, challenges for artificial general intelligence, the prospect of aliens, and the implications of flat earth theory.

You can access the show overtime, along with the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also get their own exclusive Overtime RSS feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. 

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Dec 23, 2019

In Episode 115 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brian Koffman, a doctor turned CLL patient, whose patient education and advocacy efforts have given hope and encouragement to CLL cancer patients everywhere.

Brian Koffman is extraordinary, in many ways. He’s extraordinary in the medical sense because, after twelve years of battling blood cancer, doctors can no longer find a single trace of malignancy in his entire body. He is 100% cancer-free going on almost two years, thanks to an experimental therapy that wiped out his CLL cancer in less than a month. But there’s another way in which Dr. Koffman is extraordinary, and this has to do with how he has handled his diagnosis. Brian Koffman's willingness to share his experience undergoing cutting edge treatments, as well as his decision to leave his medical practice behind and dedicate his life entirely to being a CLL advocate have both had an enormously positive impact on the lives of CLL patients and their families.

Many listeners will already know Demetri’s story and that he is a survivor of a brain tumor that caused him debilitating psychological and physical distress, but which also empowered him to change his life. It took such an experience for Demetri to truly understand that his time in this world is limited. This is not just true of him; it is true of you, too. It’s true of all of us. We’re all mortal, and how we choose to spend our precious time in the face of this reality is what gives our lives their meaning. It is what distinguishes Dr. Koffman’s life from yours, and yours from someone else’s. 

Dr. Koffman has made his choices, and hopefully, he will have many, many more to make. His story is one of perseverance, leadership, generosity, and service to a cause greater than himself. But besides serving as an important source of information and optimism about a very serious illness, we hope that his story and this conversation provide you with cause to reflect on your own life and on the things that matter most to you and how you want to spend your remaining time on this planet.

For more information about Brian Koffmar or to learn more about his work in CLL patient education and advocacy, please visit https://cllsociety.org

You can access the afterthoughts segment to this week’s rundown, the transcript of Demetri conversation with Dr. Koffman, as well as the episode rundown (show notes and educational materials about the substance of today’s conversation) through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. 

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Apr 15, 2019

In Episode 84 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with celebrated author Johann Hari about his book “Lost Connections” and the silent epidemic of depression and anxiety that is pervading our society and burdening the lives of so many people.

Lost Connections begins as a chronicling of Johann’s search for answers to the causes of his own depression, but becomes an investigation into the reasons for its increasing prevalence in the lives of others.

In the introduction to the book, Johann tells us that some one in five U.S. adults is taking at least one drug for a psychiatric problem and that nearly one in four middle-aged women in the United States is taking antidepressants at any given time. Addictions to legal and illegal drugs are now so widespread that the life expectancy of white men is declining for the first time in the entire peacetime history of the United States, and these statistics are not exclusive to Americans. When scientists test the water supply of Western countries, they always find it laced with antidepressants, because so many people are taking and excreting them that they simply can’t be filtered out of the water we drink every day. We are literally, as Johann writes, awash in these drugs and we have come to accept that a huge number of the people all around us are so distressed that they feel they need to take a powerful chemical every day just to keep themselves together.

This is an extremely sensitive issue because so many people suffer under the burden of depression, but unlike other disabilities, this one is particularly difficult to talk about. No one wants to be seen as a downer or weak, even though more people are starting to understand that depression is not a sign of weakness. But what is it a sign of?

Certainly, there are people in this world who are predisposed towards various forms of mental illness, including severe, sometimes debilitating depression. However, it is difficult to comprehend how the epidemic – the rising rates of depression and anxiety – can be explained in biological terms and treated in pharmacological ways. Johann Hari would say that this epidemic is not a malfunction caused by a biological deficiency. He would say that they are the natural response to a deficiency in how we live.

This point, in particular, resonates. The Indian philosopher Krishnamurti, famously said that “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” On the surface, things have never been better. This is literally the best time to be alive in all of human history by almost any metric, and yet, if you look between the cracks you find people struggling. Some of them are depressed, others are just overwhelmed, grieving, or lonely. It isn’t just people in poverty who are struggling. This is a society-wide phenomenon. We see it in our politics, but we also see it in our culture. What do we value in our societies today? Who are the heroes that we idolize? If an alien species were to visit earth, what would be the appeal we would make to save our lives?

It’s not a coincidence that there has been an outpouring of interest in questions of ethics, moral philosophy, and epistemology. What are we to infer from the resurgent public curiosity in psychedelics if not that they may hold the key to revelation – the revelation of some elemental truth about life that we seem to have forgotten in our haste to remake the world and ourselves along some artificially manufactured, commercially sanitized avatar of a human life.

Joseph Campbell, the great mythological scholar and mystic once said, “I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” Could this epidemic be a reflection of our struggle to fulfill the demands of a culture whose values are no longer compatible with the needs of a human life? As Johann Hari writes in the final paragraphs of his book, while addressing his younger self, “You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met. You are not suffering from a chemical imbalance in your brain. You are suffering from a social and spiritual imbalance in how we live. This pain is not your enemy, however much it hurts, and Jesus, I know how much it hurts. It’s your ally – leading you away from a wasted life and pointing the way towards a more fulfilling one. You can try and muffle that signal or you can let it guide you, away from the things that are hurting and draining you, and towards the things that will meet your true needs.”

Those of you who are regular listeners to this show know that we’ve devoted more time and attention to the subject of life – it’s properties, its merits, and how we come to know and understand it – as we move into a new paradigm of human experience at the frontier of technological futurism. No one knows exactly where this is all going. We are all still figuring it out, but it seems that this is an important piece of that puzzle.

There are limits to human adaptability, and we should be careful not to accept explanations simply because they come wrapped in a story of scientific certainty or commercial authority. People aren’t machines. Your life matters. Your pain matters. Listen to it. It may have something important to teach.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Mar 11, 2019

In Episode 80 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with CTRL-labs CEO Thomas Reardon, about his company’s ground-breaking innovations in neural interface design, computational neuroscience, and machine learning that turn science fiction into reality.

Thomas Reardon’s career is no less impressive than his most recent endeavor to displace the graphical user interface and revolutionize immersive computing. He is a founding Board Member of the World Wide Web Consortium and famous for having created Internet Explorer at Microsoft, which, at its peak, represented 96% of all web browsers in existence. Over one billion people on earth have used Reardon’s software to access the Web. After leaving Microsoft, Reardon decided to go back to school, receiving his undergraduate degree in Classics from Columbia, gaining fluency in Latin and Greek. He followed that up with a Ph.D. in Neuroscience split between Columbia and Duke.    

It’s hard to capture the paradigmatic nature of the innovations stemming from the work being done at CTRL-labs without seeing it for yourself. Anything that I can say is insufficient to capture the awe of watching someone type on a screen without moving his fingers, use her intentions to pick up and finely control objects in three-dimensional space or play a video game while remaining visually motionless. The implications of this technology are perhaps, rivaled only by the practical genius of its implementation. By focusing their attention on translating only the final, neuronal output of our brain’s commands as expressed through electrical impulses sent directly to our muscles, the team at CTRL-labs has managed to create a device that can capture the brain’s intentions non-invasively, through the use of a simple armband that you can wear like an article of clothing, a wristwatch, or a fancy bracelet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this technology turns yesterday’s future into today’s reality, blowing wide-open the world of immersive computing and expanding our sense of possibility beyond our wildest imagination.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Jun 4, 2018

In Episode 46 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brian Keating, astrophysicist and author of Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor.

When we think about competition, we don’t typically think about scientists. Instead of seeing these individuals as adversaries competing for fickle prizes or glory, we see them as impartial explorers of the cosmos. We see them as the selfless gatekeepers of knowledge.
This view, as we are coming to learn, is more than a little askew.

The darker sides of science — the prejudices and egos and dubious incentives — are realities that we are forced to face almost as soon as we start investigating what it is that drives scientists in their pursuits.

And they are realities that Brian Keating knows all too well.

Keating is an astrophysicist at UC San Diego's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. He is also credited as being the driving force behind BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made. BICEP2 was tasked with answering some of the biggest questions in physics, such as how our cosmos came to be and what the universe was like at the beginning of time. Specifically, the telescope was created to detect the unique B-mode polarization signature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a byproduct of the cosmos’ first moments of expansion.

For a time, Keating and his team believed they had detected this signature. The work almost won Keating the Nobel Prize in Physics. Almost.

In this episode, Keating joins host Demetri Kofinas to walk us through the history of experimental cosmology and trace its course to modern science. He starts with an examination of the early geocentric models of the universe and shows how the scientific revolution, and the introduction of empiricism, altered the course of history and set us on the path to modern physics. The episode culminates with a discussion of what it is that drives scientists in their pursuits. From wealth to fame, from a genuine desire to understand the origins of the cosmos to an egotistical desire to wage war on religion, Keating outlines some of the most remarkable discoveries in physics and how biases and incentives are slowing innovation and shredding the fabric of modern science.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

 

Dec 11, 2017

In Episode 26 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with NASA's Chief Climate Scientist and Head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt. The two cut through the controversy surrounding climate change and dive right into the heart of climate science. They parse through the data, explore the climate models, and consider the impact that further warming could have on humanity in the decades to come.

What is driving the warming of our planet? What is causing the acidification of the oceans? What is shrinking the ice sheets? What is causing the rise in sea levels, the decrease in snow cover, and the melting glaciers? Is there a causal connection between human activity and the prolonged droughts, intense heat waves, and raging wildfires we have seen in recent years? What are the feedback mechanisms of climate change? How do we measure the impact of losing reflective layers of ice, exposing permafrost, or releasing vapor into the atmosphere? What does the cooling of the upper atmosphere tell us about the cause of global warming? Could changes in solar activity, sunspots and cosmic rays, and their effects on clouds be to blame for climate change? How will humanity respond to more extreme weather events – hurricanes, droughts, floods, and forest fires – as our populations grow and the density of our coastal regions increases? And is there anything we can do, to prepare?

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on FacebookInstagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Oct 30, 2017

In Episode 23 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Heather Berlin about the neural basis of consciousness. The two consider a theory of mind based on a materialist perspective on reality. Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions. If this is the case, then where do our thoughts and our feelings, come from? Who is in charge of our volitions and our desires? What is the neural basis of depression, anxiety, and psychosis? What is the substantive source of human creativity, inspiration, and genius? Is there really nothing more to the experience of consciousness – to life itself – than the observable firing of billions of neurons jumbled together in an atomic stew consisting almost entirely of empty space?

Dr. Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Berlin practices clinical neuropsychology at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She is the host of the PBS series Science Goes to the Movies, and the Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown. Heather Berlin co-wrote and stars in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway and Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation. She has made numerous media appearances including on the BBC, History Channel, Netflix, NatGeo, StarTalk, and TEDx. Heather Berlin received her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and Master of Public Health from Harvard University.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on FacebookInstagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Sep 11, 2017

In Episode 19 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with theoretical physicist Geoffrey West about his work studying biological systems, infrastructure, and the socioeconomics of cities. Dr. West's primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics, especially those concerning the elementary particles, their interactions, and cosmological implications. Geoffrey West currently serves as distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he served as President from July 2005 through July 2009. Prior to joining SFI Dr. West was the leader, and founder, of the high energy physics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is also the author of SCALE, a remarkable, and timely book, whose substance and theory we explore today.

In today’s conversation, we explore some of the most remarkable insights coming out of the field of computational biology. This is an interdisciplinary cohort consisting of theoretical physicists, biologists, and mathematicians who are all working together to create models that explain the origins, requirements, and limits of life. What do our models tell us about nature’s design for humanity? Are there limits to growth? What accounts for the decrease in metabolic rate as size/mass increases? How do physical systems and networks scale in size within the confines of the Earth’s physical space? What are the universal costs associated with our cities and our lifestyles? What accounts for their resilience? What is the significance of our thirst for more power as defined by the amount of work we do over time? What can interest rates and human time preferences tell us about our relationship to nature? What role do we play in the universe’s inexorable procession towards entropy? How much time do we have left?

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on FacebookInstagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Jul 10, 2017

In Episode 15 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Eric Schadt. Eric Schadt is founder and CEO of Sema4, as well as Dean of Precision Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. During the course of his 20-year career, Dr. Eric Schadt has built genetics and systems biology groups at Merck. He built the computational biology group at Rosetta. He has served as co-founder of Sage Bionetworks and as Chief Science Officer of Pacific Biosciences. He now serves as the founder and CEO of Sema4. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals, and he has contributed to a number of discoveries relating to the genetic basis of common human diseases such as diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s.

In today’s conversation, we explore the information technology of biology – DNA – the world of genomics, where big data looms large. We begin by mapping the territory of the human genome and exploring the pathways of disease. We look to understand the ways in which complex genetic combinations express themselves as phenotypes such as height, bone structure, intelligence, and personality. How are these traits coded for? What are the instructions our body uses to repair a damaged cell? What blueprint does it consult before trying to grow new arteries? How does it know to regulate our appetite or when start us down the path of puberty? What happens when these instructions are damaged? How can the smallest difference in the order of life’s code make all the difference for our success, our happiness, and even our survival?

50 years have passed, between the discovery of the double-helix and the mapping of the first human genome. What progress have we made in the 15 years since? How has our ability to sequence new genomes created a paradigm shift in medicine? What is the role of big data and artificial intelligence in finding the correlations needed in order to treat malignancies and prevent diseases? What is the promise of genomics? What are the perils of big data in medicine? What stands between us and some superhuman future?

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation on FacebookInstagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

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