The Jacob Shapiro Podcast
by Jacob Shapiro
Latest episode
More Siskos Than Picards
More Siskos Than Picards
About this podcast
The Jacob Shapiro Podcast is a modern geopolitics podcast that wades deep into the machinery of our global systems. We explore not just what happened this week, but why it happened, and what it means for markets, money, and the people living through it.
Geopolitics is the intersection of geography and politics. Each episode, geopolitical analyst Jacob Shapiro sits down with economists, strategists, scientists, journalists, and people on the ground to follow one story to its roots: the US-China rivalry, Africa's devastating civil unrest, the war in Ukraine, Latin America’s political realignment, the energy transition, oil and commodity markets, global trade and tariffs, artificial intelligence, food and water security, and the fiscal math behind the dollar. Some conversations start with a headline. Others start with a shipment of lentils, a tanker in the Red Sea, or a warehouse full of used books, and end up somewhere much bigger.
Jacob is a Geopolitical Analyst and a Stratfor alumnus who advises Fortune 500 companies, institutional investors, and family offices on geopolitical risk. He studied literature and theology before he studied foreign policy, and he approaches the world as a fox, not a hedgehog: curious, contrarian, skeptical of single-cause explanations, and willing to change his mind on air.
For investors, policymakers, business leaders, and anyone who suspects the news is missing the bigger picture. New episodes weekly.
(Formerly "Cognitive Dissidents” and “The Perch Pod”)
Episodes
The newest 50 of 350 episodes
- More Siskos Than Picards · 1 h 1 min · Season 2 Episode 436Kamran Bokhari calls the Mecca Accord "a secretary general without a secretariat." He still won't call it nothing. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed it as Washington began…
- Who Wanted Nvidia’s CEO Burned? · 20 min · Season 2 Episode 435An American official walks into a Malaysian data center and finds a hoard of Nvidia equipment still in its boxes. Two years later, U.S. officials reportedly believe an executive…
- There Is No Light Web - Minor Powers · 40 minA flaw sat for years in the code beneath most of the world's websites until an AI model went looking for it (See: PHP2Shell). Dror Poleg, an economic historian who writes about…
- Ukraine Is Not a Sovereign State · 59 min · Season 2 Episode 434Ukraine has had three revolutions since 1990: students on Kyiv's granite square, the Orange crowds of 2004, the Maidan in 2014. Volodymyr Ishchenko, a sociologist at the…
- The World Cup of Politics (Brazil Elections) · 55 min · Season 2 Episode 433A Brazilian congressman runs a WhatsApp channel called "Lula's Army." This week it passed ten million followers, part of a late surge that has turned a race Lula was losing into…
- Brazilianization · 1 h 5 min · Season 2 Episode 432Brazil was always the country of the future - prophesied as a new Eden since the sixteenth century, promised great things that never quite arrived. Alex Hochuli’s argument is…
- Ethiopia's New War · 46 min · Season 2 Episode 431Eritrea and (a Tigrayan-led) Ethiopia fought one of Africa’s deadliest wars against each other. Then Eritrea helped Ethiopia crush Tigray. Now Eritrea and Tigray are fighting…
- Circular Financing · 56 min · Season 2 Episode 430Mark Walter bought the Lakers for $10 billion and sold them fourteen months later for $12.5. That's a 20% return - which sounds enormous until you consider that nobody sells the…
- Rubio Makin Moves · 56 min · Season 2 Episode 429Two hundred years ago, Simón Bolívar dreamed of a united Latin America - precisely so it could resist becoming America's backyard. South America may finally be integrating…
- The Sand Mafias · 48 min · Season 2 Episode 428People are being killed over sand. Not diamonds, not lithium, not rare earths - sand, the second-most consumed resource on earth after water, and the one nobody thinks about…
- Rabbit Season, Duck Season · 1 h 4 min · Season 2 Episode 427Inside you are two wolves. One (Michael Every) looks at Washington and sees a plan. The other (Jacob) looks at the same info and sees chaos. Somewhere north of both is the…
- The $10 Trillion Ocean · 1 h 6 min · Season 2 Episode 426The world has never been wealthier... but a warm patch of ocean in the Pacific is about to reorganize the weather across four continents and all that wealth still might not be…
- Boil the Frog · 1 h 11 min · Season 2 Episode 425Scott Bessent knows something that we don't. Luke Gromen has spent his whole career reading the fine print of America's balance sheet, and his conclusion is stark: the quiet…
- Pulped · 59 min · Season 2 Episode 424AI companies are buying up used books, scanning them, and destroying the originals. At least, that's the headline... the real story is weirder. Charlie Becker, a…
- Cooler Heads Are Not Prevailing · 57 min · Season 2 Episode 423Jacob Shapiro welcomes back Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown's Institute of International Economic Law and former White House senior director for international…
- Lessons Learned - Geopolitical Cousins · 1 h 27 minRound two. Same four analysts, a lot more whiskey, and a lot less structure. Peter Zeihan, Marko Papic, and Matt Gertken sit back down with Jacob - a man who cut his teeth…
- This Is The Way The World Ends (w/ Zeihan & Gertken) - Geopolitical Cousins · 1 h 40 minSixteen years after last sharing a table together, four Stratfor alumni reunite for a wide-ranging conversation on the decade ahead. Jacob and Marko are joined by Peter Zeihan…
- Geography is Destiny: China, The Global South, & Energy · 1 h 1 min · Season 2 Episode 422Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of the China Global South Project, joins the pod to discuss the developments on the other side of the globe. From Ho Chi Minh City, Eric explains…
- Why Is China Bad at Soccer? · 1 h 11 min · Season 2 Episode 421Jacob grabs Chris Branch, senior writer at The Athletic and author of The Pulse, to talk about the World Cup as geopolitics. They cover Trump's red-card intervention and the…
- Shipping for Dummies · 58 min · Season 2 Episode 420Jacob sits down with J Mintzmyer of Value Investors Edge for a shipping deep-dive (but of course it's a geopolitics lesson in disguise). Mintzmyer argues the industry has barely…
- Frontlines: Ukraine, Iran, oil markets, and what the World Cup reveals about global politics · 50 min · Season 2 Episode 419Crosspost! Shaun Haney and Jacob use the global football tournament as a springboard to discuss nationalism, international institutions, and the role sport plays in bringing…
- Is The War Over? · 59 min · Season 2 Episode 418Hamidreza Azizi joins the show once more to ask a deceptively simple question: is the war over? Azizi argues the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is deliberately vague and fully…
- The Cartel Math Isn't Mathing · 56 min · Season 2 Episode 417Jacob Shapiro sits down with Victor Hernandez, a Mexican national security analyst, to stress-test his own optimism about Mexico. Hernandez argues the army now runs eight…
- Crosspost: Frontlines "Hormuz to AI" · 41 min · Season 2 Episode 416You might not realize it, but Jacob also appears on a few other podcasts regularly! Jacob is a regular guest RealAgriculture’s Frontlines podcast, hosted by Shaun Hane. Shaun and…
- Who Killed the Florida Orange? · 53 min · Season 2 Episode 415Florida produced 242 million boxes of oranges in 2003. This year, the USDA is forecasting 12 million... a decline of more than 95% in less than a generation. Jacob sits down with…
- Are the Cartels Winning? · 54 min · Season 2 Episode 414Ioan Grillo has spent decades on the ground in Mexico watching the cartels evolve, and his assessment is sobering. Violence has shifted form more than it's receded. Governments…
- Static, Not Strategic · 58 min · Season 2 Episode 413Our favorite military analyst, Sim Tack, returns to the pod to assess three different conflicts reshaping global security. In Ukraine, territorial gains are tactical, not…
- Warp Speed for Everything · 1 h 13 min · Season 2 Episode 412Jacob sits down for a fantastic conversation with author and analyst Dror Poleg to explore how AI is reshaping work, value, and the economy. They unpack why AI is better…
- Gross Diplomacy · 57 min · Season 2 Episode 411Peru has had seven presidents in nine years, homicides have nearly doubled, and extortion is up sixfold - and yet the country just tried to buy $3.5 billion worth of F-16s…
- Fertilizer 101 · 52 min · Season 2 Episode 410Josh Linville,VP of Fertilizer at StoneX, chats with Jacob about the global fertilizer crisis triggered by disruption to the Strait of Hormuz. They cover why the Middle East…
- The Off Ramp Is Right Now · 53 min · Season 2 Episode 409Josef Schachter - President of Schachter Energy - walks us through what global oil markets looked like the day before bombs started falling, and what the math looks like now…
- The View From Delhi · 56 min · Season 2 Episode 408Kabir Taneja, Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation Middle East, joins the podcast for an Indian perspective on the US-Israel conflict with Iran. Jacob and Kabir…
- Soft Power is Underrated · 1 h 7 min · Season 2 Episode 407Chase Taylor of Pine Cone Macro rejoins the pod for a candid conversation about the Iran War and its ripple effects on global markets, military strategy, and U.S. geopolitical…
- Renegade Scottish Economics · 55 min · Season 2 Episode 406Jacob sits down with Laurie McFarlane, co-director of Future Economy Scotland, for a (non-Gulf War related, finally) conversation about what makes Scotland one of the more…
- Firepower Is Not a Strategy · 25 min · Season 2 Episode 405Solo analysis from Jacob! Some reflection on being wrong about the Third Gulf War. Jacob outlines why he thought the war wouldn't happen - interceptor shortages, domestic…
- An Imminent, Underreported War · 54 min · Season 2 Episode 404Jacob Shapiro sits down with journalist Jody Ray, who just returned from on-the-ground reporting in Ethiopia and Eritrea. This convo is a gateway into one of the most…
- Escape from Tel Aviv · 42 min · Season 2 Episode 403Jacob sets down the grand strategy for a gripping personal story, catching up with his high school friend Avi Swerdlow, who landed in Israel the day before the new Gulf War…
- Who's Running Tehran? · 1 h 6 min · Season 2 Episode 402Iran expert Hamidreza Azizi joins Jacob Shapiro to break down the issues posed by Iran's blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Azizi explains Iran's phased strategy: take out US…
- Decapitation Strike · 30 min · Season 2 Episode 401Geopolitical analyst Kamran Bokhari joins Jacob to break down the US/Israeli joint strike on Iran. Is this regime change, or coercion? Bokhari argues the limited force deployment…
- Healthy Climate Skepticism (?) · 59 min · Season 2 Episode 400North Dakota State Climatologist Daryl Ritcheson joins the show for his annual check-in about the climate (our fourth???) - He and Jacob revisit last year’s forecast misses and…
- The Cold War That Wasn’t · 1 h 1 min · Season 2 Episode 399Louis-Vincent Gave joins The Jacob Shapiro Podcast to unpack a world that looks chaotic... but may be quietly reordering itself. From a surprising thaw in U.S.–China relations to…
- Takaichi's New Japan · 1 h 11 min · Season 2 Episode 398Something extraordinary just happened in Japan... but of course no one is paying attention! A ruling party written off as tired and scandal-plagued didn’t just win - they…
- War With Iran · 58 min · Season 2 Episode 397Hamidreza Azizi joins the pod for an emergency episode on the current state of Iran amidst escalating tensions with the United States. Azizi examines the potential for conflict…
- Land, Debt, and Decline · 53 min · Season 2 Episode 396Jacob sits down with agricultural economist Dr. David Kohl to unpack what a brutal downturn in farm profitability reveals about globalization, capital concentration, labor…
- The Black Sea Isn’t Quiet Anymore · 51 min · Season 2 Episode 395Andrey Sizov, a Black Sea agricultural markets, joins the pod to talk about about why the Russia-Ukraine war has disrupted global grain trade far less than expected - and why…
- Fed Under Fire · 51 min · Season 2 Episode 394Economist Mike Konczal joins the show to unpack the escalating pressure campaign against the Federal Reserve, new inflation data, and what all of this means for the U.S. economy…
- Measuring Risk · 41 min · Season 2 Episode 393Shock, instability, climate stress, financial panic, political rupture: the question isn’t who avoids disruption, but who absorbs it and keeps moving. Jacob invites on Parag…
- For My Friends, Everything; For My Enemies, The Law · 59 min · Season 2 Episode 392Venezuela has become the flashpoint for a new era of American hard power - not just a regime change, but a raw assertion of dominance over the "backyard." Elohim Monard graces…
- Bye Bye Maduro, You Gone Now · 21 min · Season 2 Episode 391Jacob takes on the U.S. seizure of Nicolás Maduro and what it reveals about American power, imperial strategy, and hemispheric priorities. This was less about China or…
- Money and Control · 46 min · Season 2 Episode 390What if the money in your pocket wasn’t a tool for freedom, but a mechanism for control? Inflation, surveillance, and financial exclusion actively shape who can save, speak, or…
