The Jacob Shapiro Podcast

A 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 a near tie. Monica de Bolle of the Peterson Institute for International Economics maps what Sunday's runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro decides: who fills at least three of the Supreme Court's eleven seats, whether anyone fixes debt rules built for an age of runaway inflation, and who controls the world's second-largest rare earth reserves - where an American company has agreed to buy a mine. Monica is extremely c...

Brazil 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 that the future caught up to Brazil from the other direction. The wealthy world didn’t pull the laggards forward; it declined to meet them. A shrinking middle class, patrimonial politics, collapsing trust, gated condominiums and open sewers alongside WhatsApp. This is Brazilianization, and Hochuli joins from São Paulo days after Lula’s loss in the first round to explain what it looks like from inside. A bleak convers...

Eritrea 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 Ethiopia together. Confusing? Super. Nicholas Norbrook of The Africa Report maps the forces pulling at a country that was, until recently, one of the fastest-growing economies on earth - a messianic prime minister with a very young team, Emirati money on several sides at once, Egypt quietly assembling a coalition to box Addis in, and a short run to the Red Sea coast that would be very easy to attempt and very ha...

Mark 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 Lakers after a year unless something has gone badly wrong. Chris Branch, author of The Athletic's The Pulse, joins to pull on the thread: life insurance money funding franchise purchases, a UAE sovereign wealth fund in the holding company, a Kushner and a former Disney CEO waiting on the other side. Neither of them can prove anything. Both of them can tell something is rotten.

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Timestamps:<...

Two 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... Just not the way he had in mind. Elohim Monard joins from Pucallpa, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, to trace what Marco Rubio's recent swing through the region actually accomplished, why security is the MacGuffin and China is the real story, and how a continent ends up saying "yes sir" while Chinese state companies quietly run its ports and power grids. Plus: the Latin Americanization of US politics, and why El...

People 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 twice. Mette Bendixen, a geoscientist at McGill, studies where it comes from and who pays the price for it. Dubai imports its sand from Australia. Greenland's melting ice sheet is quietly producing a new export. And somewhere in Rwanda, a woman crushes stones by hand for two weeks to earn twenty dollars. The foundation of the modern world turns out to be a resource with no lobby, no regulation, and...

Inside 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 sovereign nation of Canada - a country discovering what it actually costs to step away from Washington and forge out on its own. Is Carney brave or delusional? Does scale decide everything? When the polite fictions come down, what's left holding any of this together? Tune in for a real disagreement between people who like each other, both wolves get fed.

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The 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 enough to cover the damages. Climate scientist Justin Mankin studies how much these events actually cost - and his estimates run to $10 trillion or more in global economic loss over the next five years. Big numbers, short timeframe, scary outlook. But the hardest question that Dr. Mankin brought up with us wasn't about how we're gunna pay for all of this, it's about what gets lost when...

Scott 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 interventions coming out of Washington - doubled bond buybacks, a yen rescue, a sudden fondness for stablecoins - aren't policy. They're symptoms. The arithmetic of debt, entitlements, and interest has crossed a threshold from which, Gromen argues, there are only three exits, and none of them are painless. We've got a crisis hiding in plain sight - and someone is gunna end up paying for it.

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AI 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 seventh-generation bookseller in Houston, went viral for tracing one of these mysterious bulk orders - following overlooked books into Amazon warehouses filled with entire categories of obscure human knowledge. Today we're taking the plunge into a mystery that spans artificial intelligence, culture, and the LTV of a "rare" book.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Episode setup and guest intro

(01:22) - Mic check and welcome

(02:01...

Jacob Shapiro welcomes back Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown's Institute of International Economic Law and former White House senior director for international economics. Trump keeps finding new legal tools - including a forgotten 1930 law now aimed at Canada - and companies have stopped investing because they can't guess what comes next :/ Also, Washington has quietly bought stakes in 37 companies, with no rules and almost no transparency around any of it.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Setup

(00:27) - Why Tariffs Matter Now

(02:18) - Rapid Fire Tariff Tools

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Round 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 pestering all three of them for their pieces as a Stratfor intern - for an unfiltered conversation about how they actually became geopolitical strategists. They trade formative-moment stories from Stratfor's early-2000s "golden age" (including the Egypt/Mubarak call that made Jacob's career), debate whether corporate America can ever hire real geopolitical talent, and each name the one book that shaped how they see...

Sixteen 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, and Matt Gertken to tackle three questions: How does the world end in the next 10 years? What core belief could each of us get wrong? And what's the least expected, most likely thing to happen next?

The conversation ranges from deglobalization and collapsing oil supply chains to the demographic cliff facing the developed world, the odds of deflation versus inflation in the 2030s, and whether the global order ends...

Eric 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 how the Global South actually sees the US-Iran war, why nobody expects China to ride to anyone's rescue, and how Vietnam's tariff and energy shocks became a never-again moment. He and Jacob dig into the myth that tariffs can implode China, America's fading China literacy, and why the next order won't be Chinese-led - but China will be its transformational character.

*Note: There are some weird buzzing...

Jacob 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 Balogun controversy, England-Argentina and the ghost of the Falklands, why sports and politics were never actually separate, and why China and India can barely qualify while Cape Verde runs wild. Plus: whether soccer ever truly takes hold in America, and why it might take a billionaire treating the sport like a Carnegie library to make it happen.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Guest Intro<...

Jacob 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 changed in eleven years, most of the efficiency gains, double hulls, eco-designed vessels, LNG boil-off fixes, were locked in over a decade ago, leaving only regulation to move the needle. The two dig into why the US lost shipbuilding to Japan, Korea, and now China, how the Jones Act complicates the picture, and why America's real shot at relevance lies in owning and financing vessels, not building them.

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Crosspost! Shaun Haney and Jacob use the global football tournament as a springboard to discuss nationalism, international institutions, and the role sport plays in bringing people together, while acknowledging that politics inevitably follows major global events.

Shapiro says that international sporting events can provide valuable insight into broader geopolitical trends while also serving as a rare source of optimism.

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Referenced in the Show:

Frontlines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckZi7rZU3U

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Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com

Jacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com...

Hamidreza 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 reversible - sanctions relief hinges on a phone call, the $300 billion investment fund is unfunded, and both Iran and the US are already renegotiating its terms through actions, not words. They dig into Iran's Strait of Hormuz fee gambit, China's calculated non-intervention, Turkey's regional rise, and 80% inflation battering Iran domestically. Azizi's verdict: Iran emerges more resilient, not more powerful, and... you'll have to listen to get the rest!

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Jacob 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 ministries' budgets, can't out-spy the cartels, and may face limited US drone strikes Mexico has no way to resist. El Mencho's death looks more like an ambush than a victory. Nearshoring pencils out on a spreadsheet - until corruption and parallel taxation eat the margin. A bracing case for what happens if Jacob's wrong.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro and Framing

(01:29) - Meet Victor Hernandez

You 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 Jacob discuss geopolitics from an agricultural lens, exploring how the world reacts to the extremely fine-tuned world of ag.

Many analysts expected a prolonged disruption in the Strait to trigger severe economic fallout. Instead, oil prices have risen, inflation pressures have intensified, and shortages are emerging in some regions, yet markets remain resilient. Jacob argues that oil’s influence on the broader economy is no longer as domi...

Florida 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 journalist Alexander Sammon, who wrote a definitive autopsy of the Florida orange industry, to understand how disease, globalization, and real estate swallowed one of America's most iconic crops. Scratch the surface of orange juice, and you find geopolitics, government mandates, and the full sweep of 20th century American economic history.

Alex's article below!

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Schedule Update

(00:26...

Ioan 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 change rhetoric, not reality. The U.S. is more involved than anyone admits. And Sheinbaum is threading a needle between Washington's pressure and Mexican sovereignty. A conversation you won't find anywhere else.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Guest Intro

(01:33) - Name Pronunciation

(02:46) - How Cartels Evolved

(03:35) - Violence Plateau Explained

(08:04) - Homicide Stats vs Reality

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Our favorite military analyst, Sim Tack, returns to the pod to assess three different conflicts reshaping global security. In Ukraine, territorial gains are tactical, not strategic; Russian economic endurance remains the real variable. In Iran, a degraded military has reached a stalemate the U.S. and Israel cannot break without regime change. And in Mali, a jihadist advance is threatening to create a new territorial caliphate... with Russia's failed security guarantee quietly accelerating the collapse.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome

(01:08) - Sim is Back

(01:56) - Is the World Overwhelming?

Jacob 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 understood as a medium than a tool, what the shift from tangible to intangible assets means for investors, and why the dynamics of show business now govern every industry - from oil to politics.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introooo

(01:27) - Twitter and the Text Commons

(04:16) - AI Metaphors Tool or Medium

(07:58) - How LLMs Actually Think

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Peru 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. Elohim Monard returns to diagnose a political crisis that doubles as a case study in great-power failure. From "gross diplomacy" on social media to a runoff framed as "cancer versus HIV," Peru is caught between Washington and Beijing with no strategy of its own.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Guest Intro

(00:37) - Gross Diplomacy Sparks

(01:51) - US Diplomatic...

Josh 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 dominates fertilizer supply, why the US can't easily fill the gap, which crops and regions are most at risk, and what farmers should do right now to protect themselves.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome

(01:15) - War Context and Stakes

(02:22) - Fertilizer 101 Big Three

(03:36) - Why Hormuz Matters

(04:55) - Middle East Gas Advantage

(06:12) - Why US...

Josef 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. Prices were already heading higher, the conflict accelerated the timeline, and the U.S. can't drill its way out of a closed Strait of Hormuz. Jacob and Josef also get into Canada's structural advantage, why markets are still surprisingly calm, and what a prolonged conflict means for the global economy. Tune in for more :)

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome

(00:36) - Prewar Oil...

Kabir 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 discuss how ordinary Indians are feeling the economic anxiety of potential energy shortages, India's long-standing policy of non-alignment in the Middle East, its deep ties with Gulf states, and why any lasting regional resolution will ultimately require Iran's security buy-in.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome

(00:57) - Global Economy Worries

(01:40) - Meet Kabir Taneja

(02:02) - ORF Middle East Explained

(03:26...

Chase 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 standing. Jacob and Chase discuss escalation dynamics in the Strait of Hormuz, the psychology of both leaderships, and what a realistic off-ramp might look like. They close out on the topic of U.S. competitiveness - covering energy policy, education investment, human capital, and the looming threat of nuclear proliferation.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome

(01:21) - War Anxiety and Cash Question

Jacob 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 fascinating geopolitical underdogs around. The two dig into Scotland's constrained economic agency within the UK, the squandered promise of North Sea oil, the renewable energy transition, and why Scotland - like much of Europe - risks sleepwalking into managed decline.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome And Setup

(01:30) - Why Scotland Now

(02:35) - Future Economy Scotland Origins

(05:54) - Early Impact And Strategy

Solo 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 politics, inflation risk, and explains what's shaken his analytical framework: the killing of moderate Iranian leaders, the appointment of a hardline Supreme Leader, the U.S. confusing firepower for strategy, and, of course, allies refusing to cooperate.

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Timestamps:

(00:27) - Why No US Attack

(02:15) - Iran Geography Leverage

(02:56) - US Politics Inflation Risk

(05:19) - Noninterventionist Contradiction

(06:26) - War...

Jacob 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 underreported conflicts brewing today - a potential war over Red Sea access with echoes of Cold War rivalries, ethnic fracture lines, and a region that's been through hell once already.

If you enjoyed the conversation, check out more of Jody's work below!

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Timestamps:

(01:22) - Meet Jodi in Nairobi

(01:38) - Why Ethiopia Matters

(03:20) - Ethiopia Basics

(05:44...

Jacob 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 erupted. Avi recounts waking to sirens, sheltering with his mother, and navigating a closed airspace in a circuitous scramble to get home - a reminder that geopolitics is always personal.

Note: If you know anyone in a Gulf or Middle Eastern state who has had to scramble in a similar way, or is experiencing the war on the ground, please connect us! We would love to...

Iran 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 radar systems first, then threaten energy infrastructure. He also unpacks who's actually running Tehran right now, why China and Russia are quietly helping, and why no optimistic scenario exists for Iran's long-term future.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome and Guest Intro

(00:41) - War Week Context

(01:56) - Reza Returns

(02:50) - How Long Can It Last

(08:02) - Damage and...

Geopolitical 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 points to a "Venezuela model" - targeting IRGC hardliners while preserving moderate military figures to negotiate a nuclear deal. But... Has the moment for regime collapse has already passed? The two also explore the regional fallout: Kurdish mobilization, Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions, and the risk of Iranian state collapse cascading across Eurasia.

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Timestamps:

(00:43) - Iran Response And Targets

(01:08) - Decapitation And Cyber...

North 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 hits before diving into 2026. They explore the transition from La Niña to El Niño, implications for U.S. agriculture, hurricane risk in the Gulf, and crop prospects in South America and the Black Sea. The discussion then widens into a candid debate over sea level rise, extreme weather trends, and climate data interpretation... Highlighting disagreements, long-term cycles, and the importance of questioning assumptions in an era of clickbait and...

Louis-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 a potential renaissance in Latin America and Canada, Louis argues that today’s volatility is accelerating deeper structural shifts. He explains why Europe remains fragmented, why energy prices could derail everything, and why investors may be thinking about risk all wrong.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Welcome & Introducing Louis Gave (Gavekal Research)

(02:43) - Liberation Day Shocks

(05:02) - China De‑Westernizing Supply Chains...

Something 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 delivered a generational landslide. Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first female Prime Minister, led her Liberal Democrats into a victory so complete that the opposition straight up imploded (see: winning 2/3 of Parliament). At the center of the dust cloud stands a leader arguing Japan must harden itself for a dangerous world: rebuild industry, rearm, and rely on no one but itself. This isn’t incremental politics. It’s a bet on nat...

Hamidreza 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 between the two and and offers insights into Iran's internal politics, the role of the IRGC, and the possible repercussions of a U.S. attack.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:46) - Iran's Domestic Situation

(02:44) - US-Iran Tensions and Military Movements

(04:08) - Iran's Response and Internal Dynamics

(09:41) - Potential Scenarios and Outcomes

(28:31) - Iran's Military Capabilities and...

Jacob sits down with agricultural economist Dr. David Kohl to unpack what a brutal downturn in farm profitability reveals about globalization, capital concentration, labor shortages, and long-term economic resilience. The two touch on tariffs, debt, and the limits of export-led growth, and then the conversation widens to examine how technology, demographics, and financial fragility are reshaping both rural America and the national economy.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction

(00:56) - Discussion on US Ag Economy

(02:17) - Challenges and Opportunities in Agriculture

(07:09) - Land Values and Institutional Investments

(12:24...