The Jacob Shapiro Podcast

Rabbit Season, Duck Season

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 th

The $10 Trillion Ocean

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 n

Boil the Frog

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 qu

Pulped

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-

Cooler Heads Are Not Prevailing

Jacob Shapiro welcomes back Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown's Institute of International Economic Law and former White House senior director for internation

Lessons Learned - Geopolitical Cousins

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 te

This Is The Way The World Ends (w/ Zeihan & Gertken) - Geopolitical Cousins

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 Z

Geography is Destiny: China, The Global South, & Energy

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 exp

Why Is China Bad at Soccer?

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

Shipping for Dummies

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

Frontlines: Ukraine, Iran, oil markets, and what the World Cup reveals about global politics

Crosspost! Shaun Haney and Jacob use the global football tournament as a springboard to discuss nationalism, international institutions, and the role sport plays in bring

Is The War Over?

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 a

The Cartel Math Isn't Mathing

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

Crosspost: Frontlines "Hormuz to AI"

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. S

Who Killed the Florida Orange?

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 d

Are the Cartels Winning?

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. Gover

Static, Not Strategic

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

Warp Speed for Everything

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

Gross Diplomacy

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-16

Fertilizer 101

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 E