Hello, friends. Well, today, in addition to our regular episode, I have a big announcement.

This is something that I've been working on for months and that I'm so excited to share with you.

TLDR. One, I'm today announcing the launch of the Breakdown Network, an entire network of podcasts and other content dedicated to exploring big picture power ships.

The tagline for the network is Change Explained.

Number two, the first spinoff show is called Bitcoin Builders.

It's a show all about this Cambrian explosion of creativity and entrepreneurship around Bitcoin, Lightning, and Freedom Tech.

The first two Bitcoin

Builders shows are available today. Number three, as part of this change, the breakdown's

great partnership with CoinDisk will be coming to an end. That means you'll need to subscribe

to the breakdown-only feed to get this show going forward. Okay, so that's the high-level news,

but let's take a step back and talk

about how we got here. And let's start with what I always say the breakdown is about, the big

picture power shifts remaking our world. What does that mean? Well, all around us, the fundamental

structures and assumptions on which our economies and society's

rest are changing. The examples of it are everywhere. Take de-globalization and the return of history.

At the end of the Cold War, one of the most prominent theories of the world was the idea of the

end of history, that human societal evolution had culminated and reached its apotheosis

in Western liberal democracies and market economies.

With no more Soviet Union as enemy, America was free to export these ideas everywhere.

This way of thinking contributed to the attempt to bring China into the U.S.-led global economic order,

which, while certainly making stuff cheaper, also hollowed out the middle class in the U.S.

and set up many of the core American political challenges we face today.

...