What's up, everybody? My name is Demetric Afinas. I'm a media entrepreneur, financial analyst,

and the host of Hidden Forces, a podcast that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday

citizens get an edge by equipping themselves with the knowledge needed to anticipate the

challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. By sharing my critical thinking approach and

by challenging consensus narratives about the power structures shaping our world, I

help you make the connections to see the bigger picture, empowering you to make smarter

decisions. In this week's episode, I speak with Luke Burgess, founder and director of

Forthwall Ventures, and author of Wanting, a book about the power of memetic desire

and how it impacts our behavior in work and life. The goal of this conversation is to help

you understand the forces that shape how we come to want the things that we desire,

from fancy degrees to ambitious career goals to gorgeous bodies, and to learn how to extract

ourselves from the systems of wanting that ultimately leave us exhausted. We're going

to sift through the noise of consumer culture, social media, and political divisiveness to

identify those desires that are meaningful and enduring. In the overtime, Luke and I discuss

the memetic consequences of social media and how the hyper-connectivity of modern life

has fundamentally altered our perception of reality with dramatic implications for our

political and economic systems. We also discuss how to counteract the destructive forces

of memetic desire, so that rather than try and rid ourselves of them, we learn to desire

differently. And with that, please enjoy this week's episode with my guest, Luke Burgess.

Luke Burgess, welcome to Hidden Forces. Thanks for having me on. It's great having

you on. So is this your first book or did you co-author a previous book? I co-authored

a book called Unrepeatable with a really small little publishing house. So this is a totally

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