Geopolitical Cousins
Geopolitical Cousins throws together analysts Jacob Shapiro and Marko Papic for some of the most in-depth, off-the-wall geopolitical analysis in the world.
Episodes
AfD won 44% in Saxony-Anhalt, and the Twittersphere (x-sphere just doesn't hit, sorry) immediately projected Panzer divisions massing on the Polish border. Is AfD kinda scary right-wing populist? For sure. But every right-wing populist party in Europe has faced this same test over the last decade, and 17 out of 17 came to Jesus on the Euro once they had to actually govern. So is Germany becoming the Fourth Reich?? Unlikely. This is...
Rabies-infested beavers. Not an insult - a fiscal strategy. Canadians have stopped buying bourbon, started flying maple leaf flags in grocery stores, and ~ most importantly ~ handed Mark Carney the political cover to build infrastructure needed since the OG Trudeau. This week: why "size of the fight in the dog" beats a trade balance sheet, why 5% tariff coverage is somehow triggering a national identity crisis, and why America migh...
Scott Bessent says he doesn't understand why oil prices are spiking. The guy standing between America and the River Styx is confused :) The cousins crack open a few cold ones this week and break down why the 30-year just hit a 20-year high - not debt, not deficits, just vibes. Atrocious ones. The lads cover the war in Iran, tweets about North Korea, and a bond market that's done playing along. Plus... are hyperscalers minting money...
It's been a minute. Marko and Jacob are back after a long gap, and not much has changed: the Hormuz standoff drags on, the war in Ukraine grinds forward, and the stock market shrugged it all off. Marko argues freedom of navigation was always empire's marketing slogan. Jacob pushes back on why Israel keeps mattering more than his own theory allows. The cousins disagree about Russia's next move, but what's new?
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Timestamps:
(00...
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 c...
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 ...
The cousins reconvene with the BCA brain trust - Juan Correa, Robert Tipper, and Jeremie Peloso - for the World Cup post-mortem. The model called all four semifinalists but missed champion Spain, so the crew litigates whether the winner's curse is dead, whether the GOAT variable was a methodological capitulation, and what Cape Verde, Norway, and Egypt say about the value of a center of gravity. Also on the docket: Trump's Balogun r...
Iran again. Yes, again :( nobody's thrilled, but that's the content. The cousins break down a week of tanker attacks, retaliations to retaliations, and a 20% toll that became "great investments" in 24 hours. Marko's pitch: stop forecasting oil prices and start using them - they're an input, not an output. Jacob pushes back on who actually wants what. Then Japan, where rising yields and a yen at 162 have the macro world whispering a...
Iran, Hormuz, another tanker on fire - sure, fine, but the real question is: what's actually driving the behavior here, and it's not the diplomacy everyone keeps quoting. Marko and Jacob argue it out: chokepoint tolls, the memorandum nobody trusts, oil prices doing more work than anyone wants to admit. Then Europe, because apparently that's still a thing - NATO's arms-deal theater, Le Pen's conviction, a French case nobody's making...
It's the Book Episode!!! Marko and Jacob turn their usual geopolitical sparring into a book draft: eight titles each, no rules, no rankings, just the texts that actually built their analytical muscle <3 The cousin picks span philosophy, fiction, psychology, and history. Machiavelli's The Prince opens the list, followed by texts on Marxism, biography, social psychology, and intelligence tradecraft. Marko favors frameworks that d...
Drones aren't a technological revolution - they're a pain-tolerance equalizer, letting Ukraine strike refineries deep inside a country that never planned to defend them. Jacob and Marko trace the defender's-advantage pattern across 1948 Israel, Vietnam, and Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing offense rarely wins against a population fighting for its home. The long-term call: Ukraine emerges as the next South Korea, corruption and all, while ...
Cousins hits the road for its first-ever in-person episode, recorded at Matt Gertken's home in Taos, New Mexico! Jacob, Marko, and Matt dig into the brewing standoff between Anthropic and the US government over export controls on its Mythos AI model, then zoom out to ask whether AI marks a civilizational rupture on par with industrialization itself - pitting the state, corporations, and "free-for-all" chaos against each other for c...
World Cup Time!!!!!!!
Robert Tipper and Juan Correa are our guests.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Secret Forecast Origins
(01:23) - Meet The Authors
(03:02) - Juan Football Roots
(07:41) - Marco World Cup Memories
(10:07) - Robert Germany Stories
(14:47) - Jacob 2014 Awakening
(19:06) - Why Soccer Is Hard
(21:50) - Inside The Model
(28:28) - What Doesnt Predict
(30:22) - Group Stage Surprises
(31:40) - Home Edge And Curse
(35:16) - Why Champi...
The Strait of Hormuz is running out of runway - and so is the Trump administration's room to maneuver... The cousins unpack why oil inventories are the real ammunition in the Iran standoff, why markets keep hitting all-time highs despite closed shipping lanes, and what the AI economy's dominance says about the K-shaped world underneath. We close with NBA playoff predictions (duh) ahead of a Thunder-Spurs Game 7.
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Timestam...
Jacob and Marko dive straight into the Iran-US ceasefire negotiations (airstrikes are hitting Iranian ships and missile sites as I type) - dissecting domestic political constraints on both sides, the Strait of Hormuz's diminishing leverage window, and why the emerging deal is arguably a worse JCPOA. They pivot to Gen Z's eroding relationship with nationalism, Erdoğan's assault on Turkey's main opposition party, protests in Serbia A...
Trade Value Index 2026 Part 3!
Okay, okay... Here's the FULL list -> https://tinyurl.com/gctvi26
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Welcome Back and Housekeeping
(01:37) - Netanyahu Reconsidered
(03:07) - Trump Iran War and Tariffs
(05:37) - Ejecting Netanyahu TBD
(06:09) - Cyprus Surprise Pick
(08:37) - Finland NATO and Stubb
(10:21) - Zelensky Case for Top Tier
(20:34) - Pope Leo XIV Rising Influence
(27:15) - Mitsotakis and Greece Comeback
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2026 Trade Values P2 :)
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Welcome
(00:42) - Part Two Setup
(02:31) - Lula at Fifteen
(05:17) - Macron Debate
(09:57) - Noboa and Ecuador Crime
(11:47) - Uzbekistan Rising
(13:28) - Uzbek Reforms Deep Dive
(17:28) - Japan New Prime Pick
(21:46) - Denmark and Greenland Standoff
(24:03) - List Mixup and Denmark
(25:17) - Xi Jinping Rising
(26:53) - Xi Strengths and Risks
(31:28) - Javier Milei Debate
(34:08) - Rapid Fire...
The Trade Value Index is back!!!!!!! Part 1.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Housekeeping
(00:47) - Why We Love Rankings
(02:15) - Trade Value Rules Explained
(06:59) - How We Score Leaders
(08:29) - What Trade Value Means
(11:03) - Last Year Rankings Recap
(13:01) - Wins Misses and Dropoffs
(19:43) - Starting the Countdown
(20:00) - Jacob Cuts and Bottom Five
(26:12) - Vietnam Surprise Pick
(27:44) - Marco Honorable Mentions
(30:58) - Dishonora...
Trump and Xi shook hands in Beijing, and yes, the soccer mom in all of us should appreciate that two nuclear superpowers are behaving like adults. But let's not kid ourselves :) soybeans and Boeing orders don't a détente make. JShap thinks Trump can't carry the baton; Marko says he's the only one who can land the plane he launched. Meanwhile, the CIA's running around Mexico, Cuba's running out of diesel, and AOC is sharpening her i...
The lads turn an unscripted session into a sharp diagnosis of the US-China relationship amid the Strait of Hormuz crisis. They debate whether China is strategically patient or simply indifferent - and what its silence means for the Global South. The Xi-Trump summit looms as both the dealmaker's prize and the ultimate test of a G2 world.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introooo
(01:20) - China Defies Iran Sanctions
(03:33) - Oil Markets ...
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