Superheroes and villains start from the same place - alone, unsupported, hurting. Tyrone Ross Jr. and Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio meet for the first time to discuss origin stories, the power of what you tell people, and why hope is both a tool and a weapon.

Eric Pachman returns to discuss a clip about serendipity and the architecture of lasting work. Fresh off another career pivot, he's launching Data 4 The People - a mission to expose uncomfortable truths about SNAP, poverty, and who we are as a society.

Mike Green published a piece redefining the poverty line at $140k. Some people debated his math. A lot of people just said "he used AI" and moved on. Watch how institutions dodge uncomfortable questions - not by winning the argument, but by telling a story that spreads faster.

Trump claimed Thanksgiving dinner is 25% cheaper this year. Fact-checkers immediately noted how the basket changed. But both Trump and his critics are correct. Because when you can choose which groceries to count, you control the inflation narrative. A data-driven look at how institutions select their truths this holiday season.

Anthropic released a threat report at the same time as Perscient's narrative tracking hit all-time highs on "we must spend to beat China." But the actual capability gap? Quietly buried. Hallucination problems in the attacks themselves? Also quietly buried. Infrastructure skepticism simultaneously at all-time highs? Doesn't move the needle. They'll be back. And next time, everyone ready to benefit will have more funding, faster timelines, fewer questions to answer. We're taking notes.

In a world obsessed with narrative warfare, earnestness has become a quiet competitive advantage. We've spent the past year and change documenting strategic thinkers who stayed genuine despite every incentive to become calculation machines for The Intentional Investor on Epsilon Theory. Here's why that matters now more than ever - AND, where to find them.

Bill Pulte walked into Mar-a-Lago with a high school posterboard and sold Trump on 50-year mortgages. By Monday, the White House was walking it back. The real story isn't whether it's good policy—it's what this reveals about how policy actually gets made.

Ben Hunt and Rusty Guinn of Perscient have developed a revolutionary technology for tracking narratives in real time.

The stories we're told precede the decisions already made. Ben Hunt and Rusty Guinn teach us to see the narrative architecture beneath the headlines – the way language is weaponized, how certainty is constructed, and how we're brought along to support predetermined conclusions. Using Perscient's Semantic Signatures technology, they reveal what Storyboards can show us: how narrative operates across media, politics, and markets – not just finance. This isn't cynicism. It's literacy. The question isn't whether the ending is inevitable. It's whether you're discovering it or being led toward it.

When institutional stories stop matching reality, the world changes overnight. Here are three techniques to help spot narrative shifts while they're building towards a shift. If there's one muscle you need to build in 2025, it's "why am I reading this now?"—because the bankruptcies, the whispers, and the hidden disconnects are already here.

Our Perscient narrative-tracking technology confirms Kyla Scanlon's work - "young Americans shut out" narratives consistently predict "degenerate economy" stories by several months.

We've compressed Frank Sinatra's "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" into a TikTok-sized soundbite, and somehow lost the waterfront, the hope, and the weight of the times that made that sentiment mean something. Every American ideal – opportunity, courage, freedom – has been flattened into binary Twitter arguments that work great for algorithms but terribly for actual humans living actual lives. But compression isn't killing meaning, it's just distorting it, and music shows us the way back: small, live, communal experiences that can't be replicated without everyone spotting the fraud.

Aswath Damodaran, the "Dean of Valuation," reveals how he manages his own portfolio in this Excess Returns episode with Matt Zeigler and Justin Carbonneau — covering his philosophy on risk, position sizing, lifecycle diversification, and the hard lessons learned from decades of personal investing.

Nick Maggiulli's Wealth Ladder breaks down the six-level framework for understanding why some people break free from their current wealth level, and why most don't. In this Excess Returns episode, Matt Zeigler dives into the real barriers between wealth stages, from grocery freedom to travel freedom, and why your financial strategy needs to evolve as your net worth grows.

Grant Williams argues we're living through a once-in-a-century inflection point reshaping markets, institutions, and trust itself. In this Excess Returns episode, Matt Zeigler explores what's driving this pivot—from frozen Russian assets to central banks' gold buying—and why "buy the dip" may no longer work.

Think of Perscient storyboards as a way to track narratives in real-time so you can see reality before the story catches up.

For example, here are five insights on the housing market from Matt Zeigler's interview with Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, that come alive with new meaning through the narrative-tracking power of Perscient storyboards.