The USA needs 5,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines a year but builds only 400. Jiake “Jake” Liu thinks the fix starts in the backyard. Jake is a serial entrepreneur whose new company, Outer Spaces, puts solar panels on the roof of a backyard pavilion with an EV-grade battery under the deck that can be installed in one day. This is a decentralized approach to upgrading US energy infrastructure. Rob and Jake talk about selling home energy now that the federal solar credit is gone, who should own the battery, and how trade with China shapes the product. In the future, Jake sees the 24 million acres of American backyards becoming charging pads for delivery drones, parking for flying cars, and even sites for tiny nuclear reactors.
November 12, 202624 min
The Next Generation of Digital Banking
There’s a new wave coming. Unlike the prior banking industry waves of ATMs, online banking and mobile, this new wave is happening fast and faster than ever before. With rapid adoption of LLMs and AI, financial institutions need to be prepared In this episode, Ryan Caldwell, MX’s Founder and CEO speaks with Breaking Banks’ host Jason Henrichs live from the stage of Money Experience Summit. The new wave and banking channel is an AI agent. Once engaged with an agent, the stickiness is high. The AI agent works for the customer, not the bank, and it lives inside someone else’s app. Banks need to be having complex conversations to maintain relationships and trust built over decades, and even centuries, to help customers continue to fulfill dreams and achieve strong financial lives, the true nobility of banking.
November 6, 20261 hr 0 min
Hybrid Warfare
Protopian futurist Monika Bielskytė, now advising NATO on cognitive warfare, joins Rob Tercek and Brett King to explain how hybrid warfare works. Its goal is not to persuade anyone of anything. It amplifies the extremes on both sides of real grievances until people believe nothing and become passive. Monika argues that the answer is a constructive vision of the future, anchored in science, and Elon Musk serves as the case study for how paper wealth and science-fiction hype translate into real-world power. Topics covered in this episode: Cognitive warfare and the politics of despair; Protopia vs. “burn it all down” nihilism; extraction vs. regeneration; Elon Musk is floating Mars, while shorting Earth; Consensus in an age of autonomous systems.
November 5, 202627 min
Industrializing Innovation
For 20 years, U.S. Bank has had a formal innovation practice. U.S. Bank was the bank that other banks pointed to when they talked about innovation. As the approach has matured, what’s striking is how U.S. Bank has turned this innovation practice into an actual discipline, not just a department, with its influence felt across the whole bank. An intellectual property practice that has patents, 70,000 employees behind it as potential innovators, and dedicated Centers of Excellence for AI and Blockchain. In this episode, Jason Henrichs sits down with Don Relyea, U.S. Bank’s Chief Innovation Officer, at the MX Money Experience Summit 2026 Listen as Don shares personal insights and the inner workings of the 20-year innovation journey at U.S. Bank, what will matter to customers years from now and what innovation really means when AI agents start making decisions about our money.
November 3, 202635 min
Episode 20: The Governor Who Builds Ecosystems (October 2026)
In this episode of Breaking Banks Africa, Matteo Rizzi sits down with Soraya Hakuziyaremye, Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda, to discuss how forward-thinking regulation and technological innovation are shaping Africa’s financial ecosystem. Reflecting on her transition from global corporate banking to public leadership, Governor Soraya shares Rwanda’s vision of serving as a proactive “orchestrator” rather than a passive regulator. The conversation explores the role of the Kigali International Financial Centre (KIFC), the importance of ongoing dialogue between central bankers and fintech innovators around virtual assets and stablecoins, and the imperative to build local talent and coding skills to drive sustainable, inclusive economic growth across the continent.
November 2, 202632 min
Decision Making in Uncertain Times
In this episode of The Banker’s Bookshelf , host Paolo Sironi welcomes Tony Fish, author of Decision Making in Uncertain Times , for a wide-ranging conversation on navigating fundamental uncertainty in finance, technology, and leadership. Tony explains that the book stems from his experience as a severely dyslexic and autistic thinker. Written primarily for neurotypical readers, it shows how people who see the world differently approach uncertainty, so that boardrooms can better understand and use those perspectives. Rather than offering a single framework or model, the book presents ten distinct ways of viewing the same situation. Central to this is the idea of paradox: the same data can support two valid but opposing interpretations. Fish argues that every important decision should contain a paradox; without it, decisionmakers remain trapped inside an existing frame. The final chapter explores “Peak Paradox.” He contends that many foundations of modern decision-making—money, law, time, and especially counting—are human inventions that do not exist in nature. Counting does not equal truth, yet metrics and trend lines are routinely treated as truth. KPIs often begin for narrow reasons (incentives, bonuses) and then persist as “ghosts in the system,” even after the original purpose disappears and the underlying data changes. On AI and geopolitics, Fish describes sovereignty as Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously alive and dead. What once meant freedom from asking permission now means interdependence. Claims of AI sovereignty, he says, are “unbelievable levels of madness.” Companies are becoming more sovereign than states, while limited-liability structures are failing. He points to the need to rethink what companies are for. Fish distinguishes choices, decisions, and judgment. Children are typically offered A or B and asked to decide but rarely taught to ask whether the right choices were even presented. Dyslexic thinkers often see the missing options. Judgment—reflection on whether the available choices were adequate—should begin early and be central to leadership, not reserved for later life. Finally, he introduces “consurgence,” an old English word meaning “rising together.” Trust, leadership, and success cannot simply be built; they may emerge from conditions, or they may not. There are no guarantees. The constructionist mindset that tries to engineer the perfect outcome (the best teams, the best pitch, the best game) fails to account for this. Banking, he notes, often claims to “build” trust, yet trust cannot be constructed on command.
October 30, 202656 min
Writing a 20 Year Epic Space Opera
In this week’s pod international bestselling author Kevin J Anderson (Star Wars, Dune) returns. With more than 23 million books in print, Kevin has just embarked on his most ambitious personal project yet – creating the complete works of the Saga of Seven Suns epic. Kevin started this series in 2002 but is just launching his own Backerkit campaign. Along the journey Kevin explains how the business of publishing has been reshaped by technology and time.
October 27, 202624 min
Building Credit, Expanding Opportunity
James Garvey, Founder and CEO of Self Financial, joins Social Currency to discuss the challenges millions of Americans face when building or rebuilding credit. From the personal experience that inspired Self to the company’s mission of helping more than four million people establish credit, James shares insights on financial inclusion, fintech innovation, and expanding access to opportunity. Listen in as we explore the future of credit building and the impact of creating pathways to a stronger financial foundation.
October 26, 20261 hr 2 min
Tokens Are The New Capital
Anand Chandrasekaran does not sit on the sidelines. He jumps into the game. He is the managing partner at Celesta Capital and co-founder of two AI companies, Crescendo and HiO. He explains why AI only transforms an industry when insiders drive the change, and why he expects the shift from scarcity to abundance to transform fields like customer care. He also describes how tokens have become the new capital, that is, the vital resource that CEOs must ration. Rob Tercek talks to Anand about what happens to the career ladder when AI automates the call center jobs that built India’s middle class, how the role of the VC has evolved, and Anand’s view that we are in the earliest stage of the AI super cycle.
October 22, 202632 min
The New Kid on the Neobank Block
Barq means lightning in Arabic, and for once the brand name might be underselling it. One million users in three weeks, more than 15 million users across over 210 nationalities today, with around $118 billion processed since launch. In this episode hosts Jason Henrichs and Brett King are joined by Mohamed Al Sabea, Chief of Staff and Chief Strategy Officer at barq, to discuss the rapid growth and strategic approach of barq, a digital payments company in Saudi Arabia. For context, barq has achieved in two years what has taken many of today’s neobanks the better part of a decade to accomplish. And then last month, they did something even rarer: raising $329.5 million in a Series A funding round that values the business at $1.85 billion. It is the largest Series A round in MENA / GCC history. Barq is also the fastest growing neobank outside of China serving 70% of the Saudi banked population in just two years. Listen as the trio explores how barq achieved its lightning-fast user acquisition, built trust through transparency, and planned for regional expansion and new product offerings. Stay tuned for more!
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