Inside the Foundation for the Study of Cycles - Land Cycles, and the Work That Predicted Them

This week I was joined by Richard Smith – Chairman and a Director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles  (FSC) – for a wide-ranging conversation that goes well beyond “what’s the next market call?”

Richard tells the origin story of how he fell down the cycles rabbit hole (via Dewey’s classic Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events), how he ended up building tools for traders and investors, and why he and Andrew Pancholi stepped in to recover and rebuild the Foundation after it nearly fell apart.

We also get into why cycles research keeps getting pushed to the margins – the quiet stigma around “predictive” work – and the deeper question that sits underneath all of this - are cycles really about control, or are they pointing us back toward a more natural, participatory understanding of reality?

As you’ll hear, Richard doesn’t just “believe in cycles” – he’s protecting the original archives, working with a university to organise them, and thinking hard about how modern semantic search (yes, even language models) could finally make this material accessible in a way it never has been before.

But before I get to the interview, I want to briefly cover over some of the names we talk about in our conversation. Some long-time subscribers will be familiar with them already,

But many newer readers may be encountering their work for the first time.

To do this, it helps to step back and set the historical backdrop, beginning in the 1930s – a genuine golden era for cyclical thinking.’

The 1930s: the decade that exposed land as the lead cyclical character

Want to read more?

Subscribe to landcycleinvestor.com to keep reading this exclusive post.

Subscribe Now