What About China? Part II: Explaining the Chinese Miracle ~ Yasheng Huang
China's rise has shook the world. It has changed the lives of over a billion people in China. It has flooded humanity with cheap goods, from single-use toys to high-tech solar panels. And it has chang...
19 Sep 20241h 5min
What About China? Part I: The Deep Currents of Chinese History ~ Yasheng Huang
The West has ruled history — at least the way history has been written. This is a shame. To tell the story of humans, we must tell the story of us all.So what about the rest? What themes and quirks do...
2 Sep 20241h 12min
Does It Matter Who Brings In The Meat? ~ Katie Starkweather
How do hunter-gatherers live? Do they wage war? Are they egalitarian? Do they really work for less?These are fascinating questions. I’ve tried my best at covering them on the show. (You can see a list...
1 Aug 202448min
Why Agriculture? Climate Change and the Origins of Farming ~ Andrea Matranga
Agriculture changed everything. Traditionally, this “Neolithic Revolution” was celebrated for opening the gates of civilisation. Recently, it has been compared to the original sin. But whatever our ta...
15 Jul 202458min
What Can Moral Dilemmas Tell Us About Ourselves? ~ Peter Railton
You are driving a car. The brakes stop working. To your horror, you are approaching a busy street market. Many people might be killed if you run into them. The only way to prevent a catastrophe is by ...
30 Jun 20241h 11min
The Birth of Modern Prosperity, Part IV: Grasping Towards Equality (with Branko Milanovic)
The Industrial Revolution played in the hands of the rich. A century after James Watt revealed his steam engine in 1776, the richest 1% owned a whopping 70% of British wealth. Then things changed. Acr...
18 Jun 202436min
The Birth of Modern Prosperity, Part III: Power to the People (with Daron Acemoglu)
The Industrial Revolution did not create modern prosperity. Indeed, the British workers saw little or no improvements in their wages between 1750 and 1850. They did, however, experience ever-worsening...
12 Jun 202436min
The Birth of Modern Prosperity, Part II: Laboratories of the New Era (with Brad DeLong)
For millenia, patriarchy, population growth, and extractive elites made the world a bleak place for most humans. But there are good news, too: everything changed around 1870. And the changed happened ...
4 Jun 202435min
