There is a sense in which the future is not only going to be all right, but the future's going to turn out much better. And i think the sixties, like is one of them. You know, if there's a great hope about technology at the end of the sixties because of getting to the moon, the seventies is actually about energy now. And then, i think, in the nineties, or after 19 89, but i don't think it really takes off until the middle of the nineties. But i do think that a different form of historical exceptionalism took hold from the mid-nineties on.
Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, a columnist for The New Statesman, and has been a regular contributor to the Talking Politics podcast. Her new book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, looks at decades of geopolitical history that have fed into our current moment: one of war and conflict, nations competing for dwindling natural resources, and the climate emergency casting a long shadow. She joins journalist and author Andrew Mueller to discuss how we got here.
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