Navigating the Risks of Contemporary Historical Analysis

Adam Tooze is my favorite economic historian. After writing a handful of books on the 1920s and Nazi economics, he's now turned his eye to the present day, taking on the financial crisis and US-China relations. In this conversation, we get into

• What we can learn from the diplomatic and economic modes of 1920s and 30s
• Why Nazi legal theory resonates so well in China today
• How modes of understanding Nazi Germany can help illustrate China
• How Xinjiang camps echo the logic of Soviet gulags
• Whether the US in fact lost the Cold War
• Adam's dream bureaucracies to work it

Matt Klein, author of the recent Trade Wars are Class Wars, guest hosts. 

Intro and outtro music are both hit songs from 1928, the year of the Kellogg-Briand Pact which tried to outlaw war.

Intro music: Pine Top's Boogie Woogie

Outtro music: Blind Willie McTell, Statesboro Blues

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