Mind the Shift

Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University in Washington DC, has correctly predicted the winner of nine presidential elections in a row. He has a system with 13 ”keys” that seems almost foolproof (see below). Now he reveals his prediction for November 3, and you will hear it in this episode. Lichtman is a Democrat, but he makes sure to shove his own opinions aside when he makes his predictions. The fact that he has picked five Republicans and four Democrats on beforehand gives him credibility enough. But his thoughts on how the incumbent is doing he doesn’t keep to himself: ”Trump has exposed lots of loopholes in our system. He has also shown how easy it is to deny information to the American people.” ”He is a coward. He can’t even fire people eye to eye. He hasn’t personally got the fortitude to actually, physically, fight a battle to stay in the White House.” ”Trump has virtually destroyed everything the Republican party ever stood for.” Oh, and Allan is also a former steeplechase champion. And a 16-time quiz show winner. Here are the 13 keys to the White House. If six or more of these statements are found to be false by this time, the incumbent party loses: 1) midterm gains 2) no primary contest 3) incumbent seeking re-election 4) no third party 5) strong short-term economy 6) strong long-term economy 7) major policy change 8) no social unrest 9) no scandal 10) no foreign/military failure 11) major foreign/military success 12) charismatic incumbent 13) uncharismatic challenger Lichtman concludes that seven are now false – 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12

Roy Coughlan had a multi-million euro business and lost everything when the markets crashed. When trying to rescue what was possible to rescue he saw the corruption of the economic and legal systems. He had a first hand experience of the ”conveyor belt rulings” in favor of the banks and against homeowners. At that point he had already seen falsity in the health system. ”Why don’t you hear about health methods that will heal you without pills? Because it’s a money game.” Now Roy wants to help more people think for themselves and free themselves from what he sees as a corrupt matrix – by truth-telling and by giving solutions. His tools are a new podcast (in addition to the three he already had) and a book. But are cell phones and additives truly dangerous? What role does fear play? Listen to Roy and me discussing the state of the world from partly different angles but with one common basis: have no fear, but be aware. Check out Roy Coughlan’s website here.

Hear the experienced and highly respected ”global trend guru” Bi Puranen explain some of the social mega-trends that we are seeing today. On the Pandemic: ”Lockdowns have caused a lot more harm than the virus to low and middle income countries . One estimated result is 15 million unwanted pregnancies.” ”It’s a huge backlash for the fight against poverty. We have lost ten years.” On Democracy: ”What do we mean by the term? It can be filled with many peculiar things that someone brought up in the West would never consider democratic.” ”We need to learn how to detect the ’submarines’ in popular opinions.” On migrants: ”We must revise the notion that you never change the mindset you get when you are young. Migrants do.” On the elderly: ”Where elderly people have a high social position, people also think they have too much influence.” On defense: ”People aren’t as willing to fight for their nation as before. But they are willing to fight to defend values.” Puranen is one of the leaders of the World Values Survey and a researcher at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm.

The experienced, sharp-minded, productive and – to some – controversial German ecologist Josef Reichholf is a humble Bavarian scientist who realized early on that he couldn’t compromise with his conscience. That entailed breaking with fellow ecologists, who in Reichholf’s mind had become too ideological. He thinks climate change policy for the most part is a big waste of money – not because there is no warming, but because there are a myriad ways the money could be used wiser. Who is then the biggest culprit in the destruction of habitats? Modern agriculture. Some quotes: ”Nature has always changed. When our bodies reach equilibrium, we are dead. There is no state of nature that is the ’right’ one.” ”Since Enlightenment we have separated nature from humankind. This separation is now predominant in the Western culture.” ”As a nature scientist I want to stay unbiased by ideology. The green ideology came into conflict with the scientific facts.”

Shouldn’t an economist count money all the time? ”No”, is the unequivocal answer from Andreas Bergh, associate professor in economics at Lund university in southern Sweden. In this episode you can hear Bergh develop his sharp observations of human behavior in all kinds of contexts. Some samples: On globalization: ”We are seeing a backlash against the very forceful and rapid increase in globalization in the 80’s and 90’s, and what else is to expect, really?” ”But preventing people from communicating across borders, I don’t see that happening, not even if you try hard to stop it.” On the negativity bias: ”We are not freeing ourselves from the lizard brain but we are learning how to handle it better.” On the internet’s impact on polarization: ”Your friends, your family and your workmates are even more similar to you than the people you meet online. Yes, there are echo chambers, but they didn’t appear with the internet.” On the rise of right-wing populism: ”I was shocked when the liberal elites acted as if these opinions had never existed. Many had naïve expectations of the effect of political participation. Democracy is working; that’s why we are seeing a rise of right wing populist parties.” ”At the same time the potential for these parties is decreasing because tolerance is increasing in the long run.” On inequality: ”It is a problem if the biggest decision regarding your economic standard is the timing of your real estate transactions. It’s hard to get rich by working.”

In this episode we meet UNFPA doctor Bernadette ”Bernie” Ssebadduka, who dedicates her working hours to fighting harmful cultural practices in poor rural areas in northern Uganda, such as ”courtship rape” and female genital mutilation performed under the radar. But Bernie has also seen change sweeping across Uganda. There is hope, she says: ”We have seen the benefits of empowering women. The game changer has been education.” Her own journey is a case in point, from growing up in a large family in a small village via the big city to becoming a highly educated, skilled professional.

”This is like a bushfire. If there is one spark, this thing will catch fire”, says epidemiologist Debby Guha-Sapir about the fact that authorities stopped measles vaccinations due to covid-19. Debby founded the world’s best and most reliable database on natural disasters, EM-DAT, at the university of Louvain, Belgium. Dry numbers can be more contentious than you think: ”We get a lot of hate mails about the fact that our data doesn’t show that disasters are increasing. Nobody wants good news.”

”The most important weapons for terrorists isn’t Kalashnikovs or suicide bombs, it’s journalists. We journalists are part of the problem of trust meltdown in society. Now we have to be part of the solution”, says this Danish former editor in chief, who fled the bleeding headlines and decided to dedicate his time to making journalism constructive. In 2017 he founded Constructive Institute. He is confident things will change: ”There is one force which is even stronger than fear, and that’s hope.”

Why our charity is so ineffective. Why (just possibly) there is reason for optimism. And why we should plan for an extremely long-term future. Hear this Oxford psychology/philosophy researcher and Effective Altruism advocate answer mega-questions.

”If life is a game, then the barriers are the game. If you wanna play big you need big barriers, if not you want smaller barriers. The mechanism is the same.” This brit calls himself an expert on failures, but listen to his gems of wisdom.