Is The West Heading Towards Social Breakdown? | Aaron Bastani Meets Peter Turchin

Intro:

History is not just one thing after another. Historians spend lifetimes figuring out how X event in medieval France impacted Y event in 20th century Polynesia – but none of these historians have truly ‘done the math’ like this week’s guest.

Coming from a background in applied mathematics, Peter Turchin has gathered an unprecedented amount of historical data which he believes gives him a better chance than most of predicting how societies slide into grave crises. He’s been proven right too, in the early 2010s, he predicted that 2020 would see a global rise in instability.