The Economic History Podcast
The Economic History podcast is a platform for sharing knowledge, ideas and new research with a general interest audience. Each fortnight, we meet leading academics in the field and discuss a range of topics, including pandemics, long run economic growth, gender issues, financial crises, inequality, sustainable development and a number of weird and fun economic experiments in history. There is no time like the past to help us understand the present.
The Economic History Podcast
Slouching Towards Utopia
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Seán Kenny
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Season 2
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Episode 36
In this episode, we meet Prof. Bradford DeLong to discuss his recent book 'Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century.' We cover the rate of technological change prior to the industrial revolution. Before 1500, "the amount of technological change they got in a century, we get in two and a half years"! We also look at some prerequisites for industrialisation and discuss how the second industrial revolution was the game-changer in terms of long run living standards. After discussing the European turnaround after the Marshall Plan, we finish in the post-war era by looking at "Pacific Rim" development and how it differed from previous modern economic growth episodes.