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Each golden age has a unique lesson to teach us about the world we hope to live in today.
In this episode Jonathan Fortier talks with Johan Norberg about his new book Peak Human, which examines seven golden ages to reveal the common thread that makes societies thrive. Their conversation explores not only what went wrong when these civilizations collapsed, but the lessons to be learnt about what was done right. Openness, Norberg argues, has historically triumphed over withdrawal from the rest of the world.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel.
Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a writer who focuses on globalization, human progress, and intellectual history. Norberg is the author and editor of more than twenty books, translated into more than thirty languages. They include In Defense of Global Capitalism (2003), Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016), Open: The Story of Human Progress (2020), and The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World (2023). Norberg is also the writer and host of numerous television documentaries on such subjects as energy, economics, Sweden, India, and Adam Smith. Many of them can be found at the Free to Choose Network. Norberg’s forthcoming book, Peak Human, will be available in September 2025.