Paul Cooper

speaker

254 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5 Jun

Paul Cooper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · How Civilizations Die - with Paul Cooper · 5 Jun 2026 podcast

And indeed, five centuries later, Rome is sacked during its own catastrophic decline.

I think when I started this series, I believed that I would come away with advice, a list of things not to do if you don't want your civilization to collapse.

Here's how to prevent it.

But I think as time's gone on, I've become something of a cynic about the human ability ever to learn from history, like Albinus and Maximus and Constantinus,

We seem to always pass again and again through the same patterns, the same mistakes, tyrannies and dictatorships, economic collapse, environmental degradation.

I think the lesson I'd really like people to take from this is that if you ever feel despair, if you ever feel alone with that feeling, actually that feeling is extremely ancient.

People have been feeling that since the dawn of time and that it's one of the most fundamental human feelings perhaps.

At the end of the day, societies collapse and they are replaced by a more sustainable one.

A society that's unable to survive ends up being replaced by one that can.

And wherever we see collapse, we also see the green shoots of recovery coming through the ash, like the new growth after a forest fire.

So at the end of the day, it's about building connections with the people around you that will survive times of upheaval, times of degradation and even poverty.

It's about building things in your life that will survive history.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on and for your thoughtful questions.

It's been great to be here.

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