Hello, this is Rusty Reno at First Things Magazine. Welcome to the next edition of the

editor's desk, our regular podcast, where we look at and talk to authors of recent

articles in First Things Magazine. And if you're not a subscriber, dear listener, well, all I can say

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I have with me, Christopher Caldwell, a contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books,

and author most recently of The Age of Entitlement.

And he's here to talk to me about his recent article on the fateful 90s.

Welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Great to be here, Rusty.

You know, the 90s is a, as you argue, a defining decade.

It's funny, you know, in the most people say, oh no, it's the Reagan revolution.

That's the defining moment. There's got to be some truth to that.

And certainly we look back on the 1960s and appropriately see this as a transformative decade.

But do you have any thoughts on why you would say that the 80s, I mean, every decade has consequential events,

but why would you argue that the 90s really is a more pivotal moment?

Well, it was it's very, it's not very typical of important decades in one respect.

There's a saying.

Milton Friedman once said that most change comes about in periods of crisis,

and it tends to use, when you need change,

you tend to use the ideas that are lying around, you know?

So like Franklin Roosevelt probably had no kind of economic theory, but in the crisis of the

...