ENGLAND EXPECTS. 1/8 The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, by Adrian Wooldridge Hardcover
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
@Batchelorshow
ENGLAND EXPECTS. 1/8 The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, by Adrian Wooldridge Hardcover
https://www.amazon.com/Aristocracy-Talent-Meritocracy-Modern-World/dp/1510768610/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1658009977&refinements=p_27%3AAdrian+Wooldridge&s=books&sr=1-2
The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?
In The Aristocracy of Talent, the esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey guys it's Mimi Webb, I'm the new brand ambassador for Maybelline. Make up |
| 0:05.8 | your mix with the glow-up playlist and shuffle your looks with my favorite |
| 0:09.6 | Maybelline products. The new Color Tattoo eye shadow sticks only at SuperJug. |
| 0:20.3 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:26.0 | I welcome Adrian Wuldridge of the Economist magazine. He is budget. At the same time he is |
| 0:32.7 | Adrian Wuldridge author of a new book The Aristocracy of Talent. How meritocracy made the |
| 0:39.5 | modern world. Good heavens this sweeps over enormous a mere a period of history. |
| 0:45.2 | From kingships reaching back all the way to Plato and then right up to now. |
| 0:50.9 | Meritocrats is the word it was invented in the 20th century but we begin with what |
| 0:56.9 | Adrian introduces as a diddy from the 19th century to describe the the contest for finding |
| 1:05.3 | why people are elevated and why people are not elevated in human history. It goes like this. |
| 1:12.1 | God bless the squire and his relations and keep us in our proper stations. |
| 1:18.8 | Adrian, good evening and thank you and congratulations. That diddy for me is your book |
| 1:26.4 | because the contest against that presumption that there is such a thing as proper stations |
| 1:31.9 | has informed arguments for well at least 2500 years. Let's begin with where you |
| 1:38.9 | identify the hierarchical presumption of mankind. How did it work and what was its genesis? |
| 1:45.7 | What drove Adrian? Good evening to you. God thank you so much for inviting me and thank you for |
| 1:52.2 | starting off with such a profound question because I think it's important to recognize that for most |
| 1:57.2 | of human history the assumptions that we now have about individualism, efforts, merit and reward |
| 2:06.4 | have not been the assumptions that most people have had. Most people throughout most of history |
| 2:10.6 | have believed that society is a hierarchy that people should be born into their proper places |
| 2:17.2 | that family connections are more important than individual abilities and that dynasty |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.