From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, May 21st.

You know how we like to talk about history on this show and related to the present?

Well, we have a special guest who will take us

on a 500-year ride through major social changes, he calls them revolutions, that have led us to the

America of today. This will begin in the Netherlands, in the 1600s, believe it or not, and it will

end with our social media habits, our relationship to our identities,

even the possible end to the left versus right model that has so defined our politics

and how we think about our politics for generations.

Who can lead a 500-year history tour in one book and try to convey the arc of all that social change in one

radio segment. It's Farid Zakaria, the Washington Post Foreign Affairs columnist and host of

GPS, the Sunday Global Affairs Show on CNN. His new book is called Age of Revolutions,

Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the present. We'll do this in two

parts to follow the framing of the book, three revolutions from the past that helped set up

today's world, and then four revolutions that Farid sees us in, in the middle of, today. Each one one in brief, obviously, to make it work on a radio

show timeline. Let's see if we can do it. Farid, always good to have you on the show. Welcome

back to WNYC. It's a pleasure to be with you, Brian. I'm glad to be here. No problem. Can we start

with your definition of revolution for this book?

Because it may not be the kind of revolution that first comes to some listeners' minds,

like the American Revolution or the Russian Revolution or the Gandhian Revolution of your birthplace, India.

So define revolution for the purpose of your book. Yeah, that's a very important point. What I am trying to look at

are the kind of fundamental revolutions that have endured and reshaped society. So what I mean by that

is what are the times when we have had these massive transformations of the economy, of the technological basis of society,

...