How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World: Interview with Economist Duncan Weldon
Tides of History
Wondery / Patrick Wyman
4.8 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the whole of human history can be divided into two parts: before the Industrial Revolution, and after. Economist Duncan Weldon joins me to talk about the Industrial Revolution, why it started in Britain, and the trajectory of the British economy over the past two centuries.
Get Duncan’s book, Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through, here.
Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History. |
| 0:16.3 | Thanks for joining me. |
| 0:17.6 | So if you've been listening to Tides for a while or read my book The Verge, you have |
| 0:21.1 | probably grasped the fact that I really, really like economic history. |
| 0:25.4 | But for most people, economic history conjures up images of endless charts, graphs, statistics, |
| 0:30.8 | something dreadfully dry, maybe esoteric, even if we might grudgingly admit its importance. |
| 0:36.5 | But I beg to differ. |
| 0:38.1 | Economic history is actually incredibly exciting because at its core, it's about how people |
| 0:42.1 | spend the vast bulk of their time, working, interacting with each other in the basic ways |
| 0:47.3 | that make a society what it is. |
| 0:49.6 | Understanding economic history means coming to grips with the fabric of everyday life |
| 0:53.2 | and past experiences in the most profound possible ways. |
| 0:58.0 | The Industrial Revolution irrevocably changed all of those things. |
| 1:01.8 | It is the most important story in the entirety of economic history. |
| 1:05.7 | And any story about the Industrial Revolution also has to be a story about the economy |
| 1:09.9 | of Britain, because that's where it began, and nobody can tell that story better than |
| 1:14.1 | today's guests. |
| 1:15.3 | He is an economist by training. |
| 1:17.5 | He writes about the British economy for the economist, and he was previously the economics |
| 1:22.0 | correspondent for the BBC's News Night. |
| 1:24.6 | He has a new book out now entitled 200 Years of Muddling Through, the surprising story |
| 1:29.2 | of the British economy, which I immensely enjoyed reading and which I highly recommend |
... |
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