Ted Audio Collective.

I'm old enough to remember Y2K.

That hollow doomsday when everyone said that the elevators would freeze, the electrical

grid would shut off, and the economy would collapse.

Everyone rushed out to stores to buy batteries to stock up for the apocalypse.

People were whipped into a frenzy, and this was before the true heyday of social media.

I can't even imagine what that would look like now. So the year 2000

rolled around and we waited for the sky to fall, but weirdly it never did, which

begs the question, what if we aren't as good at forecasting the bad things

that are going to happen, be they technological, economic, social, as we think we are, and how can we keep ourselves from falling for these

false alarms?

I'm a dupeck andola. This is Ted Business. Our speaker today, economist

Philom Carlson Slezak, is skeptical about those who are always predicting

economic collapse.

He's asking us to resist the temptation

of succumbing to doom and gloom

and to keep our minds open to a different kind of variability.

Then after the talk, I'll discuss the idea of rational optimism

and what it means to me.

But first, a quick break. A Quick Break.

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