Learning to Love the Stagnant Order
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is your Empire feeling less than fresh? Does it feel like the modern world’s best days are behind it? Do conquest and global power politics not hit as good as they used to? Welcome to the Age of Stagnation, a time when the fruits of the Industrial Revolution can be enjoyed but not replicated.
It’s making us all a little crazy, especially world leaders. With us today on the show is Michael Beckley, a political science professor at Tufts University and his career includes stretches at the Pentagon, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the RAND Corporation. To hear Beckley tell it, stagnation might not be such a bad thing. If we can avoid repeating the worst mistakes of the 20th century and let go of a “number go up” mind set, then maybe we can all learn to enjoy a long age of stabilization.
- The diminishing returns of the Industrial Revolution
- Winners and losers in the Age of Ascent
- Moore’s Law sputters out
- Stabilization isn’t so bad. “We’re some of the luckiest people who’ve ever lived.”
- Shenanigans and shithousery
- AI isn’t “ready” yet
- Why conquest doesn’t work anymore
- China as a paper tiger in the age of stabilization
- America’s unique advantages
- “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” - Mike Tyson
I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. |
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| 0:05.4 | It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. |
| 0:09.1 | Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:17.6 | Hello out there in Radio Land. |
| 0:19.2 | It's another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. |
| 0:21.7 | I am your host, Matthew Galt. |
| 0:24.6 | Hey, listeners, is your empire feeling less than fresh? |
| 0:28.8 | So it feel like its best days are behind it and as things stagnate, |
| 0:32.6 | you dream of a return to a golden age that never really happened? |
| 0:36.4 | I think a lot of us are feeling that way. |
| 0:37.8 | And here to talk about it and about his new article in foreign affairs is Michael Beckley. Sir, |
| 0:45.5 | how are you doing today? Did I say your name right? I said the name right, yeah. |
| 0:48.2 | You did, Matthew. And it's really great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. |
| 0:52.0 | Can you introduce yourself to the audience? |
| 1:00.4 | Sure. I'm a professor at Tufts in the political science department. I mostly do U.S.-China relations and really the rise and fall of great powers over time and how to measure power what it even |
| 1:06.6 | actually is. And I've spent some time in and out of government, but mostly I'm just a career |
| 1:11.1 | academic. |
| 1:13.2 | So speaking of measuring powers and charting their decline and fall, it feels like we're in a |
| 1:18.7 | big old decline here in the United States. And it was kind of heartening in a weird way |
| 1:23.6 | to read this piece, the stagnant order, because it just seems like decline is kind of what's |
| 1:29.6 | going on all over, right? Yeah, I think we are actually in a period of almost macro historical |
... |
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