This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 1st, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Continued human progress depends on freedom, and human progress in the latter half of the 20th century

has been remarkable.

But the threat that free trade and free movement may be curtailed is a constant concern.

Johann Norberg is author of Progress, 10 reasons to Look Forward to the Future.

He spoke at the Cato Club 200 event in October.

In all my years of public speaking, I've never prepared in a worse way than I've done this time around because I prepared by

staying in the US specifically in DC for a week before talking about progress. I usually live I live in Sweden so I

usually spend my time there and so I prepared by going to the US during the

presidential campaign of 2016.

And that's the worst possible preparation, as I'm sure that Caleb's quote,

explained to you.

It seems like both parties are now in the grips of people who think

that the Renaissance only happened to other people. And they seem

accelerated by what's going on, both the sort of the populist-standardist left and the Trump right.

And as you know, acceleration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you

and right before you understand what's wrong with it and and some people are in this

blessed state where they never understand what's wrong with their ideas so they keep on

being accelerated and and angry So in this context why write a book on progress? Why talk about

progress? Well for three reasons because progress has happened and it's the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind.

Two, almost no one gets it.

...