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I'm Christopher Lighten. This is open source.

Helen Thompson is the first of three very different historians

we're calling on this hour to trace patterns from the past

into the global predicament today.

Oil and gas are Helen Thompson's angle of observation.

Jackson Lears will be up next tracking the course of American Empire.

Robin Kelly who writes about freedom dreams in the black radical imagination

will follow with an argument about the old roots of 21st century fascism.

And so we begin the second season of a radio podcast series we call

in search of monsters in collaboration with the Quincy Institute for Responsible

Statecraft.

Helen Thompson get us started please.

Your new book from Oxford is titled Disorder about our condition and our future.

The three letter word that drives the disorder you say is spelled O-I-L.

Your subtitle is hard times in the 21st century.

It's part of your argument that oil made the last century meaning just what?

Well if you look at the beginning of the 20th century when oil was starting to become

significant as an energy source the European powers particularly Britain

...