You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hume.

What's the power of a story? It frames our belief systems, right? Even if the promises of the story fail to deliver?

In today's archive talk from TED Summit 2019, journalist George Monbeo tears down the story behind a political and economic system that has

dominated our lives. We'll zip through modern history to get a better understanding of why we're

so stuck in a failed narrative, and more importantly, what should replace it. Do you feel trapped in a broken economic model? A model that's trashing the living world and

threatens the lives of our descendants, a model that excludes billions of people while making a handful

unimaginably rich that sorts us into winners and losers

and then blames the losers for their misfortune. Welcome to neoliberalism, the zombie doctrine

that never seems to die however comprehensively it is discredited.

Now, you might have imagined that the financial crisis of 2008 would have led to the collapse

of neoliberalism. After all, it exposed its central features which were deregulating,

business and finance, tearing down public protections,

throwing us into extreme competition with each other, as, well, just a little bit flawed.

And intellectually, it did collapse, but still it dominates our lives. Why? Well, I believe the answer is that we have not yet produced a new story with which to replace it. Stories are the means by which we navigate the world. They allow us to interpret

its complex and contradictory signals. When we want to make sense of something, the sense we

seek is not scientific sense, but narrative fidelity. Does what we are hearing reflect the way that we

expect humans and the world to behave? Does it hang together? Does it progress as a story

should progress.

Now, we are creatures of narrative,

and a string of facts and figures,

however important facts and figures are,

and, you know, I'm an empiricist,

...