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The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Why we should be grateful for chaos – Brian Klaas explains

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics, Government

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We like to imagine society is structured by rationality and reason. But, really, isn’t everything a matter of chance? Ros Taylor talks to Brian Klaas, associate professor of global politics at UCL, about his new book Fluke: Chance, chaos and why everything we do matters, in The Bunker and to discuss how randomness shapes our lives.  Buy Fluke by Brian Klaas through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. • “Unforeseen events have shaped everything economically and politically in our lives. The illusion of control causes us to be hubristic in how we navigate uncertainty, and that’s a very big problem social science needs to grapple with.” – Brian Klaas • “Very often people on the political left are worried about the idea of determinism because they say ‘this lets injustice off the hook’. The flip side of that is you believe that everyone dictates their own future – which is what the political right often says." – Brian Klaas www.patreon.com/bunkercast  Written and Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by: Eliza Davis Beard. Audio production: Robin Leeburn. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

0:17.0

Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.

0:22.0

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0:28.0

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0:30.0

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0:32.0

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0:37.0

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0:55.5

after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker your need to know on news and politics five days a week.

1:09.0

I'm Ross Taylor.

1:11.0

You may think, if you're lucky, that you've got a decent amount of control over your life.

1:15.0

You probably chose where to live, who to partner up with, what kind of job to do.

1:19.0

You chose to listen to the bunker right now, for which many thanks. But Brian Class is here to tell you that your

1:25.4

whole existence is the result of an extraordinary fluke, and not only that, but when you think you have

1:30.5

free will, you're probably deceiving yourself. On the upside he also wants to tell you why

1:35.5

all that can be a good thing. Brian welcome back to the bunker. It's such a pleasure to be here

1:40.2

thank you. You're an associate professor at University College London and you've

1:44.8

spent your career working in the social sciences which are all about cause and effect. Yet your

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