Johan Norberg: Analyzing Golden Ages, Embracing Openness and Spotting Warning Signs

Hi everyone, I'm Nikola Tanjen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and today we are exploring one of history's most pressing questions, the rise and fall of great civilizations. Because there are so many things that we can learn from the past. And today I'm here with Johan Norberg, author of the newly released book, which I just loved. called peak human, what we can learn from the rise and fall of golden ages. Now, um Johan, you have studied golden ages throughout history, from ancient Athens to the modern Anglosphere, and that's what we're going to zoom in on today.

So Johan, warm welcome. Thank you very much. Let's start with the beginning. What is a golden age? Yeah, I'm glad you asked.

A Golden Age is something that's often defined in retrospect afterwards, which is a little bit sad. So it's often subsequent generations who look back at the past and say, wow, they really had something impressive going. Can you never see it when you're in it? Sometimes you do, but it's easier afterwards because it's about a combination of cultural creativity, scientific discovery, technological innovation and economic growth. And so it's really a large number of innovations and new discoveries in many different fields of human experience at the same time.

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