Speaker 1 00:00:21 You are listening to Right on radio, on k a i 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Weber, and on tonight's program, Dave Fed talked to Bill Misner about his work, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire. Meisner is the author of many books, including Short Story Collections, Poetry and Novels. His baseball novel, Spirits in the Grass, won the Midwest Book Award, as did a short story collection hitting into the Wind. He's a returning guest to write on radio. Then the last part of the hour, Dave interviews Jay Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at you, Cal Berkeley. He is a prolific writer with a long time popular blog on everything economics. His book, Slouching Towards Utopia is a page turning look at the transformative 20th century warts and all. Also, this is during our pledge drive. So join US warriors as we talk about a little of our literary ventures, reading habits recently, and why we think you need to keep on supporting us and everything I does. So please think about donating to
[email protected], all this and more. So stay tuned to right on radio.
Speaker 2 00:01:35 Welcome back. This is Dave Feig, and we have Bill Meisner with us tonight. Good evening, Bill.
Speaker 3 00:01:42 Hey, Dave, how are you?
Speaker 2 00:01:43 Wonderful. Good to see you.
Speaker 3 00:01:44 Great. Yeah, thanks for having
Speaker 2 00:01:46 Me here. We'd love to have you back. Bill's been with us before and he'll be with us many times. A reminder that you heard from Josh, ladies and gentlemen, it is pledge week here on K F A I Fall Pledge, and we are a community member supported radio station like no other, as you know, or you wouldn't be listening. It's K f a i.org. This is where you're gonna hear local authors, spectacular, beautiful writers like Bill and many others. So, uh, with that Bill, let's, um, start talking to you about your new novel. Congratulations, by the way.
Speaker 3 00:02:18 Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's, um, only a month away.
Speaker 2 00:02:23 Yeah. So give us some details on when it's gonna come out and the publisher and the,
Speaker 3 00:02:28 Um, it's going to be, the pub date is November 21st. Okay. And it's from Steven F. Austin State University Press. Awesome. But the pre-orders can go through, um, Texas a and m University press as the shipping and all that. So that's the basic link for it.
Speaker 2 00:02:47 Wonderful.
Speaker 3 00:02:47 So, yeah, it's, um, it's been a long time in the making, which I'll explain <laugh>. So one more month isn't too much to wait for me or, or anybody
Speaker 2 00:02:56 Else. That's right. This would be a great lead in. And, uh, so we love to start with a reading of course, as you know, Bill. But before we do that, why don't you give us kind of the arc of this, the novel without giving too much away. Tell us what it's about and then set up your reading for us, please.
Speaker 3 00:03:10 Sure. Yeah. Well, the book is unlike a lot of my other books because I wrote drafts of it between other books. Interesting. That made it quite unique. Um, and over the years, there were those 300 paper malls calling my name to, to keep coming back to it. So, um, it's unique in that respect. Um, I wrote it because I, I was inspired by a true incident in 1969 when a, a radical anti-war protest group saw a plane in a nearby town and attempted to bomb a place, an ordinance plant that was right outside my hometown.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 Amazing,
Speaker 3 00:03:50 Amazing. So the gunpowder producing factor is a place where my father worked as a supervisor, though he wasn't there at that exact time. But that's kind, that's the seed for the book.
Speaker 2 00:04:01 Um, it's such a great, great thing to capture and to bring back to life in a novel Bill. Really great.
Speaker 3 00:04:07 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, thank you. And but beyond that, I, I mean, I should mention it's, uh, this isn't all about that Right. Incident, though. I Right. Though my characters, I I intertwine them with that incident, which, you know, that's an author's driving license or driving without a license, whatever you wanna call it. Exactly. So, um, but as the novel developed, it was basically a family drama mm-hmm. <affirmative> and a love story. And so it became a struggle between war and peace during the turbulent Vietnam years of 1968 mm-hmm. <affirmative> and 69. Yeah. And by the time it was finished, I hope to create a kind of portrait of America at that time as, as sort of represented by this one small family in a small town in Wisconsin
Speaker 2 00:04:49 And this very amazing couple, young couple, um, I think you pulled it off, Bill, but, uh,
Speaker 3 00:04:55 So I pulled it off. You, you can only hold, I mean, you send it out, it's like tossing a paper airplane out of a 30 story window and hoping it gets out there and lands. Somebody grabs it and looks at it and says, Oh, yeah, that made sense.
Speaker 2 00:05:09 Yep. That's a poet speaking, ladies and gentlemen. Um, very nice metaphor. <laugh> <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:05:15 I don't always speak in metaphor, so my wife assures me of that poet.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 Okay. Well, with that, um, why don't you set up your reading.
Speaker 3 00:05:23 Okay. Um, yeah, I'll read from chapter one because this is the exciting portion of the, the book, the action portion related to that bombing. Okay. And, um, so I'll give you a portion of chapter one. Very good. And, um, as the book goes along, though, the, um, it leads up to this incident. Okay. So if that makes sense to you.
Speaker 2 00:05:46 Yep.
Speaker 3 00:05:47 And here's how it goes about a two and a half minute scene. Sounds
Speaker 2 00:05:51 Good.
Speaker 3 00:05:52 The first explosion erupted opening like an orange flower surrounded by a, a ring of angry gray smoke, leaning over a copper bin of gunpowder. Phil Keho felt the shockwave, like a fist, puling him from the inside of his chest. He ran to the open doorway of Powder House 1 21, and what he saw made him stop there frozen, unable to move in or out. Panic rushed through him as he spotted a low flying Cessna. It swings wobbling as if it were balancing precariously on the updrafts. Phil had heard that a plane might fly over the strong ammunition plant one of these days, dropping hundreds of anti-war leaflets for the workers below, or pulling a fluttering banner that might read Stop the War, Close the Strongs In a fleeting dream last night, Phil saw the plane dropping yellow flowers from the sky, like tiny spiraling suns. But this plane had no banner or flowers, and it contained no cargo of peaceful flowers.
Speaker 3 00:06:59 Instead, a solid object, a blaze, like a meteor, dropped from it. The object tumbled in slow motion until it struck a powder storage building and detonated in a blinding flash of red. What the hell? A one man scream somebody's bombing the plant who felt himself being shoved against the doorframe as frantic workers dashed toward the open areas between the buildings with pieces of burning wood raining down around them. He still couldn't move. All he could do was stare a smoke from the explosion rose in a mushroom cloud run. He remembered his girlfriend, Mariah, saying to him one night when they swam at the lake, if something happens out there, she cautioned. Don't hesitate, just run. And Phil finally broke from his trance and sprinted toward the concrete path that led to the exit gates as he merged with the other workers. Absurd thoughts flashed through his mind.
Speaker 3 00:07:58 He could have been running wind sprints with his best friend Tommy during high school football practice. He could have been with a platoon under attack in the middle of Vietnam. But this was no game. This was no war here in the middle of rural Wisconsin. The plane and went into a sudden dive, dropped its cargo, and another explosion erupted. Phil crouched down and pulled his knees up to his chest to protect himself. Then something hit him hard, making him shudder. Not a fragment of wood or a chunk of asphalt, but the realization that he, Phil Keho, the security supervisor's son, might have something, not just something, but a lot to do with this.
Speaker 2 00:08:44 That's Bill Meisner reading from his soon to be released novel, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire. Nice. Very dramatic reading. And I think, Bill, that we need to start with the historical context. You set us up, but, uh, we need to just plum it a little more because that was a very, um, great opening and, and intense setup. So, uh, tell us a little more about this event that this your book was inspired by, and to what degree, uh, you stuck with history and how much you, you know, took off.
Speaker 3 00:09:15 Um, well, I played a little with history given, given just the actual fact that it happened mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, um, but what I did do, of course, was traumatize the whole mm-hmm. <affirmative> incident. So it actually did happen. It was on New Year's Day or New Year's Eve in 1969. And, um, two people stole Cessna and tried to bomb the plant, but the bombing was totally unsuccessful. So
Speaker 2 00:09:40 There are no
Speaker 3 00:09:41 Sort of fiction. The fictional part comes in where I exaggerated the whole event, including huge explosions, lots of destruction. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and like I said, I, you know, when you write a novel, you're not telling the truth. It's only versions of the truth as you see it. And for the sake of drama, I had to exaggerate all that. No, no. So, I, I actually talked to people who were around during the bombing. Oh, wow. Did some research, um, to a guy who was there. And he, he thought it was rather laughable and said there were, there were three, um, some kind of bottles with, um, chemicals in them that they dropped, and all three landed in the snow and didn't do a thing. And he said, You know what? Here the protestors were upset that it didn't cause such gigantic stir, but very odd incident. You can look and it's on the net, you know, specific details. And then unfortunately, you know, as things turned darker, these same guys were involved in a, the bombing of a building at the U of Wisconsin, which actually killed someone.
Speaker 2 00:10:41 Yeah. That was,
Speaker 3 00:10:41 And was, that was not too much later than that. So the, I mean, these guys were involved, you know Yeah. Totally involved with violence. Um, yeah. Though this one was kind of a mad cap incident apparently, where nothing much happened.
Speaker 2 00:10:56 Yeah. Um, I do have a memory, and of course we all, to the degree we read and look back at recent history, you know, re recall certain things. I, I recall U UW was bombing, but, um, this munitions plant won, um, does feel exactly like that, a madcap sort of event. Um, it's a great takeoff for your story, and it's, you know, the dramatic tension comes back into the story, obviously. Um, but to what degree Bill did you feel then beholden to that time? Um, the sixties, 68, all the tensions in the country. Um, you're, you're a writer, an accomplished writer, and a teacher. Um, did this handcuff you or set you free?
Speaker 3 00:11:40 Um, I think it set me free. That's, it's a great question, but the whole milu, I mean, I'm fascinated by it. I've taught it at St. Cloud State. I taught a class in the sixties mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, like based on literature and writing and politics of the sixties. So yeah, I'm fascinated by the, the turbulent element of it and just, um, you know, there, there were so many things coming together between music, politics, young people, the draft, the Vietnam War, civil rights, feminism, starting, you know, all those things clashing all at once together mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, no, I found it empowering to write about it. Um, what I did have to do, of course, is quite a bit of research to make sure you, if I stuck a song in there to make sure, Yeah. It actually was out in that month of 1968 or whatever,
Speaker 2 00:12:28 Because some,
Speaker 3 00:12:29 And I made a couple of, I made a couple of fo pods where I had a, um, one of the characters comp, he was actually complimenting my main female character on her name, Mariah and I put a song in that had that, um, that lyric in it. And then I found out later that song didn't come out until about four years after my <laugh>, the date of my book. So I thought, well, that paragraph has to go <laugh> <laugh>. So I had him compliment her in a different way, but not the song. I don't know if anyone knows. It's called, They Call the Win. It's a sort of western song. Anyway.
Speaker 2 00:13:01 Okay.
Speaker 3 00:13:02 I used that and thought it sounded just perfect until I looked up the date of the song. So that kind of thing, I had to do a lot of that with, um, minor details. What happened when, when was, you know, what moon launches were taking place at what, what month of the year, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 00:13:20 And, you know, just to follow up to the question, and the other thing you did really, really well is you gave us all of this color bill, but you didn't swamp us with it. You didn't overwhelm us with the politics of it. This isn't some sort of, you know, political screed or anything like that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it, it is a rich story that's alive in a time period. It's not a time period with a story attached to it. And I think that's difficult to do, and I'm kind of impressed with this. Um, did you, um, was this some sort of, were you aware of this in the back of your mind, or did the, were you just able to write this story and then, then just color it with the 1960s as you were writing it?
Speaker 3 00:14:00 I think your, your description of it is probably the most accurate. I mean, I was writing the story, the story that was most, you know, closest to my heart was fill in Mariah and what happens between them and also between father and son.
Speaker 2 00:14:14 Yes.
Speaker 3 00:14:14 Yes. And, um, and the mother involved too. So it's kind of a family story. So I, I put forth, I tried to do my best with that family story and the love story mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then the milieu would be filled in around it. Yeah. Or some of the incidents. And I have to admit, my last couple of drafts I did, um, I added more elements of the politics of actual events that took place. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> when and where, you know, by looking up the years 1968 or 67, and see Sure. Exactly what was going on in the country. Yeah. So, yeah, I had a few more color details in that way. Well, it's really, but I'm glad it worked. But I mean, at it's heart, it's really, really a, um, is this a story of love and, and faithfulness or, you know, loyalty between characters, you know, all of them have, that have element of loyalty, or are they gonna be loyal or do they break away from tradition? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:15:06 <affirmative>. Yeah. We'll leave that this subject. But, uh, you're right, the sixties are such a powerful moment in recent American history and, and many people who are still around have deep sear memories of it. So, uh, you have to play careful with those, those memories. So about thinking mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you did a beautiful job, honor. I remind our listeners who are speaking with Bill Meisner, Minnesota's own Bill Meisner, author of the forthcoming novel, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire, you mentioned family. And, um, I really like the relationship between Phil and his father. Um, there's a great scene where the father, Carl, I believe is, um, making a point about safety and, um, he's is his son as an example. I just think it's so well, um, laid out. Um, maybe you can, uh, ask the question this way, um, and you can share as much as you want, but to what degree, uh, does Bill Meisner's experience come to play in these, um, characters when you built these family relationships?
Speaker 3 00:16:08 That's another great question. I think <laugh>, <laugh> and some of, I mean, you, you have a part, I think a writer, If a writer's doing the right job, they have a, a connection with each of the characters. So each one is a possibly a little part of you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, does that make sense? Of
Speaker 2 00:16:27 Course it does. Yes.
Speaker 3 00:16:28 And, and the con Yeah. And the connection has to be there. Um, they are all invent, they're all fictional characters, of course, but they're Right. But some emotional things were transferred from one scene to another scene in this book. And it, it tends to work that way. Like, it could be an overlay of an experience that might have happened, but you're exaggerated and turn it into your characters and, and that sort of thing. Yeah. And it's the same the way I was saying my, I pull my, I decided for the sake of drama to, um, have both my lead characters connected to the bombing. Yes. Which, you know, that was totally invented. And I think that, you know, that's an example of it. You want something to happen. You want them to be involved in a drama. But in, in many respects, it's a, it's, um, something you just make up and try to make it as intense as
Speaker 2 00:17:18 Possible and as real as possible. And it's, it's very real Bill, that relationship. Um,
Speaker 3 00:17:22 Glad you liked that. Um,
Speaker 2 00:17:24 Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:17:25 That scene. So I was not involved in that. Neither was my father, but, um, to the seed for connecting it, I worked in a factory during a summer mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, summer work for college during college. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and a safe, a safety supervisor, Um, made somebody stand up and <laugh> and showed that this broken glass that got hit while he was mowing lawn, it got hit by a rock. That'll be darn. So, yeah, I, I took that whole scene in parallel with, um, my father character of Carl and the son of Phil, and make, you know, Phil be the Yeah. The subject of interrogation and humiliation and all that.
Speaker 2 00:18:01 So, so,
Speaker 3 00:18:01 But I did see the scene happen, and it was kind of like the way I wrote it, <laugh> somewhat for people, you know, the, the young workers like us college guys just thought it was kind of humorous that Sure. You know, that we had a big lecture about that we were elbowing each other. Yeah. So I tried to put all that into that scene. Well,
Speaker 2 00:18:18 It's, it is in there. And let this be a lesson to you all you kids out there, all you writers, you know who you are. Uh, nothing goes unused in a writer's memory. <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:18:28 I mean, uh, that's
Speaker 2 00:18:29 True. Uh, maybe an inconsequential memory in Bill's life, uh, becomes a very nice scene in his novel. Uh, so that's great.
Speaker 3 00:18:36 <laugh>. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 00:18:37 You did something courageous, I think, which is right about a young woman and right about a young woman. Well, I think I'm a guy, what do I know? But it strikes me as challenging or a challenge for people who don't live in someone else's skin to, uh, bring that person alive. Um, mm-hmm. <affirmative> was that particular challenge.
Speaker 3 00:18:56 Yeah. You were talking about Mariah. Mariah, Yeah. I tried, I did try to channel her personality and, and come up with this much, um, close detail that would, that would be within the skin of a 18 year old female. Yeah. And probably of the, of the, all the characters, she was the toughest to write since I'm, Yeah. I'm not exactly directly connected with that. We have a son, not
Speaker 2 00:19:21 A daughter. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:19:22 Um, but then I did teach college students for a lot of years. You know, teaching 18, 19, 20 year olds kind of know what makes them tick after you're involved with them for years. So, um, but yeah, a lot of it was invented. I had to invent her entire, um, background with her, her divorce relationship. I picked a, um, a trailer park near St. Cloud and strolled through it to look for details. Nice. And I thought, Yeah, she's gonna live here. I love a different name.
Speaker 2 00:19:52 I
Speaker 3 00:19:52 Love that. So I did that kind of, you know, that's the kind of research I did. I'd go to a place, look at it, Huh. Think about it and think about what would she, how would she react to a sort of dumpy trailer court when she came out of a, a fairly nice home with a dad who was a, um, a rich person. You know, they had a rich family and, um, a realtor. And so it was, once it was broken, she ended up in this place, which she considers quite dingy. And, um, and, you know, depressing. She doesn't wanna admit she lives there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I had to, Yeah. I went around. I found details. I actually wrote a couple of details, Huh. Just on the last draft, um, as I, Cause I decided to drive through this trailer court again, just to see what was happening. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I saw there was a squad car pulling through it, and there was six in the evening, not picking anybody up, just, um, kind of on patrol through the, the blocks of it. Wow. So I immediately pulled out my pen and just wrote it down and, you know, put that into the book. Yeah. I thought, she's gotta see the usual guy from town patrolling at 6:00 PM Yeah. To make sure everything's all right. It just makes it a little bit more scary for her. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:21:03 <affirmative>.
Speaker 3 00:21:03 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But that's the kind of thing I did to develop it. And then, um, my wife helped me a lot about what a, what a young girl might say or think. So she saw many of those drafts, and that was really valuable to me. I see. She'd say now she wouldn't think that now she wouldn't do, you know, write something else. You've got that part works, but maybe not that part. So that helped quite a lot. And I did, you know, I obviously needed that.
Speaker 2 00:21:28 Yeah. We all do. I think, Well, any writers, uh, Stephen King, I think, What does he say? Everyone needs an ideal writer or something. One writer, one reader, I'm sorry, an ideal reader. One person who can read your stuff and call you on it, um mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and maybe that's a
Speaker 3 00:21:44 Yeah. And you can't write in a vacuum, that's for sure. I mean, you can't Yeah. Nobody's perfect in writing. Um, I have, Tim O'Brien is one of my idols of writing. He wrote that fabulous Vietnam book. Yep. The things they carried. Yes. And, and I talked to him about it. He, he published a short story. Its maybe 25 pages long. The one called The Things They Carried. It's in his book. Yep. And when I got to talk to him, I got to meet him a couple times. When I talked to him, he said that story was maybe 80 to 90 pages. Wow. And through many drafts, it was paired down to about 25 or 30. Amazing. So you, you always see the finished product and think, Wow, that must have just popped out out. He's a fabulous writer, but he's a fabulous writer because, because he wrote it, because he is able to craft it so well,
Speaker 2 00:22:35 Yeah. That's a really
Speaker 3 00:22:36 Good thing. So I always remember that kind of thing about writers who, how many times they write something through it and make it better, better, better. And hopefully nearly the best they can do.
Speaker 2 00:22:46 That's right. That's right. Uh, we are speaking with Bill Meisner, ladies and gentlemen, Minnesota Zone up in St. Cloud, His new novel, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire, forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin University Press, uh, Google that. Google him. Uh, Bill, we're getting really close to the end here. Uh,
Speaker 3 00:23:05 We're, wait, really? Uh,
Speaker 2 00:23:06 He's not something A couple minutes, I'm getting the two minute warning from Annie.
Speaker 3 00:23:10 Is that a two minute? I do have a minute of stuff to read, but, um, I did wanna say the, Can I add one more thing? Please do. The characters are fictional, obviously in this, I really did base it on my small town. Oh. In central Wisconsin, which is bearable Wisconsin. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> a very odd and quirky little tone. But I, I tried to use details from that. And, um, one of my inspirations, this is one of those writer's oddities, one of my inspirations are maybe Good Luck charms to wear a high school Barbo t-Bird High School t-shirt that I've had for, for more than a couple decades. So, <laugh>, it's worn out. It's, you know, I bet it's faded. It's got, it's got holes in it, but I put it on whenever I write, kind of get that feeling of, you know, going back to the town.
Speaker 2 00:23:58 Yep. Cool. Well, uh,
Speaker 3 00:24:01 Give me a timeline. Should we, Do you want me to read something or?
Speaker 2 00:24:04 Well, you know, we're really getting close here, but I tell you what, let's, let's, let's talk about what you're working on next. I'd like people to get a sense for that. I'm sure you're writing some homes, or maybe you've got, um,
Speaker 3 00:24:18 My latest, the thing that I've been working on lately is completely different than this one. This is, you know, primarily a serious novel. Right. But it's a, it's a kind of satire of the traditional tropical novel Oh, wow. Featuring a, featuring a mysterious narrator who's not me, who supposedly told me, um, plunked on manuscript on my table, and said, Hey, misner, I'll pay you to, um, type this out, You know, put this on, um, on Word and then maybe get it published. He hands me this typed script and then I never see, see or hear from him again. I love this. So anyway, the story is, his story apparently typed out by me.
Speaker 2 00:24:59 I
Speaker 3 00:24:59 Love it. And, um, yeah. Anyway, it's got, I don't know what the title is for sure. Temporarily. It's called Words in the Sand. Oh, that's nice. Because everything is tropical. You know, Jo on Beaches, she has a relationship with the woman. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the Keys and Key West and Largo and all that. So, but like I said, it's a little more light and unusual. But I would say it, if you looked at one page of that, you'd say, It's absolutely nothing like this now.
Speaker 2 00:25:23 Amazing.
Speaker 3 00:25:24 So I'm not sure what that means, but, but it's fun to write. Everything is fun to write.
Speaker 2 00:25:29 Well, everything is fun to read when you, when you write it, Bill. And what that means is, is you're having fun. And, uh, by the way, summer seems to be a theme. And I'm getting, I'm gonna let you go. You write about baseball, You got summer in this title. Here you can write about the beaches. This guy likes the summer. And we like Bill Meisner <laugh>. And you all love K a I. Bill, thank you for being with us tonight. We can't wait to have you back on the show.
Speaker 3 00:25:50 Thanks a lot. Great questions. Good to talk to you. Good
Speaker 2 00:25:53 To talk to you. We'll be in touch soon. And now this,
Speaker 4 00:26:13 Welcome back to the Shore everyone. I am Dave Fed, and tonight I have the distinct pleasure of speaking with Professor Brad DeLong of the University of California Berkeley. Professor DeLong is one of those rare economists who has developed a following among non-economists because of his long running blog. And because frankly, he's a dang good writer, and I can speak from experience that's sparkling prose is a rare commodity in economics. Congratulations on your book, Brad, and welcome to the program.
Speaker 5 00:26:40 Thank you very much. Um, it's a great, great pleasure to be here. And let me say that the first reviews are suggesting to people that they won't be bored if they buy the
Speaker 4 00:26:50 Book. That's correct. I will, I will second that. They won't be bored. Um, mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So your book has received a lot of attention, and I know you find yourself having to answer this question over and over, but I think we need to start here, Brad, which is to say, to give our listeners a sense for what slouching towards Utopia is all about, namely, how do you define the 20th century? And as a follow up, why is it valuable for us today to reckon with this economic history?
Speaker 5 00:27:18 Um, the 20th century, right? I want to start Century in 18. Cause before 1870, technology was not advanced enough. Resources were too scarce. Food population pressure was too great. There was no way humanity was going to be able to a sufficiently large economic pie for everyone to have All that changes in 1870. After 1870, human's technological competence doubles every generation, which means that we're clearly on the road to soon being able to have an economy in which everyone can have, you know enough. The questions are going to be how do we distribute what we're producing, the vast amounts of stuff that our technology's enabling us to produce, and then how do we utilize it so that people feel safe and secure and live lives their healthy And all that really wasn't possible before 18. You know, there wasn't enough. So most of politics and governance was fighting over the little.
Speaker 5 00:28:28 There was just so that some people could have enough. Um, with 1870, everything changes. And the story of the world economy since 1870 is how we do such a magnificent job at solving the problem of making enough. But still, how the problems of distribution and utilization continue. Um, why it's useful. Um, it's useful cause it tells you that most of the problems and dilemmas that people are facing now and governments are facing now, um, there changes on the same that has been going since 18. Technology leaps ahead, producing enormous wealth and enormous disruption. And governments and others try to frantically figure out how to organize society to solve the problems, you know, of distribution and utilization. Since the market economy is solving the production problem at a very rate. And yet these problems and whatever goes wrong in the next 10 years will be just another episode of this flu.
Speaker 4 00:29:34 Yeah. Got it. Uh, see, Brad historians often admonish this not to look backward and label events as inevitable. So given the importance, given the importance of the 20th century and the history of economic development, and assuming it was not inevitable, how the hell did we pull this off? What you just described, How did we do this? Um, it's a big question.
Speaker 5 00:29:56 It's a big question. Um,
Speaker 4 00:29:58 That's why you wrote a big book.
Speaker 5 00:30:00 We have to have, Yeah. We have to have a system that pushes, provides people with incentives and opportunities to really push technology ahead very rapidly. And then with incentives and opportunities to spend their time figuring out how to all these technologies to make human life significantly. It, and, you know, institutions for running a division of labor and for, you know, rewarding inventors and getting people to and discover those have been building for an awful long time. But up until 1870, they really weren't good enough. You know, up until 1870, you know, humanity invents new technologies, humanity gets more resources, um, and then population expands and population expands pretty rapidly to fill the space. And you have better technology, but you have smaller farm sizes, and you're spreading the goods among more craftsmen. And so standards of living really do not rise. You know, if at all, um, come 1870, we developed the industrial research laboratory to rationalize and retin discovery and development of modern technology.
Speaker 5 00:31:13 Um, the, to rationalize andt I, the development and deployment of technologies and we, the global market economies, which all of a sudden focuses a huge number of people's attention, you know, on how can I use me technologies to make, can I deploy and diffuse across the world? And that kind of crowdsourcing, um, crowdsourcing people for, to the of how to use technologies in order to make things that people will want buy those three things together. They multipli the rate at humanity. Its technology by a nearly, we get more technological progress after 18 in 10 years than we got in years before 1870. And it's that rapid acceleration of technology that opens up the possibilities
Speaker 4 00:32:11 For, for our listeners and for readers of this book. Uh, you're already getting a sense that, uh, Brad can tell a good story and a story that you can understand, but as he also suggested, uh, there are some important numbers along the way. And, uh, Brad do a great job of, uh, guiding us to help us understand this extraordinary growth, uh mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because we sit here today taking it for granted, but boy, uh mm-hmm. <affirmative> the leaps and bounds that were made. Um,
Speaker 5 00:32:40 Yeah. You know, as much technological progress in development since 1870, the time from six, 6,000 up until 18,
Speaker 4 00:32:51 Amazing, you
Speaker 5 00:32:52 Know, packed what used, what humanity used to take. But it used to take humanity eight millennia to do in terms of advancing technology and knowledge we have done.
Speaker 4 00:33:03 Now, let's talk about that narrative, Brad, in terms of the world, the globe. One of the nice things about your book is I think readers are gonna find a lot of things they didn't really know or they don't think about very often. And one of those is chapter 12, titled False and True Starts to Economic Development in the Global South. And it, it reminds us that what we're talking about here is growth and development in a particular area of the world, and not in a, necessarily just the northern north of the equator, um, but certain countries north of the equator. So, uh, let's talk about that, if you don't mind that chapter 12, What happened down South? Why didn't that happen? And is there a story here about Russia or China, but eventually also, let's start with the south of the equator. Why did not, why didn't this happen there?
Speaker 5 00:33:56 Well, some of this did happen there, right? So back, back in 18, um, you look at pretty much everyone who's not a member of the upper class know outside of the North Atlantic, and you see they're living at three a day or less, that virtually the entire world is close to what the World Bank would call extreme poverty. Yeah. And now we're down to only 500 million of 8 billion of us living at three a day or less, but only 5 million of us are at the point of what the World Bank calls extreme poverty are People who really do spend a couple hours on, who spend a couple hours on many days saying, I'm really hungry. I really wish I could get more calories now. And people who really do go to sleep worried that they'll, um, they'll not be able to get their calories a day, you'll come next year. And indeed, thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of the consequences of that is that we may face serious famine in Nigeria and Egypt. I'm ing Yeah. Um, but to reduce the number of people, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty worldwide from kinda of three and four to one in 16, that's an amazing accomplishment.
Speaker 4 00:35:15 Extraordinary, Yes.
Speaker 5 00:35:17 But it's a very uneven accomplishment. Right. That back in 1800, the Britains and the Americas were maybe twice as as of, you know, and come and Americans, two of the world. We peaked in about 1975 with the Britains and Americas being five times as rich as the rest of the world. And now we're back down to kinda three times. But that really depends on how you count India and China, which have managed to pull away from the poorer parts of Africa and Latin America over the past 30 years. Yeah. You know, we have extraordinary technologies. We have extraordinary abilities to communicate. Um, we can reach practically anyone, anyone in anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours because virtually everyone has at least some access to the village cell phone. And yet, even though we've managed to create a technology to create technologies in which we can communicate with all of ourselves nearly instantaneously, and even though we've managed to spread public health technologies all around the globe, so that while life expectancy at birth in 1870 was 30 or less, know there's not a place in the world for life expectancy at birth now is less than 60 years.
Speaker 5 00:36:44 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we've done an absolutely miserable job at spreading productive technologies around the world. So that gaps between incomes in countries and countries where even though poor countries are significantly richer than poor countries were a 50 years ago. Right. The relative gaps have grown to absolutely enormous levels.
Speaker 4 00:37:06 Yeah. Do you have a sense, Brad? This is a long conversation. Books and books and books are being written. Students are working on these questions, but, uh, uh, why, again, ask the same question a different way again. Um, some of these, some of these things that happened that caused Great Britain and the Americas in the United States, uh, to increase, to increase that gap, Why these institutions, whatever the case might be, took hold here if you will, rather than there. And if they are the keys to more success, healthier, all the ways we measure quality of life, how do we get them to work? Have we learned anything?
Speaker 5 00:37:56 Well, I think the answer for the North Atlantic, for the global is that the people living there were just really lucky, Right. That you go down to minus the back to the year minus one. Um, and you ask, where is the UL invented people and the people who are figuring out how to organize, how to produce and how to produce more and develop and advance technology. And you're going yourselves probably somewhere between Egypt and, and say you, that's where actually, um, you go to the year and it's either, you know, central Italy, it's either the Roman Empire, possibly extending a degree, parts of it, um, or somewhere in northern China. Um, you go to 800 and, you know, Baghdad and the, to dynasty capital of China, you know, um, they're doing extremely well. You know, kind, Charmaine can't sit still at his palace because they can't bring enough food to him to feed the court, and he has to spend his life riding around from province to province just to get enough to, So even in that is China is sending armadas of ships all the way across the Indian Ocean, and the Portuguese are struggling to get ships across, across, um, even in 1500, you'd say that Constantinople or Delhi or, you know, Beijing was likely to be the future capital of the world.
Speaker 5 00:39:25 With London still being a kind of barbers place, you know, where the kings are very unstable, they're stealing the throne from each other, um, and are occasionally go completely mad. Yeah. That is, the game of Throne series is based substantially on real things that happened in England around 15 in terms of how bloody murderous they were only without magic and without dragons.
Speaker 5 00:39:53 And yet somehow after 1500, a huge number of things, you know, went right in terms of developing a society in which curiosity was rewarded. Um, and in which social orders became a lot less rigid, you know, and it was no longer the case that social orders and ideas were judged primarily by whether they helped the elite continue its course and fraud ex game to grab enough from everybody else. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But increasingly ideas and ideas were rewarded and, um, social institutions grew depending on whether they happened to make people as a group more productive. Um, and that's a wonderful thing to have happened. It happened, I think, pretty much purely by luck, although we can trace pieces of its historical development, um, and the rest of the world just was not sufficiently lucky to have managed to hit upon the right complex, uh, social and economic institutions at a time when there was enough curiosity and enough resources to be, to advantage of
Speaker 4 00:41:07 It. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, one of your main
Speaker 5 00:41:10 Interesting, you know, ahead, the more interesting question is these things did not spread rapidly to the rest the world have.
Speaker 4 00:41:18 Yeah. Right. Uh, no, I lost my train of thought. Oh, um, let's, let's keep our focus north of the equator, if you will, and think about Russia and China and maybe some other in India. Um, one of your major themes is government mismanagement or inefficiency. Right? Um, right. So all the best intentions, all the best institutions, um, it, it, they fall apart unless, um, things are run properly. I guess that's one takeaway, but, uh, um, how do we think about, Well, gosh, what a big question to ask about China right now. Um, do you wanna give us a recap for us, for those of us who don't really know? <laugh> a great miracle that happened in China, and, uh,
Speaker 5 00:42:09 Well, you know, I mean, up, up until 50, you know, China is always, has always been one of the most populous, one of the most, um, you know, productive, um, one of the most organized, one of the more peaceful parts of the world. You know, that up until 1750, when China is poor, it's simply, you know, I'm, it's managed to avoid plagues and wars that de populated things. And so people have been able to of expand their families and sizes have strong Hmm. You know, but even in 17 Europeans, look at China, look at Chinese silk and porcelain and textile and forms of production. And yes, Europe has an advantage in making things outta metal and in making things that go. Um, and those advantages are extremely important when it comes to war. But overall, in terms of the technological portfolio, you know, you wouldn't say there was much difference between China and you, Britain and America at the, um, S 50. Then between s and 1901st gets these extraordinary advantages in making manufactured goods and all the manufacturing of the gets concentrated into the Atlantic, which means that, you know, all of the engineers thinking about how to improve technology, get concentrated in the,
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Speaker 0 00:44:30 Everyone, everyone.
