The Gilded Age has become one of the most common analogies for our own time, invoked as shorthand for economic inequality and political corruption. But that comparison misses much of what made the period extraordinary. After the Civil War, the United States experienced an incredible period of economic growth that completely transformed American life and landscapes.

In this episode of The Human Progress Podcast, economic historian Brian Domitrovic joins our managing editor Chelsea Follett to discuss why the conventional story of the Gilded Age is incomplete, how industrialization made ordinary Americans better off, and what we can learn from the triumphs of the Gilded Age.