Today’s bad idea is one with a short history but a big reach: the term polycrisis only came into being at the end of the last century but now it seems to be everywhere. David talks to historian Gary Gerstle about how this idea was originally conceived, what its current vogue says about the times in which we live and whether this really is a polycrisis or something else. Why is it comforting to think that the crises through which we are living are all connected in some way? Why is it also dangerous to think like that? And what does it say about our sense of powerlessness that we haven’t got a better way of describing the problems of our world?

Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Behaviourism

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