From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, the historian Richard Cockett explores all those ideas — and how the arrival of fascism can ruin in a few years what took generations to build.

• SOURCE:
  • Richard Cockett, author and senior editor at The Economist.

• RESOURCES:
  • Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World, by Richard Cockett (2023).
  • "Birth, Death and Shopping," (The Economist, 2007).
  • The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard (1957).
  • "An Economist's View of 'Planning,'" by Henry Hazlitt (The New York Times, 1944).
  • The World of Yesterday: Memoires of a European, by Stefan Zweig (1942).

• EXTRA:
  • "Arnold Schwarzenegger Has Some Advice for You," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).

Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March. In 2021 he talked with Steve Levitt — his friend and former business partner — about his book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (cowritten with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein) and much more.

• SOURCES:
  • Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.

• RESOURCES:
  • Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Olivier Sibony, Daniel Kahneman, and Cass R. Sunstein (2021).
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).

• EXTRAS:
  • "What’s the Secret to Making a Great Prediction?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).
  • "The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution," by Freakonomics Radio (2017).
  • "How to Be Less Terrible at Predicting the Future," by Freakonomics Radio (2016).

Fareed Zakaria says yes. But it’s not just political revolution — it’s economic, technological, even emotional. He doesn’t offer easy solutions but he does offer some hope.

• SOURCES:
  • Fareed Zakaria, journalist and author.

• RESOURCES:
  • Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, by Fareed Zakaria (2024).
  • "The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections Around the World in 2024," by Koh Ewe (TIME, 2023).
  • "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism," by Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin (Perspectives on Politics, 2011).
  • The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria (2008).
  • The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, by Fareed Zakaria (2003).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China?" by Freakonomics Radio (2021).