🎧 Adam Curtis

Episode summary: This week David talks to the celebrated film-maker Adam Curtis about his new series Can’t Get You Out of My Head, which tells the history of the rise and fall of individualism. Why do so many people feel so powerless in the age of the empowered individual? How has digital technology turbo-charged our feelings of alienation? And what has all this got to do with behavioural psychology? Plus much more: Nixon, China, Dominic Cummings, complex systems, Max Weber and conspiracy theories. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p093wp6h/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head Talking Points: In his newest series, Adam identifies the 1970s as the wellspring of a global system that feels irrational and beyond political control. - The Nixon shock—when the dollar became detached from the gold standard—was something that Nixon, at the time, saw as temporary. - But as the Watergate scandal carried on, banks realized they could start trading currencies against each other. Out of this came the global financial system. - The opening to…