🎧 Shutdown/Confronting Leviathan

Episode summary: We’re back from our summer break with David, Helen and Adam Tooze exploring what the pandemic has revealed about politics, economics and the new world order. From Covid crisis to China crisis to climate crisis: how does it all fit together? And what comes next? Adam’s new book is Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy. Plus David talks about his new book based on series one of History of Ideas: Confronting Leviathan. Talking Points: The term ‘lockdown’ can be misleading. Many aspects of the response were not top-down. - Most of the reduction in mobility predated government mandate. - The financial markets made huge moves and central banks then had to step in. - The popular response cannot be separated from the actions of the state. The term ‘shutdown’ better captures the pandemic’s impact on the economy. - Huge parts of the productive economy literally ground to a halt. - It seems like central banks learned something from the last crisis. - Is there still a realistic prospect of normalization? Adam…