On Decline
Stagnation, Nostalgia, and Why Every Year Is the Worst One Ever
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
On Decline
Buy for $11.17
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Tom Lute
-
By:
-
Andrew Potter
About this listen
A Winnipeg Free Press Top Read of 2021
What if David Bowie really was holding the fabric of the universe together?
The death of David Bowie in January 2016 was a bad start to a year that got a lot worse: war in Syria, the Zika virus, terrorist attacks in Brussels and Nice, the Brexit vote—and the election of Donald Trump. The end-of-year wraps declared 2016 “the worst … ever.” Four even more troubling years later, the question of our apocalypse had devolved into a tired social media cliché. But when COVID-19 hit, journalist and professor of public policy Andrew Potter started to wonder: what if The End isn’t one big event, but a long series of smaller ones?
In On Decline, Potter surveys the current problems and likely future of Western civilization (spoiler: it’s not great). Economic stagnation and the slowing of scientific innovation. Falling birth rates and environmental degradation. The devastating effects of cultural nostalgia and the havoc wreaked by social media on public discourse. Most acutely, the various failures of Western governments in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. If the legacy of the Enlightenment and its virtues—reason, logic, science, evidence—has run its course, how and why has it happened? And where do we go from here?
©2021 Andrew Potter (P)2022 Field NotesListeners also enjoyed...
-
On Property
- Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition
- By: Rinaldo Walcott
- Narrated by: David Andrew Reid
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 2
In On Property, Rinaldo Walcott explores the long shadow cast by slavery’s afterlife and shows how present-day abolitionists continue the work of their forebears in service of an imaginative, creative philosophy that ensures freedom and equality for all.
By: Rinaldo Walcott
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,030
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 897
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 896
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,838
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 11,828
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11,742
Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Disappointing
- By Noah Lugeons on 09-11-18
-
Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7,226
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,206
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,130
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
We live in the best of all times
- By Neuron on 02-25-18
By: Steven Pinker
-
Dark Future
- Uncovering the Great Reset's Terrifying Next Phase (The Great Reset Series)
- By: Glenn Beck, Justin Trask Haskins
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 273
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 273
At important meetings in 2021 and 2022, powerful leaders from government, finance, media, and business who support the World Economic Forum’s plan for a Great Reset of capitalism launched a new “call to action” titled the “Great Narrative.” The Great Narrative campaign seeks to use the decay of traditional values throughout the West and new and future advancements in technology—including in the areas of artificial intelligence, automation, the metaverse, robotics, and more—to seize control of economies and societies in North America and Europe.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Very good
- By Yup on 07-23-23
By: Glenn Beck, and others
-
The Great Reset
- And the War for the World
- By: Alex Jones
- Narrated by: Joe Kredjetti
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 729
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 648
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 645
If you really want to know what’s happening in the world, this is the one book you must hear now. Alex Jones is the most censored man on the planet and you should ask yourself why that is. There is a powerful authoritarian takeover in process that is seeking to capture the entire human system and turn it into an artificial factory farm controlled system. We are in a war for the future of the world. In this book, you will hear from the world’s elites, from their own mouths, what they are planning for you and your families and you will learn what you can do to fight it.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great Content - Narrator Not Alex
- By Reader on 10-18-22
By: Alex Jones
-
On Property
- Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition
- By: Rinaldo Walcott
- Narrated by: David Andrew Reid
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 2
In On Property, Rinaldo Walcott explores the long shadow cast by slavery’s afterlife and shows how present-day abolitionists continue the work of their forebears in service of an imaginative, creative philosophy that ensures freedom and equality for all.
By: Rinaldo Walcott
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,030
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 897
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 896
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,838
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 11,828
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11,742
Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Disappointing
- By Noah Lugeons on 09-11-18
-
Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7,226
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,206
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,130
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
We live in the best of all times
- By Neuron on 02-25-18
By: Steven Pinker
-
Dark Future
- Uncovering the Great Reset's Terrifying Next Phase (The Great Reset Series)
- By: Glenn Beck, Justin Trask Haskins
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 273
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 273
At important meetings in 2021 and 2022, powerful leaders from government, finance, media, and business who support the World Economic Forum’s plan for a Great Reset of capitalism launched a new “call to action” titled the “Great Narrative.” The Great Narrative campaign seeks to use the decay of traditional values throughout the West and new and future advancements in technology—including in the areas of artificial intelligence, automation, the metaverse, robotics, and more—to seize control of economies and societies in North America and Europe.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Very good
- By Yup on 07-23-23
By: Glenn Beck, and others
-
The Great Reset
- And the War for the World
- By: Alex Jones
- Narrated by: Joe Kredjetti
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 729
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 648
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 645
If you really want to know what’s happening in the world, this is the one book you must hear now. Alex Jones is the most censored man on the planet and you should ask yourself why that is. There is a powerful authoritarian takeover in process that is seeking to capture the entire human system and turn it into an artificial factory farm controlled system. We are in a war for the future of the world. In this book, you will hear from the world’s elites, from their own mouths, what they are planning for you and your families and you will learn what you can do to fight it.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great Content - Narrator Not Alex
- By Reader on 10-18-22
By: Alex Jones
-
What We Owe the Future
- By: William MacAskill
- Narrated by: William MacAskill
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 793
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 685
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 677
In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. It’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed, counter the end of moral progress, and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human. If we set humanity’s course right, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything to give them a world of justice, hope, and beauty.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Empty philosophising
- By Oleksandr on 08-25-22
-
Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
- By: Fareed Zakaria
- Narrated by: Fareed Zakaria
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,242
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,035
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,024
Lenin once said, “There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen.” This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps listeners to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic impacts that may take years to unfold. In the form of 10 straightforward “lessons”, covering topics from globalization and threat-preparedness to inequality and technological advancement, Zakaria creates a structure for listeners to begin thinking beyond COVID-19.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
SADLY HOPEFUL
- By Frances J. Freeman on 10-11-20
By: Fareed Zakaria
-
The Evolution of Everything
- How New Ideas Emerge
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 761
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 662
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 658
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch - the endless fascination human beings have with design rather than evolution, with direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley's wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By Winfield on 12-16-15
By: Matt Ridley
-
Against the Web
- A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Sam Seder
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 58
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 45
As the host of The Michael Brooks Show and cohost of the Majority Report, Brooks was a progressive fighter whose work brought people together from around the world. In this, his first book, he lets his understanding of the digital media environment direct his analysis of the "conservative rebels" who had taken YouTube by storm in 2018. Brooks provides a theoretically rigorous but accessible critique of the most prominent "renegades," including Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Brett Weinstein while also examining the social, political, and media environment that such rebels thrive in.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
REST IN POWER MICHAEL BROOKS
- By illiterate/left-handed/Aries on 06-13-23
By: Michael Brooks
-
Creating Freedom
- The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future
- By: Raoul Martinez
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 34
A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The BEST book, I've listened to in a long time
- By G. Newton on 04-16-17
By: Raoul Martinez
-
Four Futures
- Life After Capitalism
- By: Peter Frase
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 216
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 177
Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this postcapitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminism might actually entail.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A great read for futurists
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-17
By: Peter Frase
-
The New Abnormal
- The Rise of the Biomedical Security State
- By: Aaron Kheriaty
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 139
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 129
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 127
When COVID-19 broke out, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty’s work put him on the front lines. Realizing that the mental, physical, and economic toll of lockdowns was catastrophic, he began to protest that the cure was worse than the disease—an intolerable heresy. When he refused vaccination because he had natural immunity from a previous infection, the University of California, Irvine, medical school fired him. He fought back, in the courts and in the media, and has become a reliable source of truth amid official obfuscation and censorship.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing!
- By JenniferG on 11-02-22
By: Aaron Kheriaty
-
The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
- By: Martin Gurri
- Narrated by: Tony Messano
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 451
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 385
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 382
Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
New forces break things, but can't replace them
- By Philo on 06-25-19
By: Martin Gurri
-
Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order
- By: Patrick Wood
- Narrated by: Patrick M. Wood
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 245
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 218
Looking underneath the cover of globalization, Wood shatters the false narrative of a promised utopia and exposes the true nature of the deception used to promote this new economic order, in this audiobook. Those elite who hate the bedrock of American liberty and its time-tested constitution have pulled out all the stops to destroy both, and it's time for citizens to stand up to reject them. As always, Wood closes with the nature of effective resistance and the tools that can help to achieve success.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A MUST !! Understand and Read documents of world r
- By Jaim on 04-23-20
By: Patrick Wood
-
How Democracy Ends
- By: David Runciman
- Narrated by: David Runciman
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Since the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get? In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated 20th-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable....
By: David Runciman
-
The Decadent Society
- How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Ross Douthat
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 617
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 519
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 510
The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing - how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Another Liberal Arts Intellectual who does not rea
- By Trebla on 03-24-20
By: Ross Douthat
-
The Good Ancestor
- A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking
- By: Roman Krznaric
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
A call to save ourselves and our planet by targeting the root of our inaction: extreme shortsightedness.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Limited
- By Sofia Batalha on 03-15-21
By: Roman Krznaric
Critic reviews
“Terse, direct, provocative”—Mark Abley, The Walrus
“Like its historic ancestors, On Decline deserves a wide general audience and should be required reading for the incoming federal government.”—Winnipeg Free Press