586. How Does the Lost World of Vienna Still Shape Our Lives?

Freakonomics Radio

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).