It’s August 2016 and the best time in human history to be alive. Well, at least that’s according to Johan Norberg, who writes this week’s Spectator cover piece on the new golden age. Never, he says, has there been less war, disease, conflict, discrimination or poverty. So why do we find that so hard to believe? On the podcast, Lara Prendergast is joined by Fraser Nelson and Johan, who says:
So can it be true? And if good news doesn’t sell, why make a positive piece like this the cover story? Fraser says:‘What I’ve done is look at long-term data and statistics – everything from poverty, malnutrition, literacy to fatalities of war, the risk of dying in a natural disaster, the risk of being subjected to a dictatorship – and everything is improving. And people have a hard time believing that because they are hearing all of these other messages and often people prefer those anecdotes and shocking stories to actual data’
‘People pick up The Spectator precisely to read the stories that other publications don’t come up with.
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