A huge thank you to the Sydney opera house and promoters for making this talk available, I've read all Niall's books and it's great to hear him to live too.

Thank you!

Marvelous to know that he is married to such a brilliant woman and also an intellectual at Hoover.

My gosh, he was right about Trump's election!

6 months before Trump is elected he foretells what populism would lead to. Anti immigrant, the Wall and Tariffs and followers would accept nothing less. Also says The China tariffs are going to be serious. (Niall also called the subprime crises a couple of years before it crashed) Stock Market investors best not ignore trading war becoming a growing trend and what that entails

@1:10:37 I like how he has to bash Paul Krugman even when he travels abroad

Thanks. Sadly I was not in the audience.

I have all his books. Absolutely fascinating

Genial.

If Chinese can see this speech earlier, they will understand what's happening.

Sempre impecável!.. palestra fenomenal! ☺👌

Niall gets this wrong. Institutions are derived from culture. When the colonial powers gave independence to their non-European colonies, they bequeathed them the infrastructure, the civil service, education, police and other institutions based on the liberal European model. In almost all cases the post-Colonial countries descended into chaos and dictatorship or violent civil-war within a few years. Similarly when new countries were explicitly modelled on the European/US model such as Liberia, the non-European populace destroyed civilization equally quickly. Conversely when European pioneers taking just spades and seeds settled new territories in the Americas and South Africa, the institutions of liberal Western society developed naturally. African-American cities in the US such as Baltimore and Detriot that have not adopted European culture are as corrupt and as violent as cities in Africa, despite modern institutions. Institutions are neither necessary (to start with) nor sufficient for civilization, but culture is.

Love The Sesrchers!  Ferguson was pretty good with a foreigner's analysis of Trump at the time, and aquitted himself well in hindsight.  Working class people in my neck of the woods were so fed up with political correctness (which in many ways is a puritanical reaction to the excesses unleashed in the "boomer's"  sexual revolution) Trump was a very naughty boy with a sailor's tongue and NBC thought they destroyed him with the release of that hot mic episode.  Four years later they are still harpooning their whale, now coated with hydroxychloroquine.

well I like Niall's understanding. Unfortunately time scales escape peoples broader understanding as they live and think in the moment. What is happening in this year as it gains perspective in your understanding is not what is actually guiding the world. Looking for patterns and key moments shows that we are repeating ourselves over and over. Our countries all like to think they guide events but they are really stumbling through the repeating patterns of history and learning little along the way. But hey! it's good to think you're in the driving seat! And when it goes off course you can always say "no one could see that coming", well not with your eyes closed and no perspective of how history repeats itself.

He wasn't kidding about the electorate having ADD. No lessons were learned.

He says it wasn't culture but ideas that led to western ascendency. Culture IS ideas. Ideas make up culture.

National polls as a predictor of election outcomes a year or six months before election day is similar to predicting exchange rates a year ahead. These are genuine unknown, unknowns and to use polls to predict public moods a year ahead is simply infantile.

Neil’s description of the retreat and avoidance of intellectuals from popular politics is very telling. The absence of ideas flowing fore critique ( name-calling) is telling. Labour are retreating to ‘nationalisation’ instead or progressive democratisation and decentralisation of politics and the economy. Also digging in when wrong - Remoaners - is the stupid order of the day of so-called intellectuals.

The cookbook to inequality recipe is the twinkie deal, CEOs pay raise   Rises 400% and the  Baker's get an unleveling sifting  pay cut.  (  GOOD OLD AMERICA CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY. )

I love Mr Ferguson's work. I have no interest in Trump or increased tariffs but I think Mr Ferguson should come to my village in Norfolk, UK and tell immigration is not a problem. I was racially abused by Turkish man (in the nastiest way..not a joke) in his shop in the town for no reason other than being English. There are serious problems with social cohesion here. It is massive and a genuine concern.  But I suppose the negative results he predicts are the same weather or not he has seen the reality on the ground. He just sounds like a "politician historian" who is disconnected from factual events for ordinary people.