Politics

How Civilizations Fall—With Patrick Wyman

Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in southern Greece.

(Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

What can ancient human prehistory teach us about fighting fascism today? It turns out, quite a bit! So says historian Patrick Wyman, whose recent book, Lost Worlds, covers the 10,000 years between the end of the Ice Age and the Late Bronze Age collapse. Together, we discussed what makes societies fall apart, what is lost when they do, and how history demonstrates that human agency—and our decisions today—really do matter in determining what comes next for our civilization. Check out Patrick’s wonderful book Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World⁠. And his great podcast, Past Lives.

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Matt DaSilva

Matt DaSilva is a co-host of the Fighting Fascism podcast.

Aaron Regunberg



Aaron Regunberg is a climate lawyer, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and a former Rhode Island state representative.

Jonathan Smucker



Jonathan Smucker is cofounder and executive director of Popular Comms, a cofounder of Pennsylvania Stands Up, and the author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. He has worked for over 25 years as a political organizer, campaigner, and strategist, and has trained thousands of organizers and social movement participants.

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