Grim Old Days, with Chelsea Follett

Life before the Industrial Revolution was not simpler, slower, or more humane. It was short, violent, filthy, and saturated with grief, and almost nobody alive today can picture it accurately. That gap is not harmless. It shapes how people respond to economic growth, to AI, and to every technology that promises to change how we live.

Chelsea Follett, research fellow at the Cato Institute and the mind behind HumanProgress.org, returns to the show with a new book, The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past. The argument is blunt: we have not only solved many of the problems our ancestors faced, we have erased the memory of them. Nostalgia fills the vacuum, and nostalgia is a terrible guide to policy. What follows takes the romantic version of the past apart and argues that gratitude for what we have is the first step toward keeping it.

Chapters:

0:22 Introduction to the Grim Old Days

1:56 Why Progress Matters

5:40 Why We Romanticize the Past

8:45 Harsh Realities of Family Life

13:54 Child Labor and Daily Work

16:24 Violence and Social Progress

20:55 Defining the Pre-Industrial Era

25:12 Fragile Paths to Progress

29:06 Sources and Historical Skepticism