i think it was martin rees who said a good way to figure out how long things are going to last is to see how long they've lasted. and the enlightenment and modern western civilization is only a couple of hundred years old. i was looking at the curve of gdp, and it feels like it's just going against the thermodynamic gradient. it feels like you're going to fall off. don't you think maybe this is a local maximum and that with the uncertainty of climate change and artificial intelligence that all bets are off? >> well, a few things. there's no law of physics or the universe that says that gdp growth has to level off or stop because gdp isn't about stuff, gdp is about things that people value. and in particular as with the advance in technology, we get more and more human benefit with fewer and fewer atoms. i mean, our smartphone has replaced something like 50 appliances. most wealthy countries have reached peak stuff, that is, we consume less timber, less steel, less of every resource. but life keeps getting more and more interesting because we process bits on our cell phones. so gdp, t

[inaudible conversations] he ree nation's reaction to the death of martin luther king junior on april 4, 1968. welcome everyone and thank you so much for coming out tonight. i am the manager here we are so delighted to have jason with us tonight. he is the author of the brand-new book the heavens mike crack. he received his phd in history from uc berkeley. he is the associate professor of history at the university of new hampshire and he's the author of two other critically acclaimed books on the history of the hip --dash a civil rights movement. not too distant mirror shivers with intensity. with the continued relevance to their own travail. please join me in welcoming jason to water street bookstore. think you step for the introduction and for having me here at water street books. thank you to everybody for coming to this inaugural reading of my third book. i need to be tied to the it's exciting. we are starting history and making a little bit. most books on martin luther king on the balcony in memphis. that was on april 4, 1968. that's where it might begin. i pick up the story wher

the presests ban l lesthan ree wewes after the sassination of dr. martin luther king, jr. the 1968 columbia uprising led to one of the largest mass arrests in new york city history. more than 700 peop were arrestedn april 3030. itlso insped stude protests across the ununtry. today spend the hour oking back at is pivot moment. several of the student organizers are joining us in a minute. as one of them writes today in an op-ed in "the new york times" -- "in popular memory, the columbia protests were a high point of the campus movement against the vietnam war, and a mile marker in its radicalization. but this history, which privileges the actions and concerns of white students like myself, is incomplete, and it misrepresents what made the protests so powerful -- the leadership of the black students." those arththe wos of mar rudd, whwiwill jn usus ia minute. we'll ao spspeawith r rmond brown,ormer leer of the student afro-american society, and with nancy biberman, whoho, like rudd, was a member of sds, students for democtic society. but first, we begin with exexcerpts from t

[inaudible conversations] he ree nation's reaction to the death of martin luther king junior on apr 4