EP.876: Risk Illiteracy-The Pandemic Making Coronavirus More Deadly?

On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, the Director of the Harding Centre for Risk Literacy. He discusses how the lack of the ability of much of the global population to assess risk could lead to more deaths, making the Coronavirus pandemic’s effects worse, how risk illiteracy lead to more deaths on America’s roads after 9/11, whether world leaders such as Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are really ‘following the science’ in their policies to tackle Covid-19 and more! Finally, we speak to Richard Lachmann, US sociologist and author of First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers. He discusses how the United States’ decline is similar to the imperial collapse of the Netherlands and Great Britain, how climate change could accelerate the US’ decline, what a post-US hegemony world would look like and why China nor India could achieve the power the US achieved, what the Iraq War, Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's election meant for US hegemony, the possibility of mass social unrest and mass movements within the US as the country declines economically and geopolitically and more!