Choice is so important to who we are in the West is no longer feels like something we do, so much as something we are. Deny someone choice, and it feels like you are challenging their very humanity.

Where does this obsession with choice come from, historically and philosophically? What are its foundations and justifications? And has it gone too far? Can you have too much of this particular good thing?

This week Nick Spencer talks with Sophia Rosenfeld about her book ‘The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life’

Purchase a copy of her book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Age-Choice-History-Freedom-Modern/dp/0691164711

The idea that society should grow - and continue to grow, economically, without ending, without limits - is a relatively new and fiercely defended idea. It emerged first in Western countries but has captured much of the world today.

How realistic is it? How "sustainable"? What should we think about “limits to growth”? Is it a narrative of declinism, best ignored? Or a warning we dismiss at huge peril?

This week Nick Spencer talks with Richard McNeill Douglas about his book ‘The Meaning of Growth: The Rhetoric of Environmental Scepticism and the Defence of Modernity’

Richard’s book will be published in Autumn, find out more here. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003607632/meaning-growth-richard-mcneill-douglas