In this episode of Past Is Prologue, John looks at more than 200 years of American economic history to answer a deceptively simple question:

Why does the United States keep crashing its own economy?

Starting with the Panic of 1819 and running through 1837, 1873, 1893, the Great Depression, and the 2008 financial collapse, John shows how the same boom-and-bust pattern repeats with stunning consistency. Rather than treating each crisis as a fluke or “black swan,” he traces the underlying structural forces that make meltdown a recurring feature of the American system.

He examines the development of the market economy, waves of reckless speculation, weak or nonexistent regulation, new financial instruments that outpace oversight, and political failures that allow predictable disasters to become national catastrophes. And he explains why the people who design the riskiest systems almost never pay the price — but ordinary workers, farmers, and homeowners always do.

If you’ve ever wondered why America has endured so many economic collapses — or why the next one shouldn’t surprise anyone — this episode lays it out clearly.

In this episode of How the Hell Did We Get Here?, John digs into Chapter 2 of Charles Sellers’ The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 — a pivotal moment when the United States was pushed, pulled, and coerced into a radically new economic order.

Rather than a smooth evolution into a “modern” market economy, Sellers shows a far more turbulent reality: political battles over surplus capital, state-driven development, forced restructuring of everyday life, and deep conflicts between the winners of the new order and the many people who never asked to be part of it.

John walks through the major forces Sellers identifies:

The collapse of Jeffersonian agrarianism

Madison’s surprising embrace of nationalist economics

The foundational role of banks, credit, and internal improvements

How market relations began invading households, communities, and farms

The early psychological and cultural backlash against this new economic regime

Along the way, John explains why this chapter matters far beyond the 1810s and 1820s. Sellers’ arguments shed light on how economic revolutions actually happen: unevenly, with immense pressure, through political struggle, and often against the preferences of ordinary Americans.

This episode is for anyone trying to understand how the U.S. was pushed into capitalism — and how the tensions born in this period still shape American life today.

In this episode of Past Is Prologue, John looks at what 250 years of American history can teach us about the rise of artificial intelligence.

Rather than treating AI as a totally unprecedented rupture, John compares it to five earlier waves of technological and economic transformation:

1. The Market Revolution of the early 1800s

2. The First Industrial Revolution and the rise of wage labor

3. The Second Industrial Revolution, corporate power, and the Progressive backlash

4. Post–World War II globalization and the hollowing out of local economies

5. The Internet and digital revolution from the mid-1990s to the 2010s

Along the way, he traces familiar patterns: displacement and “creative destruction,” the concentration of power in the hands of a few actors, the lag between innovation and regulation, the gap between tech idealism and lived reality, and how badly societies tend to fail the people least equipped to adapt.

John argues that AI fits squarely inside this historical pattern—not as an omen of inevitable utopia or apocalypse, but as another turning point where choices about policy, power, and responsibility will matter far more than hype.

If you’re trying to make sense of AI without swallowing the sales pitch from the people building and owning it, this episode is for you.