Interview with Neil Howe
Co-author of The Fourth Turning talks about where we're going.
In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe produced The Fourth Turning, a book of predictive history that has gained wide appreciation for its eerily-accurate prognoses. Strauss died in 2007, but Howe is still with us, and gives here an update about how it’s all working out. Although he should be in his element these days, I have found Howe’s recent comments to be a little uninspired. He is more interested in generational role-playing and political changes on the broadest level, I think, than economics and markets. These prices going up and down are not so fascinating to everyone.
Interview of Neil Howe with Opto Sessions.
Update: I replaced the original interview with a more recent one. But also, I found out that Howe has his own weekly podcast, here.
The interview is 13 months old.
First time I’ve listened to Neil Howe. His presentation has something to do with generations and cycles of social moods followed by periods of crises followed by a new social consensus followed by a new generation, or something like that.
David McAlvany’s ponderous way of asking a question deprived Howe of my giving him a sympathetic listening.
Biden, Howe tells us, is from the “silent generation.” I’ve never heard that term before. Apparently the Silent Generation are those Americans too young to fight in WWII and too old to indulge in the excesses of the 1960s. Alone among the country’s generations, the Silents have never produced a president, — until Joe Biden came along. Howe says the 2020 election, which was three months away at the time of the interview, is “their absolutely last chance to produce a president, it looks as though this generation they will do it with Joe Biden.”
Well, yeah, if you believe Biden was elected counting legal votes only and if you believe the Silents wield great influence and if you believe Biden is actually the party leader, — if you assent to that then Howe’s got a point.
The interview did not whet my appetite to read the book.