Don’t Use Rome as a Model of Why Societies Collapse; Use Crime Syndicates and Somalia Instead

History Unplugged Podcast · Oct 2, 2025 · 49m

12,000 years ago, human history changed forever when the egalitarian groups of hunter-gathering humans began to settle down and organize themselves into hierarchies. The few dominated the many, seizing control through violence. What emerged were “Goliaths”: large societies built on a collection of hierarchies that are also terrifyingly fragile, collapsing time after time across the world. Today, we live in a single, global Goliath—one that is precariously interdependent—under threat from nuclear war, climate change, and the existential risks of AI. The next collapse…