New World Notes - Love and Power (Part 1)

This week on New World Notes: radio program #304, December 31, 2013, from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m. (and again on Wednesday from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.), host Kenneth Dowst adapts to radio an interesting documentary film by Adam Curtis.

Advocates of (1) computer networks, (2) Ayn Rand-ian "heroic individualism," and (3) financial deregulation--each claimed that their cause would increase personal freedom, expand democracy, and produce eternal prosperity and stability. These three causes were interconnected--and were combined in Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.

All parties believed that the best thing politicians and governments could do would be to get out of the way and let "the New Economy" work its magic unhindered.

But it was all nonsense. This film explores these interconnected 20th-century delusions and their aftermath.

Part 1 takes us from the emergence of Ayn Rand in the 1950s to the economic bubble of the Clinton years (late 1990s).

New World Notes reaches California. The show is now carried by nonprofit, community-supported station WGIG-FM 104.9 in Modesto. Broadcast days and times vary.

WHUS 91.7 (Storrs, CT) has changed its program schedule. The station now broadcasts New World Notes on Thursdays at 10 AM. See the complete schedule.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "imprimatur") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford.

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Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want--and what they're trying to make us settle for.

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