History Future Now with Tristan Fischer

Once upon a time, you were a toddler. By the simple act of covering your eyes with your hands the people around you would cease to exist. By lowering your hands they would, miraculously and to great amusement, reappear. More terrifyingly, your mother’s disappearance from the room could result in howls of anguish: had she disappeared forever? As we grow older, we learn that just because you cannot temporarily see something it does not mean that that something has permanently disappeared. Of course the person is still there – your fingers have just hidden them. Of course your mother is going to come back – she has just stepped out of the room. And yet despite what we have learned, our minds are still hardwired to ignore what is not directly in front of us. We have not really grown up and our adult minds are standing on the shoulders of toddlers. Like our other hard wired instinct, fight or flight, this causes us problems in managing some of the great issues of today.

After four years of recession in Western economies, a new theme is beginning to emerge: this time things really are different. It appears that we are not witnessing a conventional recession...

Rare earth metals are not exactly a typical dinner party topic of conversation. But perhaps they should be: they combine high technology and the global balance of power, with an interesting discussion about electron shells thrown in for extra points.