History Future Now

Data-driven analysis of the structural forces — demographic, technological, economic —
that will shape the next century.

Issue 15

March 2026 · 8 articles · 86 min reading time
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Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

What Worked: Five Thousand Years of Evidence for How Civilisations Flourish

Most political positions are argued from ideology. History Future Now's are argued from evidence. Five thousand years of civilisational data — from Sumer to Singapore — points consistently in the same…

13 min read →
Part 1 · Natural Resources 3 charts Audio

The New Oil: Why the Race for Critical Minerals Will Define the 21st Century

China banned gallium and germanium exports in 2023 and most Western policymakers had never heard of either element. The energy transition depends on minerals most people cannot name, mined in places m…

10 min read →
Part 4 · Society 3 charts Audio

The Great Divergence: Why Young Men and Women No Longer See the Same World

Young women have moved sharply more liberal across the developed world. Young men have not — or have moved more conservative. The gap is historically unprecedented. The political and demographic conse…

10 min read →
Part 1 · Natural Resources 3 charts Audio

The Atom Returns: Why the World's Most Feared Energy Source Is Its Best Hope

Microsoft signed a deal to restart Three Mile Island for AI power. France generates 70% of its electricity from nuclear at half Germany's carbon intensity. China is building 150 reactors. The atom is…

10 min read →
Part 3 · Jobs & Economy 3 charts Audio

The Debasement: Why Every Great Power That Borrowed Its Way to Greatness Borrowed Its Way to Ruin

The US spent more on interest payments than on defence in 2024 for the first time in history. Spain defaulted six times between 1557 and 1647. France's debt triggered the Revolution. The pattern is al…

11 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Locked Gate: How the West Priced Its Children Out of Existence

The average house in England costs 7.7 times the median salary. In Seoul, a young couple saves for 18 years to buy a flat. Every city with extreme housing costs has a fertility rate below 1.5. This is…

10 min read →
Part 2 · Global Balance of Power 4 charts Audio

The Ladder and the Lie: Why Every Great Economy Was Built on Tariffs and Free Trade Only Serves the Already Dominant

Every great economy in history was built behind tariff walls. Britain, America, Germany, Japan, South Korea, China — all protected domestic industry while it grew, then preached free trade once domina…

12 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Price of Admission: What the Netherlands and Denmark Reveal About the True Cost of Immigration

The Netherlands and Denmark are the two best-documented case studies on the fiscal and social costs of immigration in Europe. Both are small, wealthy, high-trust welfare states with meticulous statist…

10 min read →

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Part 4 · Society 3 charts Audio

The Invisible Judge: Why Guilt and Shame Societies Are Incompatible

Guilt societies are ruled by an internal judge; shame societies by the eye of the crowd. The difference shapes corruption, rule of law, and how civilisations understand each other — when they meet, th…

11 min read →
Part 2 · Global Balance of Power 4 charts Audio

The Ladder and the Lie: Why Every Great Economy Was Built on Tariffs and Free Trade Only Serves the Already Dominant

Every great economy in history was built behind tariff walls. Britain, America, Germany, Japan, South Korea, China — all protected domestic industry while it grew, then preached free trade once domina…

12 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Price of Admission: What the Netherlands and Denmark Reveal About the True Cost of Immigration

The Netherlands and Denmark are the two best-documented case studies on the fiscal and social costs of immigration in Europe. Both are small, wealthy, high-trust welfare states with meticulous statist…

10 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

What Worked: Five Thousand Years of Evidence for How Civilisations Flourish

Most political positions are argued from ideology. History Future Now's are argued from evidence. Five thousand years of civilisational data — from Sumer to Singapore — points consistently in the same…

13 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

When the Servants Are Silicon: What History's Leisure Classes Reveal About the AI Age

Robots are not stealing jobs. They are replacing the unborn. When the Shadow Workforce handles survival, eight billion people become an aristocracy. Athens used that freedom to invent philosophy. Rome…

15 min read →
Part 1 · Natural Resources 3 charts Audio

The Atom Returns: Why the World's Most Feared Energy Source Is Its Best Hope

Microsoft signed a deal to restart Three Mile Island for AI power. France generates 70% of its electricity from nuclear at half Germany's carbon intensity. China is building 150 reactors. The atom is…

10 min read →
Part 3 · Jobs & Economy 3 charts Audio

The Debasement: Why Every Great Power That Borrowed Its Way to Greatness Borrowed Its Way to Ruin

The US spent more on interest payments than on defence in 2024 for the first time in history. Spain defaulted six times between 1557 and 1647. France's debt triggered the Revolution. The pattern is al…

11 min read →
Part 4 · Society 5 charts Audio

The Empty Throne: Why the West No Longer Believes in Its Own Institutions

Trust in government, media, science, and the judiciary is at historic lows across the Western world. This is not a passing mood. It is the rational response of electorates who have watched their democ…

15 min read →
Part 4 · Society 3 charts Audio

The Great Divergence: Why Young Men and Women No Longer See the Same World

Young women have moved sharply more liberal across the developed world. Young men have not — or have moved more conservative. The gap is historically unprecedented. The political and demographic conse…

10 min read →
Part 1 · Natural Resources 4 charts Audio

The Last Drop: Why Every Civilisation That Ran Out of Water Collapsed

Water is the one resource for which there is no substitute. Every major civilisation was built on water management — Mesopotamia's canals, Egypt's Nile, Rome's aqueducts. And every civilisation that l…

10 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Locked Gate: How the West Priced Its Children Out of Existence

The average house in England costs 7.7 times the median salary. In Seoul, a young couple saves for 18 years to buy a flat. Every city with extreme housing costs has a fertility rate below 1.5. This is…

10 min read →
Part 1 · Natural Resources 3 charts Audio

The New Oil: Why the Race for Critical Minerals Will Define the 21st Century

China banned gallium and germanium exports in 2023 and most Western policymakers had never heard of either element. The energy transition depends on minerals most people cannot name, mined in places m…

10 min read →
Part 4 · Society 6 charts Audio

A Nation Transformed: Britain's Demographic Revolution, 1948–2050

Britain has undergone one of the most rapid peacetime demographic transformations in European history. It was not planned. It emerged from a sequence of policy decisions — and its long-term trajectory…

13 min read →
Part 2 · Global Balance of Power 5 charts Audio

The Great Offshoring: How the World's Factory Moved East

In a single generation, the West gave away the industrial monopoly it had held for two centuries. From the rust belts of the Midlands to the boomtowns of Guangdong, this is the story of the Great Offs…

13 min read →
Part 4 · Society 10 charts Audio

The Builders Are Dying: How the Populations That Made the Modern World Are Disappearing — And What Happens Next

Between them, European and East Asian civilisations built virtually everything that defines the modern world — the scientific method, industrial manufacturing, semiconductors, the internet, modern med…

16 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Gates of Nations: How Every Civilisation in History Controlled Immigration — Until the West Stopped

For five thousand years, every successful civilisation tightly controlled who could enter, settle, and become a citizen. Then, in the space of a single generation, the West decided this was bigotry. T…

13 min read →
Part 3 · Jobs & Economy 5 charts Audio

The New Literacy: How AI Is Killing The Scribes And What Happens Next

For five thousand years, if you could not write, you hired a scribe. If you could not code, you hired a developer. AI has just made everyone literate in the digital scribal arts — coding, design, film…

10 min read →
Part 2 · Global Balance of Power 4 charts Audio

Europe Rearms: Why The Continent That Invented Total War Is Spending €800 Billion On Defence

In 1932, Germany spent less than 1% of GDP on its military. By 1939, that figure was 23%. The transformation took just seven years. Today, Europe is embarking on the fastest rearmament since the Cold…

18 min read →
Part 4 · Society 4 charts Audio

The Death Of The Fourth Estate: What The Collapse Of Newspapers Means For Democracy, Power, And Truth

On February 4th 2026, a Washington Post reporter in a warzone in Ukraine learned by text message that she had been laid off. Nearly half the newsroom was gone in a single day. This is not just a story…

20 min read →
Part 3 · Jobs & Economy 1 charts Audio

The Return of the State Factory: Why Nations That Forgot How To Make Things Are Remembering

In February 2026, the United States signed a trade deal with Taiwan that included $250 billion in semiconductor investment pledges. Tariffs are back. Industrial policy is back. After forty years of be…

11 min read →

Press Play

Every article, narrated in full. Queue them up and listen on the go.

🌍 Part 1: Natural Resources

Energy, food, water, land — the physical foundations that every civilisation depends on.

All 14 →

⚖️ Part 2: Global Balance of Power

How nations rise, compete, and decline — from colonial empires to modern China.

All 16 →

⚙️ Part 3: Jobs & Economy

Automation, trade, debt, and the future of work in an age of intelligent machines.

All 14 →

🏛️ Part 4: Society

Democracy, religion, migration, identity — the human systems that bind us together.

All 33 →

By Tristan Fischer. A lifelong fascination with history, science, and technology led to a simple observation: the deeper you understand how the past unfolded, the more clearly you can see the future. These essays trace historical patterns and technological trajectories to work out what comes next.

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