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Matthew Sweet explores the idea of a 'polycrisis' of progress across the intertwined spheres of technology, economic expansion, climate and the global political order. In the spheres of technology, industry, economic growth and geopolitics the notion of human progress seems to have gone into reverse. There are widespread fears that new and incomprehensible technologies will turn against us. The industrial revolutions that enabled prosperity and comfort are now fuelling our ecological self-destruction. And just when we need global institutions to help regulate technological tyranny and combat climate disaster, the postwar architecture of the UN, international law and human rights seem increasingly marginalised in a world order that itself seems to be devolving. For centuries, technology and scientific development, economic expansion and global governance were all seen as markers of progress - the Enlightenment’s promise of endless, forward improvement. But across all these fields this narrative now seems to be in crisis. The idea of progress is so hardwired into our culture and psychology, it's not an easy idea to give up. But is the idea of endless progress itself now part of the problem? And progress for whom? It’s a relatively new idea - older periods in human history imagined the passing of time in cyclical or seasonal terms far more attuned to sustainability and the natural world. Given our current age of ‘polycrisis’ – the interconnection of global technology, climate catastrophe and geopolitical disorder - do we need to rethink how to think the future beyond the concept of linear time, endless expansion and progress? Author, historian and broadcaster Matthew Sweet asks what happened to progress – has it stopped? Are we going backwards? How have our ideas about progress themselves changed? With the help of thinkers, historians, writers and activists, Matthew asks if the concept can be re-imagined to give us newfound agency, shared humanity and most of all, hope. In this episode Matthew explores ideas of economic progress that drove the Industrial Revolution - progress as expansion, extraction, endless energy and constant growth - and the consequences this has had for the planet. The climate crisis is a huge rebuke to the idea of endless forward progress. Do we need to discard the idea and return to older models of cyclical time? Or are there new ways of thinking about progress if we open ourselves to non-human intelligences, both artificial and from the web of nature itself? Contributors this episode include cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, economist Kate Raworth, environmental philosopher and director of the Climate Majority Project Rupert Read, artist and writer on technology James Bridle, science writer Angela Saini, author Adam Greenfield, classicist Edith Hall, novelist and author John Lanchester, science writer Philip Ball and Google's CTO of Technology and Society, Blaise Aguera y Arcas. Producer: Eliane Glaser and Simon Hollis A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4