How We Got Here

The decisions that shaped the world we inherited

The Marshall Plan, OPEC, China's WTO accession — the decisions made decades ago that locked in the world we inherited.

Series 4 · 11 Episodes · Audience: Historians of technology, strategy consultants, senior executives, policy researchers

Episodes

• Ep. 1: The Marshall Plan — How America rebuilt Europe's industrial base after 1945 — and why the current moment echoes those decisions (18 min read)
• Ep. 2: How OPEC Rewrote the Rules of Industrial Power Overnight — The 1973 oil crisis reshaped European industry in months. Energy dependency is not new. Europe's response then explains its vulnerabilities now. (19 min read)
• Ep. 3: Japan's Industrial Miracle — The playbook Europe keeps studying but never copies (22 min read)
• Ep. 4: Philips — The company that invented half of what you use — and then gave it all away (20 min read)
• Ep. 5: How Philips Accidentally Created Europe's Most Strategic Company — In 1984, Philips spun off a small lithography unit. Today ASML controls the global semiconductor supply chain. The most productive corporate breakup in European history. (24 min read)
• Ep. 6: The Fall of the Wall — How 1989 opened markets but closed factories — and why Eastern Europe's industrial collapse still shapes the continent's politics (21 min read)
• Ep. 7: China Joins the WTO — The trade decision that moved the world's factories — and created the dependencies Europe is now trying to undo (29 min read)
• Ep. 8: How Airbus Proved Europe Can Compete at Scale — Four countries, four languages, decades of political negotiation. The messy, expensive, ultimately successful model for European industrial sovereignty. (16 min read)
• Ep. 9: From Suez 1956 to Suez 2021 — The same canal, the same lesson — sixty-five years apart, the world's most important chokepoint exposed the same vulnerability (18 min read)
• Ep. 10: From Coal and Steel to Chips and Batteries — The ECSC was a peace project disguised as an industrial treaty. Seventy years later, Europe is running the same play — with semiconductors and lithium instead of coal and iron ore. (20 min read)
• Ep. 11: The Weight of Decisions — Ten turning points, one continuous thread — and a note from the author (18 min read)