# How Civilizations Die Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679/how-civilizations-die Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679/how-civilizations-die.md Podcast: [The Students](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679) Published: 2026-04-24T00:05:45+00:00 Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/admin-students/episodes/How-Civilizations-Die-e3icjg4 Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/11136470c/podcast/play/118950852/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-3-23%2F422738837-44100-2-0131b40782183.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-students-7814679/episodes/how-civilizations-die Duration seconds: 4464 ## Resource Carroll Quigley's 1961 book The Evolution of Civilizations describes the stages a civilization goes through as it grows, expands, decays, and falls. Ben Landau-Taylor tells us how Quigley's theory works, and where our civilization sits in this process today. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-students-7814679/episodes/how-civilizations-die/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679/how-civilizations-die.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.