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This episode of The Thought Exchange is a conversation American sociologist, historian and political scientist Jack A Goldstone. Goldstone is author of 13 books and many, many research articles, with a focus on revolutions and social change. In particular, he made a key contributions in looking at the relationship between population cycles and political revolutions. Indeed, there are those who have credited Goldstone with predicting Trump and the turbulent Twenties almost 30 years ago, when he developed and published his Demographic-Structural Theory. Jack A. Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Professor of Public Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Goldstone has worked all over the world, including Russia and Hong Kong, and has worked for a number of US government agencies, consulting on USAID Democracy Assistance Programs, as_well as the UN and various European governments. He has also worked at the Brookings Institute think tank and is a current fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre. Goldstone has worked extensively on the conditions required for building democracy and stability in developing nations. Goldstone has studied revolution and social change around the world and across time, with fascinating analyses of world-changing political events throughout modern history. In particular, his 20143 book Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction is clear and accessible, with a number of compelling but counter-intuitive conclusions. The conversation is a deep-dive into Goldstone’s thinking about the causes of revolution, what current social conditions might tell us about where we are headed and also how to ensure scientifically rigorous methodology in the social sciences.