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TNBC Explainers — Part I: Power, Perception & Society
Your guide to understanding how modern societies work
Welcome to TNBC Explainers — Part I
This course breaks down the foundational concepts needed to understand how power, narratives, and collective behavior shape modern societies.
Rather than reacting to headlines, TNBC Explainers focuses on the ideas behind events — the concepts that quietly influence how people think, comply, dissent, and coordinate.
TNBC Explainers — Part I is structured as a six-module course, designed to build understanding step by step.
The Six Modules in Part I
Whether you’re watching a deep-dive analysis, a TNBC History Rhymes episode, or an exploration of contemporary political and social tensions, these explainers provide the essential vocabulary to understand what’s really happening beneath the surface.
If you want to follow the forces shaping the next big cycle, it helps to start with the concepts.
TNBC Explainers — the ideas behind the analysis.
New explainer episodes are added regularly.
Subscribe and follow the full course to build a coherent framework for understanding today’s world — and for explaining it to others.
TheNextBigCycle
Your guide to navigating a new world order
How beliefs are shaped, attention is guided, and collective behavior emerge
How authority is structured, legitimized, and enforced
How monetary and financial systems shape societies
Why societies behave non-linearly — and why systems unravel
How states compete, cooperate, and project power
How the world reorganizes during periods of systemic change
6 1.0 Groupthink — Why Societies Make Bad Choices
When disagreement disappears without being resolved, evidence stops shaping outcomes — and groupthink takes over.
1.07 Why Surveillance Expands
As a gradual system where monitoring becomes routine infrastructure
1.08 Social Credit Systems — Why Compliance Gets Quantified
What is social control — and why does it tend to expand when systems come under strain?
2.00 Who Rules —
And How?
Introduction TNBC Explainers - Module II
2.01 Social Control — How Behavior Is Shaped Without Force
What is social control — and why does it tend to expand when systems come under strain?
2.02 Ideology, Systems, and Governance
Why Politics Keeps Talking Past Itself
2.03 Legitimacy — Authority Without Trust
Why Governments Stay in Power Without Trust
2.04 Rule of Law vs. Rule by Law — When Law Limits Power, or Serves It
Why Laws Don’t Always Protect You
2.05 Democracy — When Choice Narrows Without Disappearing
Why Democracy Is Shrinking
2.06 Technocracy — Governance by Expertise Instead of Politics
When Decisions Are Handed to Experts
2.07 State Capacity — What Governments Can Actually Do
Why Can’t Governments Do What They Promise?
2.08 Authoritarianism — Control Without Meaningful Choice
You Don't Get To Choose Anymore
2.09 Totalitarianism — Control Over Behavior, Thought, and Identity
When Power Wants Your Mind
2.10 Nationalism — Identity as Political Infrastructure
Why do societies increasingly divide into “us” and “them” ?
2.11 The Welfare State — Redistribution, Compensation, and System Stability
Why do governments spend more, tax more, and borrow more — even as their ability to deliver effective outcomes appears to decline?
2.12 Social Fabric — Trust, Cooperation, and Social Cohesion
Why do societies increasingly rely on rules, money, and enforcement — instead of cooperation?