Firstly, this podcast is actually titled "on Cliodynamics and End Timeson Cliodynamics and End Timeson Cliodynamics and End Timeson Cliodynamics and End TimesOn Cliodynamics and End Times", but I don't think that's much help to most people in deciding whether to give it a listen.

Turchin oversees a massive database of civilisations, and uses it to map the rise and fall of them.  One of his big themes is what he calls "The Elite Overproduction Crisis".  He says the data shows that when a society has too many people who expect a higher status than they are able to achieve, they become a disruptive influence on social order.

I remember hearing this theory about the social disruptions in countries involved in the Vietnam War. As the theory went, prior to Vietnam, people had mostly accepted and even supported their countries going to war. Suddenly, however, the elite class that ran the United States were shocked to be confronted with popular dissent, demonstrations, (limited) media opposition, and wide debate about whether war was moral.  Some analysts at the time put this burst of dissent down to over-education.  Young people, they said, had access to too much information, too many ideas, especially those attending university. After being filled with knowledge and ideas for a better world, they would then be confronted with long and boring careers that seemed to lead to little more than consumerism and perpetuation of the status quo. When the chance came to put their ideals for a better world into practice, to come together against a state they perceived was doing evil in their name, they took it.  Cities in America burned, the National Guard was called to University campuses, and reports said that more troops would have been sent to Vietnam but for the US government being worried about the need to contain unrest at home.

Aldous Huxley's revered work of fiction, Brave New World, touches on this theme.