Signs in the sky

In October 1995, on a visit to Washington, D.C., I was interviewed on Voice of America, the U.S. radio station that broadcasts around the world. It was a curious time to be in the U.S. capital, for in the wake of a budgetary debacle and the ensuing standoff between the president and the Congress, thousands of civil servants had been suspended, and as a result the major offices of state were closed and the streets almost deserted. The interview itself was an equally curious experience: for an hour I, a Briton, was quite literally the voice of America, the most powerful country in the world, as heard by millions of people around the globe. What made the experience all the more awesome was that the subject under discussion was not football, trade, finance, or any of the usual panglobal concerns that fill the airwaves but a prophecy made thousands of years ago by the Mayan Indians that the world — or rather, this present age of the world — would come to an end on 21 December 2012: a date well within the expected life span of myself and also of the majority of the listeners.