# The Fourth Turning, Explained

Source: https://thefourthturningleader.com/fourth-turning-explained

A Fourth Turning is the crisis era that ends each saeculum: the roughly twenty-year period when institutions fail faster than they can be repaired and the social order is torn down and rebuilt. Prior American Fourth Turnings produced the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Depression-and-war era. The current one began around 2008 and is still running.

A saeculum is the roughly eighty-to-hundred-year cycle of history, about the length of one long human life, identified by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Each saeculum moves through four generational eras, called turnings: a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. The Fourth Turning Leader framework treats the saeculum as the operating rhythm behind institutional trust, decay, and rebuilding.

The four turnings are the seasons of the saeculum in Strauss–Howe generational theory: the First Turning (High) builds institutions, the Second (Awakening) questions them, the Third (Unraveling) erodes them, and the Fourth (Crisis) tears down and rebuilds them. Each turning lasts roughly twenty years, and each demands a different kind of leadership.