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Charles C. Mann – Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry

    The Lunar Society | 14 September 2022 | 1h 32m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
    Interview with Charles C. Mann about his books  1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, and The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Discusses why Native American civilizations collapsed, why he disagrees with Will MacAskill about longtermism, why there aren’t any successful slave revolts, how Bitcoin is like the Chinese Silver Trade, how geoengineering can help us solve climate change, and more.

    Charles C. Mann: 1491 Fifteen Years Later

      Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning | 9 December 2021 | 1h 19m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
      Interview with Charles C. Mann discussing his books 1491, 1493 and The Wizard and the Prophet. Describes the advanced societies and biological technologies used in the New World before the arrival of Columbus; the conditions that caused the downfall of those societies; and the global exchange of crops, slaves and goods that developed thereafter. Contrasts considerations of environmental carrying capacity versus applying science to enable our adaptive ingenuity in the face of ecological constraints.

      The Potato

        The Food Programme | 23 April 2017 | 0h 28m | Listen Later  | iTunes
        The story of how potatoes changed the world, their diversity of flavours, and how they might shape our food future. With the cook and food writer Anna Jones, Charles C. Mann – author of 1493 – How Europe’s Discovery of the Americas Revolutionized Trade, Ecology and Life on Earth, and the potato revolutionary and agronomist Alan Wilson.

        Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet

          Freakonomics Radio | 22 August 2018 | 0h 51m | Listen Later  | iTunes
          While environmentalists say we’re doomed if we don’t drastically reduce consumption, technologists say that human ingenuity can solve just about any problem. Discusses the ideas in Charles C. Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Nicely frames why each side can’t get the other.

          1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

            Context with Brad Harris | 20 August 2018 | 0h 40m | Listen Later  | iTunes
            Review of 1493: Uncovering the New World, by Charles C. Mann, which shows how Europeans emerged at the centre of a modern, globalized world by establishing the Columbian Exchange, which globalised commerce, ecology, food and disease.