Coffee: Sobering Up for The Enlightenment

How It Began | 18 December 2017 | 0h 50m | Listen Later  | iTunes
Coffee’s arrival into Europe in the 1600s helped awaken Western Civilization from centuries of booze-induced slumber, catalyzing an entirely new age of progress that featured revolutionary change on practically every front.

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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.

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn

Context with Brad Harris | 24 July 2018 | 0h 24m | Listen Later  | iTunes
Discusses the ideas in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a classic in the history of science, and one of the most cited books of the twentieth century. Kuhn challenged our assumptions about how science works, but his opaque style ignited a cultural movement energized around the misinterpretations that objective truth was an illusion and that scientific progress was just a conceit of western civilization. These ideas became pillars of postmodernism, and no one was more frustrated by the folly of their development than Thomas Kuhn himself.

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Simon Winchester on the Pacific

The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly | 1 August 2018 | 0h 39m | Listen Later  | iTunes
Interview with Simon Winchester about his book Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers. Winchester is quite the raconteur, with delicious anecdotes on US nuclear testing and policing Pitcairn Island.

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Pirate Hunters with Robert Kurson

The Art of Manliness | 9 July 2015 | 0h 31m | Listen Later 
Interview with Robert Kurson, author of the book Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship. Tells the story of two treasure hunters risking their lives and fortune to find a sunken pirate ship. In the process, they uncovered the story of one of the greatest pirates to ever live during the Golden Age of Piracy. Discusses why pirates are so appealing, why two men would risk millions of dollars to find a pirate ship, and the legendary story of the pirate who captained the sunken ship.

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