Episode Details

In this episode of pplpod, we explore the long and complex history of the Flat Earth theory. While we often joke about the concept today, we dig into its origins as an archaic scientific model in ancient societies like Egypt and Mesopotamia, where the world was viewed as a disk floating in the ocean.

Join us as we discuss:

• The Shift to Spheres: How ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Aristotle moved humanity toward a spherical Earth model as early as the 6th and 4th centuries BC.

• The Columbus Myth: We debunk the popular historical myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat. In reality, this misconception was invented in the 17th and 19th centuries; most medieval scholars and universities widely accepted the Earth’s roundness.

• Global Perspectives: A look at how different cultures progressed, including Ancient China, where the flat Earth concept persisted until the 17th century.

• The Modern Resurgence: We trace the roots of the modern Flat Earth movement back to Samuel Rowbotham in 1849 and examine how the internet and social media have fueled a conspiracy theory revival in the 21st century.

Tune in to learn how a scientifically disproven idea from antiquity became a modern cultural phenomenon.