Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
The Why of War and the How of Peace, Part II: Lessons from Prehistory ~ Douglas P. Fry
How old is war? Does it stretch deep into human origins, or did warfare become common only as growing populations settled down?
In Part II of this co…
20 hours ago
The Why of War and the How of Peace, Part I: Lessons from the Modern World ~ Douglas P. Fry
Season 5 Episode 6
History is full of wars. Why? Is war driven by fear? Greed? Revenge? Ambitious leaders? Is it rooted deep in human nature—or does it emerge only unde…
2 days, 19 hours ago
The Big Picture: Measuring the Origins of the Modern World ~ Bishnupriya Gupta & Stephen Broadberry (Great Divergence #5)
Season 5 Episode 5
Was India once an affluent empire, later impoverished by British colonisation? Or was India never rich to begin with?
More generally, what does histo…
1 month, 1 week ago
A View From the East: China, Japan, and the Other Paths to Prosperity ~ Debin Ma (Great Divergence #4)
Season 5 Episode 4
The tech gap between China and the West is closing fast. But why did the land that invented paper and gunpowder ever fall behind?
Debin Ma is the wor…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Why Did the Industrial Revolution Happen in Britain? ~ Robert Allen (Great Divergence #3)
Season 5 Episode 3
Why was industrial modernity born in Europe and not, say, China? This is one of the most consequential questions about the origins of the modern worl…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Why Did So Many Inventions Come from Europe? ~ Joel Mokyr (Great Divergence #2)
Season 5 Episode 2
Several inventions mark the progress towards modernity - the Gutenberg printing press, the Galileo telescope, the Watt steam engine. But why was Euro…
1 month, 4 weeks ago
Why the West? Colonies, Fossil Fuels, and Lessons from China ~ Kenneth Pomeranz (Great Divergence #1)
Season 5 Episode 1
Why did Western Europe become the richest region of the early modern world? Was the rise of the West powered by colonization, inventions, or somethin…
2 months ago
Encore: Walking Towards the Human Condition (with Jeremy De Silva)
Something big is coming soon. Stay tuned!
Whilst waiting, you can enjoy one of my all-time favourites from the archives.
A lot of the recent episodes h…
2 months, 2 weeks ago
Where Did Humans Evolve? Gazing at the Changing Nature of the Garden of Eden ~ Denise Su
Season 4 Episode 18
Imagine a group of ancient humans, crafting stone tools at the dawn of humankind. What did these creatures look like?
To find out, we can stare at th…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
The Original Affluent Society? Lessons from 60-Years of "Man the Hunter" Research ~ Richard B. Lee
Season 4 Episode 17
What was life like before farming? Was it nasty, brutish, and short? Or did our hunter-gatherer ancestors live lives that were relatively free, afflu…
4 months, 1 week ago