This week David talks to Helen Thompson about Dallas and the end of oil. How did the world’s most popular soap opera come to explain the energy crisis and the future of a world hooked on fossil fuels? Is the fate of the Ewing family – fire and ruin – going to be the fate of America? And did J.R. Ewing really pave the way for President Donald Trump? Plus Davi ... Show More
Nov 19
Trump-like Leadership in German History w/Chris Clark: Part 2 – Chancellor, Tyrant, Emperor?
Part two of David’s conversation with historian Chris Clark asks whether the best historical insights into Trump-like leadership come from comparison with kings or commoners, democrats or dictators. Does Trump’s leadership style share much if anything with an epoch-making politic ... Show More
58m 54s
Nov 2020
The most important book I've read this year
If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.
Best known for the Mars trilogy, Robinson is one of the greatest living science fiction writers. And in recent years, he's becom ... Show More
1h 34m
Mar 2022
167. Oil: The Making of the Modern World
Tom and Dominic are joined by Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, to talk about the incredible influence of oil over the last couple of centuries.
Discussion covers the first oil well ever drilled, how it's hard to overestimate Hitler's ... Show More
43m 4s
Oct 2021
Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, "Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller examines how literature of this era reckoned with a new vision of civilization where humans are dependent on finite, nonrenewable stores of earthly resourc ... Show More
47m 47s
Nov 2021
The Evening Rocket: Dimension X
Jill Lepore untangles the strange sci-fi roots of Silicon Valley's extreme capitalism - with its extravagant, existential and extra-terrestrial plans to save humanity. In this world, stock prices can be driven partly by fantasies found in blockbuster superhero movies, but that co ... Show More
30m 1s
Apr 2024
Is Green Growth Possible?
<p>A decade ago, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about climate change. The politics of mitigating global warming just seemed impossible: asking people to make sacrifices, or countries to slow their development, and delay dreams of better, more prosperous lives.</p><p>But the wor ... Show More
1h 3m
<p><span data-sheets-value= "{"1":2,"2":"From the bestselling authors and hosts of \"The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe\" podcast, Steven Novella, Jay Novella & Bob Novella visit Google to discuss their book \"The Skeptics' Guide to the Future: What Yesterday's Science and Scien ... Show More
