145 | Niall Ferguson on Histories, Networks, and Catastrophes

145 | Niall Ferguson on Histories, Networks, and Catastrophes

The world has gone through a tough time with the COVID-19 pandemic. Every catastrophic event is unique, but there are certain commonalities to how such crises play out in our modern interconnected world. Historian Niall Ferguson wrote a book from a couple of years ago, The Square and the Tower, that considered how an interplay between networks and hierarchies has shaped the history of the world. This analysis is directly relevant to how we deal with large-scale catastrophes, which is the subject of his new book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. We talk about global culture as a complex system, and what it means for our ability to respond to crisis.

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Niall Ferguson received his D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford. He is currently the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of numerous book, several of which have been adapted into television documentaries, and has helped found several different companies. He won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money, and has previously been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.


Jaksot(416)

AMA | July 2021

AMA | July 2021

Welcome to the July 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questi...

9 Heinä 20213h 49min

154 | Reza Aslan on Religion, Metaphor, and Meaning

154 | Reza Aslan on Religion, Metaphor, and Meaning

Religion is an important part of the lives of billions of people around the world, but what religious belief actually amounts to can vary considerably from person to person. Some believe in an anthrop...

5 Heinä 20211h 25min

153 | John Preskill on Quantum Computers and What They're Good For

153 | John Preskill on Quantum Computers and What They're Good For

Depending on who you listen to, quantum computers are either the biggest technological change coming down the road or just another overhyped bubble. Today we're talking with a good person to listen to...

28 Kesä 20211h 32min

152 | Charis Kubrin on Criminology, Incarceration, and Hip-Hop

152 | Charis Kubrin on Criminology, Incarceration, and Hip-Hop

It's all well and good to talk abstractly about morality and justice, but at some point you have to sit down and figure out what to do about people who break the rules. In our modern legal system, mos...

21 Kesä 20211h 19min

151 | Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries

151 | Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries

Any system in which politicians represent geographical districts with boundaries chosen by the politicians themselves is vulnerable to gerrymandering: carving up districts to increase the amount of se...

14 Kesä 20211h 23min

AMA | June 2021

AMA | June 2021

Welcome to the June 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questi...

10 Kesä 20213h 18min

150 | Simon DeDeo on How Explanations Work and Why They Sometimes Fail

150 | Simon DeDeo on How Explanations Work and Why They Sometimes Fail

You observe a phenomenon, and come up with an explanation for it. That's true for scientists, but also for literally every person. (Why won't my car start? I bet it's out of gas.) But there are litera...

7 Kesä 20211h 32min

149 | Lee Smolin on Time, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

149 | Lee Smolin on Time, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

The challenge to a theoretical physicist pushing beyond our best current theories is that there are too many ways to go. What parts of the existing paradigm do you keep, which do you discard, and why ...

31 Touko 20211h 29min

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