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(415)

314 | Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

314 | Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

There are living creatures dwelling deep below the surface of the Earth, as deep as we are able to drill. These hearty microorganisms are related to more familiar life forms on land and under water, b...

12 Touko 20251h 9min

313 | Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging

313 | Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging

Medical science is advancing at an astonishing rate. Today we talk with leading expert Eric Topol about two aspects of this story. First, the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, especially in ...

5 Touko 20251h 12min

AMA | May 2025

AMA | May 2025

Welcome to the May 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreon...

28 Huhti 20253h 38min

312 | Thomas Levenson on the Mutual History of Humans and Germs

312 | Thomas Levenson on the Mutual History of Humans and Germs

The germ theory of disease is a crowning achievement of science, up there with modern physics, continental drift, and evolution via natural selection. (Even if there will always be cranky skeptics.) B...

21 Huhti 20251h 31min

311 | Annaka Harris on Whether Consciousness is Fundamental

311 | Annaka Harris on Whether Consciousness is Fundamental

Questions about consciousness range from the precise and empirical -- what neurons fire when I have some particular experience -- to the deeply profound -- does consciousness emerge from matter, or do...

14 Huhti 20251h 10min

AMA | April 2025

AMA | April 2025

Welcome to the April 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patre...

7 Huhti 20253h 30min

310 | Marc Kamionkowski on Dark Energy and Cosmic Anomalies

310 | Marc Kamionkowski on Dark Energy and Cosmic Anomalies

Cosmologists were, let us be honest, pretty stunned in 1998 when observations revealed that the universe is accelerating. There was an obvious plausible explanation, the cosmological constant proposed...

31 Maalis 20251h 26min

309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and see what lights up when conscious awareness is taking place. A complete understanding of this would...

24 Maalis 20251h 20min

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