Welcome to the Age of Discovery 2.0

Welcome to the Age of Discovery 2.0

No decade transformed Western Civilization like the 1490s. Before then, Europe was a gloomy continent split into factions, ripe for conquest by the Islamic world. It had made no significant advances in science or literature for a century. But after a Spanish caravel named Nina returned to the Old World with news of a startling discovery, the dying embers of the West were fanned back to life. Shipbuilding began at a furious pace. Trade routes to Africa, India, and China quickly opened. At the same time, printing presses spread new ideas about science, religion, and technology across the continent. Literacy rates exploded. Because of the Age of Discovery, for the first time in generations, Europeans had hope in the future.
Today, an Age of Discovery 2.0 is upon us. With Elon Musk promising affordable rocket rides to the Moon and Mars within a decade, planetary bodies will be as accessible to humans as the New World was to adventurers in the 1500s.

How will the Age of Discovery 2.0 change our civilization the way the first one did five centuries ago?
To find the answers, History Unplugged is interviewing historians, scientists, and futurists who have spent decades researching this question. We will learn how:
•Spain’s 16th-century global empire was built on the spice trade (cinnamon was worth more than gold) and those same economics will lead to Mars colonization (its stockpiles of deuterium are a key ingredient for cheap fusion power
•How slavery was a conscious choice in the American colonies (Virginia embraced it while Puritan New England rejected it) and how the same choices on human rights could make the future a libertarian paradise or a neo-feudal dystopia
•How the East India Company’s control over India foreshadows SpaceX’s control over Mars and what happens when a corporation effectively controls a nation (or in this case, a planet).
•The labor shortage – and lack of regulation – in off-world colonies will lead to incredible innovation, as did the lack of workers and government restriction in colonial America drove the rise of “Yankee ingenuity’s” wave of inventions.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episoder(1078)

The East’s Auschwitz: How Imperial Japan’s Secret Experimenters Escaped Justice

The East’s Auschwitz: How Imperial Japan’s Secret Experimenters Escaped Justice

During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries c...

24 Feb 44min

The Chemistry of Conquest: Behind the USSR’s State-Sponsored (and Steroid-Powered) Olympic Glory

The Chemistry of Conquest: Behind the USSR’s State-Sponsored (and Steroid-Powered) Olympic Glory

Since the era of Joseph Stalin, Moscow’s rulers have sent Russian athletes into the Summer and Winter Olympics with one command: you must win. These competitors operated under a "win-at-all-costs" doc...

19 Feb 1h 3min

Daniel Boone’s Life as a Frontiersman and Adopted Son of a Shawnee Chief

Daniel Boone’s Life as a Frontiersman and Adopted Son of a Shawnee Chief

Daniel Boone is considered one of the United States' first folk heroes for his exploration beyond the thirteen colonies into Kentucky. His exploits are rightfully legendary. He famously rescued his da...

17 Feb 42min

The Loss and Re-Discovery of the $20 Billion Imperial Spanish Treasure Ship

The Loss and Re-Discovery of the $20 Billion Imperial Spanish Treasure Ship

The most valuable shipwreck of all time is the San José galleon—an 18th century Spanish ship that carried 11 million gold coins, silver, and emeralds—and worth $20 billion in today's currency. It sunk...

12 Feb 51min

Thomas Willing: The Revolutionary War Arms Dealer Who Led the First Bank of the United States

Thomas Willing: The Revolutionary War Arms Dealer Who Led the First Bank of the United States

America’s revolutionary war would have almost certainly been lost if not for the colony’s wealthiest merchant. Thomas Willing was a prominent Philadelphia merchant and financier who, in partnership wi...

10 Feb 54min

The Man Who Sold the War: Tom Paine's Journey from Common Sense to Global Firebrand

The Man Who Sold the War: Tom Paine's Journey from Common Sense to Global Firebrand

Most of us only know Thomas Paine for one thing: writing Common Sense in 1776, which helped kickstart the Revolution by selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But he was far more than a writer. Pain...

5 Feb 44min

The Original Body Builders: How Greek Halteres and Celtic Gabal Stone Lifts Built the World's First Strongmen

The Original Body Builders: How Greek Halteres and Celtic Gabal Stone Lifts Built the World's First Strongmen

Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These ...

3 Feb 48min

Truman’s Deep Regret at the Atomic Age He Created

Truman’s Deep Regret at the Atomic Age He Created

In the eight decades since the United States deployed the most destructive weapon ever used, conventional wisdom has held that American leaders were faced with a difficult choice: Invade Japan, which ...

29 Jan 57min

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