16th through 19th-century British trading company
POPULARITY
America has endured a long panorama of corporate greed – from the East India Trading Company to the Robber Barons, Gordon Gecko Wall Streeters to Elon Musk.
In the wake of Culloden, much of Scotland was on its knees. Crippled by defeat and the subsequent backlash of the British government, along with famine and poverty, they were in dire need of new horizons. The nascent British Empire would provide it. The Scottish Highlanders had developed a fearsome reputation during their struggles against the English, and would prove just as indomitable fighting for Britain in India. Yet, in more ways than militarily, India was to become a treasure trove of opportunity, enrichment and conquest for the Scots. From their domination of the East India Trading Company, to some of the men credited with cementing imperial rule in India, and the Highlander Regiments who took on the ferocious Tipu Sultan in the South, Scots involvement in all spheres of the British Empire in India was momentous. It also made them very rich… how controversial, then, is Scotland's Indian involvement? In today's episode, William and Anita are joined by historian Andrew MacKillop to discuss the colourful history of Scots and India. To fill out the survey: survey.empirepoduk.com To buy William's book: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-golden-road-by-william-dalrymple-signed-edition Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: empirepoduk@gmail.com Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Send us a Text Message.This conversation is a review of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, with discussions on the rankings, casting choices, and the popularity of pirates. The hosts also review two rums, with mixed opinions on their taste. They share trivia facts about the movies, including the original casting choices and the inspiration behind the character of Jack Sparrow. The conversation highlights the freedom and romanticized image associated with pirates. The conversation in this part of the recording covers various topics related to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the portrayal of pirates, the makeup and special effects, the character of Jack Sparrow, the characters of Gibbs, Mr. Cotton, and Marty, the character of Captain Barbossa, the setting of Tortuga, and the naval warfare scenes. The conversation also touches on the relationship between Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, the curse of the Black Pearl, and the growth of Elizabeth's character throughout the films. In this part of the conversation, the hosts discuss the character of Lord Beckett and the East India Trading Company, as well as the island sequence and the character of Tia Dalma. They also express their love for the character of Davy Jones, played by Bill Nighy. In this part of the conversation, the hosts discuss their thoughts on Bill Nye's performance and the impressive CGI of Davy Jones. They also talk about the character development of Norrington and the well-choreographed three-way sword fight. The hosts express their love for the Kraken attack scene and the return of Barbossa at the end of the film. In this part of the conversation, the hosts discuss the Song of the Gallows and the scene with Captain Sao Feng. They also talk about the size and scale of Chinese and Japanese ships during that time period. They discuss the character development of Jack Sparrow and his relationship with Captain Barbossa. They debate the timeline of the movies and the journey to Davy Jones' Locker. They also discuss the relationship between Davy Jones and Calypso, and the pirate politics in the Brethren Court. The hosts praise the action sequences and the Hans Zimmer score. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is highly enjoyable and well-crafted, with Support the Show.Subscribe to our YOUTUBE Channel to watch video versions of our showhttps://youtube.com/@barrelagedflickvideopodcast?si=XQtXR8xlhtxqlasf#beer #baf #moviepodcast #season4 #podcastlife #comedy #podcastlovers #2024 #cocktails #hilarious #podcasts #moviereview #podcastsofinstagram #moviefacts #liquor #drinkreview #barrelagedflickspodcast #barrelagedflicks #moviereviews #subscribe #drunkpodcast #podcast #barrelagedchicks #podcastsofyoutube #youtube #viral #drinkreviews #thetastingroom #guys #brothers #moviefacts #debates #arguments Please leave a LIKE on this video if you enjoyed our show and Subscribe to our YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram for show updates, plus behind-the-scenes photos of the drinks we've enjoyed on the show and pint review cards! "If you're enjoying our show, please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Spotify, Goodpods, or Apple Podcasts! Your support means the world to us." Don't miss out on our exclusive offers and ways to support the show: - Elevate your beard game with amazing products like Beard oil, Balm, Cologne, and more from [Copper Johns Beard](https://copperjohnsbeard.com). Use code BAF10 at checkout for a 10% discount! - Fuel your day with kickass coffee from [Coffee Bros](http://coffeebros.com). Use code BAF10 at checkout for 10% off your order! - If you would like to...
Welcome to the Pop Quiz! Every other Thursday, Joe asks the other a topical question about history, and Jon has to answer it without any help or resources - other than his legendary memory and knowledge of history. These episodes are unedited and a fun way for the team to interact more with you, our outstanding audience. Have an idea for a topic? Want to try and stump Jon? Send it to us at 15minutehistory@gmail.com or submit it to our website at https://www.15minutehistorypodcast.org. We promise not to give him any hints. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/15minutehistory/support
Continuing our Primarily Political series, Joshua Noel is joined by Josh Patterson (of (Re)Thinking Faith) to discuss the East India Trading Company in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise! We will be discussing one of our favorite film franchises, the politics in these films, and the role that the East India Trading Company had in the larger story of the movies!.Is the East India Trading Company from Pirates of the Caribbean real? Did the East India Trading Company fight pirates? What is the East India Company ship in Pirates of the Caribbean? What did Jack Sparrow do to East India company? How did pirates affect the government? How were the lines between religion, the mystic, government, and finances blurred in the Pirates of the Caribbean films? We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!.Support our show on Captivate or Patreon, or by purchasing a comfy T-Shirt in our store!.Listen to the whole Primarily Political series we're doing:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/79d3809a-0854-4796-8abb-256d85faaa2b.Check out our other Disney episodes:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/09b1c796-b409-4cfe-bbd0-8b7a8032f846.Listen to our other pirate episodes:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/211962c0-6455-40b9-8259-3b17d264e082.Don't miss any episodes with Joshua:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/642da9db-496a-40f5-b212-7013d1e211e0.Listen to other episodes with guests like Josh Patterson:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/0d46051e-3772-49ec-9e2c-8739c9b74cdeMentioned in this episode:The SG StoreGet your exclusive merch and rep the show!Systematic Geekology StoreTheology Beer Camp 2024 - The Return of the God PodsUse our code, "GEEKSHIRE", to receive a discount on your tickets and to help support our show!Theology Beer Camp 2024CaptivateSupport the show through Captivate!Systematic GeekologyOur show focuses around our favorite fandoms that we discuss from a Christian perspective. We do not try to put Jesus into all our favorite stories, but rather we try to ask the questions the IPs are asking, then addressing those questions from our perspective. We are not all ordained, but we are the Priests to the Geeks, in the sense that we try to serve as mediators between the cultures around our favorite fandoms and our faith communities.Listener Discretion AdvisedOccasionally our show will discuss sensitive subject matter and will contain some strong language. Your discretion is advised for this...
Download the Volley.FM app for more short daily shows!
This episode contains: It's December, it's a big battle getting through the month, and Ben and Steven just can't wait to be done with 2023. Ben is left alone by his family for the afternoon, and did a real long bike ride! All was well and good until he got a flat. Luckily he has friends. Friends with trucks. Steven was out of town hanging out with Devon, and they didn't record a podcast. Instead he and Devon hung out IRL with their D&D group, playing an “artisinal cooperative experience” called Oathsworn. Lots of fun but not an easy game to play. The companion app to the game was narrated by Jeor Mormont himself, James Cosmo. Is Jeor just another way to spell “Jeff?” No, Steven. Ben then talks more about biking, specifically in the rain. Oathsworn: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/251661/oathsworn-deepwood Robot Uprising: OpenAI's reported 'superintelligence' breakthrough is so big it nearly destroyed the company, and ChatGPT. Thanks to our Patron Joe Kohr for suggesting this article! ChatGPT, or as the French say “Cat, I Farted”, is reportedly dealing with a breakthrough towards a generative AI gaining “superintelligence,” or reasoning outside of it's programmed models. As in, it will be no longer “faking it”. Now, there's a new OpenAI research group with the goal of developing safeguards against superintelligence. This all reminds Ben of something he heard on another podcast: where there's a potential for using generative AI to create apps… but what if there's no more productivity apps anymore? Where you ask questions and get data presented to you? The operating system could remove the need for productivity apps, because in 10 years the ways we interact with our phones and computers will be different. Steven runs a website but he doesn't GO to websites. Where does anybody learn things on the net now? Social media? Empire and the East India Trading Company: the first company with shares. https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/openais-reported-superintelligence-breakthrough-is-so-big-it-nearly-destroyed-the-company-and-chatgpt The podcast about generative AI creating apps: https://www.relay.fm/connected/479 Empire Podcast: https://pod.link/1639561921 Tonight on The Ocho: ‘You didn't just succeed, you Exceled': Sydney man dubbed the ‘Annihilator' wins spreadsheet world championship. You might not have known this, but there's a Microsoft Excel World Championship. Now that your mind has finished exploding, you can watch it yourself. This year was newsworthy not because of it's existence, but because the winner this year was eliminated in the first round. The values Andrew Ngai received from the first round didn't match the answer key… but it turned out the answer key was WRONG! We then continue to yak about EVE Online for a bit. One of the contestants eliminated in the finals thanked his wife, who “never made fun of me, even once, for competing in the Microsoft Excel world championships.” Ben gets made fun of for doing the dishes! https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/15/you-didnt-just-succeed-you-exceled-sydney-man-dubbed-the-annihilator-wins-excel-world-championship Watch the championship here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8&t=288 Science Fiction: Has For All Mankind got too much character drama this season? Steven and Ben disagree. Steven wishes there was something more Mars-y on Mars, like red dust everywhere. You know, science fiction stuff! Netflix got The Batman and got Steven to drop everything and watch it yet again. Amazon got Merry Little Batman and got Ben to drop everything and watch it for the first time. Ben a synopsis of the really adorable film where Batman's son has a Home Alone Batman moment. This Batman has definite Devon energy. Is that enough Christmas Batman for Ben? Not in the slightest. Ben played five hours of Batman: Arkham Origins, the most ignored Arkham game. But… it's actually good? And Ben just shut his eyes and pretended it's not an Arkham game at all, since the voice cast does not include Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. It looks good, for a ten year old game.
Get ready for an insightful discussion as we explore the intriguing intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and the stock market. We start off by examining the surprisingly strong performance of Democrats over Republicans in the stock market, and the role tech stocks play in this equation. We raise questions about potential insider trading, providing a thought-provoking angle on the information disparity between politicians and the public. This episode also delves into the attention-grabbing headlines that fuel curiosity and speculation about AI's role in the stock market. As we proceed, we highlight the importance of cautious investing, discussing the recent surge in market strength driven by mega-cap tech stocks. The conversation steers you away from impulsive stock picks and underscores the need for comprehensive research and secure valuation methods. The discussion further illuminates the role of AI in investing, citing the East India Trading Company as an illustrative example of leveraging new technology for significant gains. From exploring the concept of diversification to understanding the investing mindset of today's youth, we leave no stone unturned in this exciting episode. [0:00:01] AI's Impact on Stock Investing [0:12:49] Risks of Speculating on AI Stocks [0:24:53] The Role of AI in Investing
Today we consider an alternate version of history where the inauthentic, yet affective emotional appeals of the political actors tasked with doing the bidding of special interest groups who inherently obstruct the natural order of society, no longer distract us from the strategic goals of an international council of elites formed with the aspirations of organizing politics, commerce, banking, media, and the military for centralized global efforts. Before we introduce and trace back the conspiracy that takes on numerous forms such as the most preeminent Committee of 300, or the Club of Rome, the Frankfurt School, and the Tavistock Institute, the Trilateral Commission, or the East India Trading Company, the list goes on... but we first take a brief moment to provide a couple examples that best represent this deliberate degeneration and malignant self-serving agenda in what amounts to internal subversion imposing soft power through implicit coercion...Support the show'Silence is Acquiescence'
Hey there friends and weirdos! This week Nile takes Kyle and Jules on a journey to the East India Trading Company to tell the tale of ghostly ship captain, the Flying Dutchman! Was a remarkable but overly ambitious Dutch sailor become cursed with undeath? Was he approached by an angel when he wouldn't chill out? Will he ever be able to deliver his letter to his loved one? The big lesson of this episode - don't mess with mysterious ghost ships, especially the Dutchman. All this and more!
In dieser Woche sprechen unsere Redakteure Michi und Moritz über die britische Ostindienkompanie. Eine Organisation, die während ihres über zweihundertjährigen Bestehens von einer kleinen Handelsunternehmung zu einem staatsgleichen Behemoth wuchs, der ca. 20% der Weltbevölkerung unter seiner Kontrollen hatte. Was das Ganze mit Piraten zu tun hatte und was die indische Bevölkerung davon gehalten hat, erfahrt Ihr in der Folge. Wir wünschen viel Spaß beim Zuhören.
In dieser Woche sprechen unsere Redakteure Michi und Moritz über die britische Ostindienkompanie. Eine Organisation, die während ihres über zweihundertjährigen Bestehens von einer kleinen Handelsunternehmung zu einem staatsgleichen Behemoth wuchs, der ca. 20% der Weltbevölkerung unter seiner Kontrollen hatte. Was das Ganze mit Piraten zu tun hatte und was die indische Bevölkerung davon gehalten hat, erfahrt Ihr in der Folge. Wir wünschen viel Spaß beim Zuhören.
In April of 1601, four ships set out from England with hopes of establishing trade with Asia. Remembered by history as the first voyage of the East India Company that launched a momentous relationship between what would become Britain and Asia, the first, as well as the subsequent three, voyages by this group were wrought with danger, disease, and completed at great personal sacrifice. On all of these journeys, the captains and sailors battled illness, poor living conditions, and perilously low morale. While the East India Company launched the missions with a set of rules designed to help alleviate the most significant hurdles, our guest this week, Cheryl Fury, shares in her recent publication that the human cost of these voyages remained astronomically high. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Download the Volley.FM app for more short daily shows!
Welcome to episode 34 of the Everything 9000 Podcast where we discuss relevant hot topics across the news and UK culture. Over the last couple of weeks the Queen's passing has raised several topics of discussion - one we think needs exploring more is - how should people of colour and minorities living in the UK feel about the royals given the history of looting by the East India Trading Company? Many Asians and Africans have claimed particular diamonds that were taken from their original homelands should be returned (The Kohinoor, The Great Star of Africa / Cullinan I). Even within the majority population of the UK feelings have been mixed - many loved the recent Queen Elizabeth II dearly, many moved on much quicker. We also discuss the impact on football and hospital appointments. Hosted by - Aman - @birminghman Guests - Amrit - @itsamritrai / Ishan - @ishannandra Please drop a comment if you enjoyed the video - every little helps! Don't forget to like and subscribe! Hit the link below to subscribe to our Youtube channel. Cloud 9000 Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa2oL5hPzdc_FfO5t7VkvDw Cloud 9000 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cloudninethousand/?hl=en #podcast #queen #cloud9000
Charles C. Mann is the author of three of my favorite history books: 1491. 1493, and The Wizard and the Prophet. We discuss:why Native American civilizations collapsed and why they failed to make more technological progresswhy he disagrees with Will MacAskill about longtermismwhy there aren't any successful slave revoltshow geoengineering can help us solve climate changewhy Bitcoin is like the Chinese Silver Tradeand much much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Some really cool guests coming up, subscribe to find out about future episodes!Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy my interviews of Will MacAskill (about longtermism), Steve Hsu (about intelligence and embryo selection), and David Deutsch (about AI and the problems with America's constitution).If you end up enjoying this episode, I would be super grateful if you shared it. Post it on Twitter, send it to your friends & group-chats, and throw it up on any relevant subreddits & forums you follow. Can't exaggerate how much it helps a small podcast like mine.Timestamps(0:00:00) -Epidemically Alternate Realities(0:00:25) -Weak Points in Empires(0:03:28) -Slave Revolts(0:08:43) -Slavery Ban(0:12:46) - Contingency & The Pyramids(0:18:13) - Teotihuacan(0:20:02) - New Book Thesis(0:25:20) - Gender Ratios and Silicon Valley(0:31:15) - Technological Stupidity in the New World(0:41:24) - Religious Demoralization(0:44:00) - Critiques of Civilization Collapse Theories(0:49:05) - Virginia Company + Hubris(0:53:30) - China's Silver Trade(1:03:03) - Wizards vs. Prophets(1:07:55) - In Defense of Regulatory Delays(0:12:26) -Geoengineering(0:16:51) -Finding New Wizards(0:18:46) -Agroforestry is Underrated(1:18:46) -Longtermism & Free MarketsTranscriptDwarkesh Patel Okay! Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Charles Mann, who is the author of three of my favorite books, including 1491: New Revelations of America before Columbus. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, and The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World. Charles, welcome to the Lunar Society.Charles C. Mann It's a pleasure to be here.Epidemically Alternate RealitiesDwarkesh Patel My first question is: How much of the New World was basically baked into the cake? So at some point, people from Eurasia were going to travel to the New World, bringing their diseases. Considering disparities and where they would survive, if the Acemoglu theory that you cited is correct, then some of these places were bound to have good institutions and some of them were bound to have bad institutions. Plus, because of malaria, there were going to be shortages in labor that people would try to fix with African slaves. So how much of all this was just bound to happen? If Columbus hadn't done it, then maybe 50 years down the line, would someone from Italy have done it? What is the contingency here?Charles C. Mann Well, I think that some of it was baked into the cake. It was pretty clear that at some point, people from Eurasia and the Western Hemisphere were going to come into contact with each other. I mean, how could that not happen, right? There was a huge epidemiological disparity between the two hemispheres––largely because by a quirk of evolutionary history, there were many more domesticable animals in Eurasia and the Eastern hemisphere. This leads almost inevitably to the creation of zoonotic diseases: diseases that start off in animals and jump the species barrier and become human diseases. Most of the great killers in human history are zoonotic diseases. When people from Eurasia and the Western Hemisphere meet, there are going to be those kinds of diseases. But if you wanted to, it's possible to imagine alternative histories. There's a wonderful book by Laurent Binet called Civilizations that, in fact, does just that. It's a great alternative history book. He imagines that some of the Vikings came and extended further into North America, bringing all these diseases, and by the time of Columbus and so forth, the epidemiological balance was different. So when Columbus and those guys came, these societies killed him, grabbed his boats, and went and conquered Europe. It's far-fetched, but it does say that this encounter would've happened and that the diseases would've happened, but it didn't have to happen in exactly the way that it did. It's also perfectly possible to imagine that Europeans didn't engage in wholesale slavery. There was a huge debate when this began about whether or not slavery was a good idea. There were a lot of reservations, particularly among the Catholic monarchy asking the Pope “Is it okay that we do this?” You could imagine the penny dropping in a slightly different way. So, I think some of it was bound to happen, but how exactly it happened was really up to chance, contingency, and human agency,Weak Points in EmpiresDwarkesh Patel When the Spanish first arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries, were the Incas and the Aztecs at a particularly weak point or particularly decadent? Or was this just how well you should have expected this civilization to be functioning at any given time period?Charles C. Mann Well, typically, empires are much more jumbly and fragile entities than we imagine. There's always fighting at the top. What Hernán Cortés was able to do, for instance, with the Aztecs––who are better called The Triple Alliance (the term “Aztec” is an invention from the 19th century). The Triple Alliance was comprised of three groups of people in central Mexico, the largest of which were the Mexica, who had the great city of Tenochtitlan. The other two guys really resented them and so what Cortes was able to do was foment a civil war within the Aztec empire: taking some enemies of the Aztec, some members of the Aztec empire, and creating an entirely new order. There's a fascinating set of history that hasn't really emerged into the popular consciousness. I didn't include it in 1491 or 1493 because it was so new that I didn't know anything about it; everything was largely from Spanish and Mexican scholars about the conquest within the conquest. The allies of the Spaniards actually sent armies out and conquered big swaths of northern and southern Mexico and Central America. So there's a far more complex picture than we realized even 15 or 20 years ago when I first published 1491. However, the conquest wasn't as complete as we think. I talk a bit about this in 1493 but what happens is Cortes moves in and he marries his lieutenants to these indigenous people, creating this hybrid nobility that then extended on to the Incas. The Incas were a very powerful but unstable empire and Pizarro had the luck to walk in right after a civil war. When he did that right after a civil war and massive epidemic, he got them at a very vulnerable point. Without that, it all would have been impossible. Pizarro cleverly allied with the losing side (or the apparently losing side in this in the Civil War), and was able to create a new rallying point and then attack the winning side. So yes, they came in at weak points, but empires typically have these weak points because of fratricidal stuff going on in the leadership.Dwarkesh Patel It does also remind me of the East India Trading Company.Charles C. Mann And the Mughal empire, yeah. Some of those guys in Bengal invited Clive and his people in. In fact, I was struck by this. I had just been reading this book, maybe you've heard of it: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple.Dwarkesh Patel I've started reading it, yeah but I haven't made much progress.Charles C. Mann It's an amazing book! It's so oddly similar to what happened. There was this fratricidal stuff going on in the Mughal empire, and one side thought, “Oh, we'll get these foreigners to come in, and we'll use them.” That turned out to be a big mistake.Dwarkesh Patel Yes. What's also interestingly similar is the efficiency of the bureaucracy. Niall Ferguson has a good book on the British Empire and one thing he points out is that in India, the ratio between an actual English civil servant and the Indian population was about 1: 3,000,000 at the peak of the ratio. Which obviously is only possible if you have the cooperation of at least the elites, right? So it sounds similar to what you were saying about Cortes marrying his underlings to the nobility. Charles C. Mann Something that isn't stressed enough in history is how often the elites recognize each other. They join up in arrangements that increase both of their power and exploit the poor schmucks down below. It's exactly what happened with the East India Company, and it's exactly what happened with Spain. It's not so much that there was this amazing efficiency, but rather, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement for Xcalack, which is now a Mexican state. It had its rights, and the people kept their integrity, but they weren't really a part of the Spanish Empire. They also weren't really wasn't part of Mexico until around 1857. It was a good deal for them. The same thing was true for the Bengalis, especially the elites who made out like bandits from the British Empire.Slave Revolts Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, that's super interesting. Why was there only one successful slave revolt in the new world in Haiti? In many of these cases, the ratios between slaves and the owners are just huge. So why weren't more of them successful?Charles C. Mann Well, you would first have to define ‘successful'. Haiti wasn't successful if you meant ‘creating a prosperous state that would last for a long time.' Haiti was and is (to no small extent because of the incredible blockade that was put on it by all the other nations) in terrible shape. Whereas in the case of Paul Maurice, you had people who were self-governing for more than 100 years.. Eventually, they were incorporated into the larger project of Brazil. There's a great Brazilian classic that's equivalent to what Moby Dick or Huck Finn is to us called Os Sertões by a guy named Cunha. And it's good! It's been translated into this amazing translation in English called Rebellion in the Backlands. It's set in the 1880s, and it's about the creation of a hybrid state of runaway slaves, and so forth, and how they had essentially kept their independence and lack of supervision informally, from the time of colonialism. Now the new Brazilian state is trying to take control, and they fight them to the last person. So you have these effectively independent areas in de facto, if not de jure, that existed in the Americas for a very long time. There are some in the US, too, in the great dismal swamp, and you hear about those marooned communities in North Carolina, in Mexico, where everybody just agreed “these places aren't actually under our control, but we're not going to say anything.” If they don't mess with us too much, we won't mess with them too much. Is that successful or not? I don't know.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, but it seems like these are temporary successes..Charles C. Mann I mean, how long did nations last? Like Genghis Khan! How long did the Khan age last? But basically, they had overwhelming odds against them. There's an entire colonial system that was threatened by their existence. Similar to the reasons that rebellions in South Asia were suppressed with incredible brutality–– these were seen as so profoundly threatening to this entire colonial order that people exerted a lot more force against them than you would think would be worthwhile.Dwarkesh Patel Right. It reminds me of James Scott's Against the Grain. He pointed out that if you look at the history of agriculture, there're many examples where people choose to run away as foragers in the forest, and then the state tries to bring them back into the fold.Charles C. Mann Right. And so this is exactly part of that dynamic. I mean, who wants to be a slave, right? So as many people as possible ended up leaving. It's easier in some places than others.. it's very easy in Brazil. There are 20 million people in the Brazilian Amazon and the great bulk of them are the descendants of people who left slavery. They're still Brazilians and so forth, but, you know, they ended up not being slaves.Slavery BanDwarkesh Patel Yeah, that's super fascinating. What is the explanation for why slavery went from being historically ever-present to ending at a particular time when it was at its peak in terms of value and usefulness? What's the explanation for why, when Britain banned the slave trade, within 100 or 200 years, there ended up being basically no legal sanction for slavery anywhere in the world?Charles C. Mann This is a really good question and the real answer is that historians have been arguing about this forever. I mean, not forever, but you know, for decades, and there's a bunch of different explanations. I think the reason it's so hard to pin down is… kind of amazing. I mean, if you think about it, in 1800, if you were to have a black and white map of the world and put red in countries in which slavery was illegal and socially accepted, there would be no red anywhere on the planet. It's the most ancient human institution that there is. The Code of Hammurabi is still the oldest complete legal code that we have, and about a third of it is about rules for when you can buy slaves, when you can sell slaves, how you can mistreat them, and how you can't–– all that stuff. About a third of it is about buying, selling, and working other human beings. So this has been going on for a very, very long time. And then in a century and a half, it suddenly changes. So there's some explanation, and it's that machinery gets better. But the reason to have people is that you have these intelligent autonomous workers, who are like the world's best robots. From the point of view of the owner, they're fantastically good, except they're incredibly obstreperous and when they're caught, you're constantly afraid they're going to kill you. So if you have a chance to replace them with machinery, or to create a wage where you can run wage people, pay wage workers who are kept in bad conditions but somewhat have more legal rights, then maybe that's a better deal for you. Another one is that industrialization produced different kinds of commodities that became more and more valuable, and slavery was typically associated with the agricultural laborer. So as agriculture diminished as a part of the economy, slavery become less and less important and it became easier to get rid of them. Another one has to do with the beginning of the collapse of the colonial order. Part of it has to do with.. (at least in the West, I don't know enough about the East) the rise of a serious abolition movement with people like Wilberforce and various Darwins and so forth. And they're incredibly influential, so to some extent, I think people started saying, “Wow, this is really bad.” I suspect that if you looked at South Asia and Africa, you might see similar things having to do with a social moment, but I just don't know enough about that. I know there's an anti-slavery movement and anti-caste movement in which we're all tangled up in South Asia, but I just don't know enough about it to say anything intelligent.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, the social aspect of it is really interesting. The things you mentioned about automation, industrialization, and ending slavery… Obviously, with time, that might have actually been why it expanded, but its original inception in Britain happened before the Industrial Revolution took off. So that was purely them just taking a huge loss because this movement took hold. Charles C. Mann And the same thing is true for Bartolome de Las Casas. I mean, Las Casas, you know, in the 1540s just comes out of nowhere and starts saying, “Hey! This is bad.” He is the predecessor of the modern human rights movement. He's an absolutely extraordinary figure, and he has huge amounts of influence. He causes Spain's king in the 1540s to pass what they call The New Laws which says no more slavery, which is a devastating blow enacted to the colonial economy in Spain because they depended on having slaves to work in the silver mines in the northern half of Mexico and in Bolivia, which was the most important part of not only the Spanish colonial economy but the entire Spanish empire. It was all slave labor. And they actually tried to ban it. Now, you can say they came to their senses and found a workaround in which it wasn't banned. But it's still… this actually happened in the 1540s. Largely because people like Las Casas said, “This is bad! you're going to hell doing this.”Contingency & The Pyramids Dwarkesh Patel Right. I'm super interested in getting into The Wizard and the Prophet section with you. Discussing how movements like environmentalism, for example, have been hugely effective. Again, even though it probably goes against the naked self-interest of many countries. So I'm very interested in discussing that point about why these movements have been so influential!But let me continue asking you about globalization in the world. I'm really interested in how you think about contingency in history, especially given that you have these two groups of people that have been independently evolving and separated for tens of thousands of years. What things turn out to be contingent? What I find really interesting from the book was how both of them developed pyramids–– who would have thought that structure would be within our extended phenotype or something?Charles C. Mann It's also geometry! I mean, there's only a certain limited number of ways you can pile up stone blocks in a stable way. And pyramids are certainly one of them. It's harder to have a very long-lasting monument that's a cylinder. Pyramids are also easier to build: if you get a cylinder, you have to have scaffolding around it and it gets harder and harder.With pyramids, you can use each lower step to put the next one, on and on, and so forth. So pyramids seem kind of natural to me. Now the material you make them up of is going to be partly determined by what there is. In Cahokia and in the Mississippi Valley, there isn't a lot of stone. So people are going to make these earthen pyramids and if you want them to stay on for a long time, there's going to be certain things you have to do for the structure which people figured out. For some pyramids, you had all this marble around them so you could make these giant slabs of marble, which seems, from today's perspective, incredibly wasteful. So you're going to have some things that are universal like that, along with the apparently universal, or near-universal idea that people who are really powerful like to identify themselves as supernatural and therefore want to be commemorated. Dwarkesh Patel Yes, I visited Mexico City recently.Charles C. Mann Beautiful city!TeotihuacanDwarkesh Patel Yeah, the pyramids there… I think I was reading your book at the time or already had read your book. What struck me was that if I remember correctly, they didn't have the wheel and they didn't have domesticated animals. So if you really think about it, that's a really huge amount of human misery and toil it must have taken to put this thing together as basically a vanity project. It's like a huge negative connotation if you think about what it took to construct it.Charles C. Mann Sure, but there are lots of really interesting things about Teotihuacan. This is just one of those things where you can only say so much in one book. If I was writing the two-thousand-page version of 1491, I would have included this. So Tehuácan pretty much starts out as a standard Imperial project, and they build all these huge castles and temples and so forth. There's no reason to suppose it was anything other than an awful experience (like building the pyramids), but then something happened to Teotihuacan that we don't understand. All these new buildings started springing up during the next couple of 100 years, and they're all very very similar. They're like apartment blocks and there doesn't seem to be a great separation between rich and poor. It's really quite striking how egalitarian the architecture is because that's usually thought to be a reflection of social status. So based on the way it looks, could there have been a political revolution of some sort? Where they created something much more egalitarian, probably with a bunch of good guy kings who weren't interested in elevating themselves so much? There's a whole chapter in the book by David Wingrove and David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything about this, and they make this argument that Tehuácan is an example that we can look at as an ancient society that was much more socially egalitarian than we think. Now, in my view, they go a little overboard–– it was also an aggressive imperial power and it was conquering much of the Maya world at the same time. But it is absolutely true that something that started out one way can start looking very differently quite quickly. You see this lots of times in the Americas in the Southwest–– I don't know if you've ever been to Chaco Canyon or any of those places, but you should absolutely go! Unfortunately, it's hard to get there because of the roads terrible but overall, it's totally worth it. It's an amazing place. Mesa Verde right north of it is incredible, it's just really a fantastic thing to see. There are these enormous structures in Chaco Canyon, that we would call castles if they were anywhere else because they're huge. The biggest one, Pueblo Bonito, is like 800 rooms or some insane number like that. And it's clearly an imperial venture, we know that because it's in this canyon and one side is getting all the good light and good sun–– a whole line of these huge castles. And then on the other side is where the peons lived. We also know that starting around 1100, everybody just left! And then their descendants start the Puebla, who are these sort of intensely socially egalitarian type of people. It looks like a political revolution took place. In fact, in the book I'm now writing, I'm arguing (in a sort of tongue-in-cheek manner but also seriously) that this is the first American Revolution! They got rid of these “kings” and created these very different and much more egalitarian societies in which ordinary people had a much larger voice about what went on.Dwarkesh Patel Interesting. I think I got a chance to see the Teotihuacan apartments when I was there, but I wonder if we're just looking at the buildings that survived. Maybe the buildings that survived were better constructed because they were for the elites? The way everybody else lived might have just washed away over the years.Charles C. Mann So what's happened in the last 20 years is basically much more sophisticated surveys of what is there. I mean, what you're saying is absolutely the right question to ask. Are the rich guys the only people with things that survived while the ordinary people didn't? You can never be absolutely sure, but what they did is they had these ground penetrating radar surveys, and it looks like this egalitarian construction extends for a huge distance. So it's possible that there are more really, really poor people. But at least you'd see an aggressively large “middle class” getting there, which is very, very different from the picture you have of the ancient world where there's the sun priest and then all the peasants around them.New Book ThesisDwarkesh Patel Yeah. By the way, is the thesis of the new book something you're willing to disclose at this point? It's okay if you're not––Charles C. Mann Sure sure, it's okay! This is a sort of weird thing, it's like a sequel or offshoot of 1491. That book, I'm embarrassed to say, was supposed to end with another chapter. The chapter was going to be about the American West, which is where I grew up, and I'm very fond of it. And apparently, I had a lot to say because when I outlined the chapter; the outline was way longer than the actual completed chapters of the rest of the book. So I sort of tried to chop it up and so forth, and it just was awful. So I just cut it. If you carefully look at 1491, it doesn't really have an ending. At the end, the author sort of goes, “Hey! I'm ending, look at how great this is!” So this has been bothering me for 15 years. During the pandemic, when I was stuck at home like so many other people, I held out what I had since I've been saving string and tossing articles that I came across into a folder, and I thought, “Okay, I'm gonna write this out more seriously now.” 15 or 20 years later. And then it was pretty long so I thought “Maybe this could be an e-book.” then I showed it to my editor. And he said, “That is not an e-book. That's an actual book.” So I take a chapter and hope I haven't just padded it, and it's about the North American West. My kids like the West, and at various times, they've questioned what it would be like to move out there because I'm in Massachusetts, where they grew up. So I started thinking “What is the West going to be like, tomorrow? When I'm not around 30 or 50 years from now?”It seems to be that you won't know who's president or who's governor or anything, but there are some things we can know. It'd be hotter and drier than it is now or has been in the recent past, like that wouldn't really be a surprise. So I think we can say that it's very likely to be like that. All the projections are that something like 40% of the people in the area between the Mississippi and the Pacific will be of Latino descent–– from the south, so to speak. And there's a whole lot of people from Asia along the Pacific coast, so it's going to be a real ethnic mixing ground. There's going to be an epicenter of energy, sort of no matter what happens. Whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's petroleum, or hydroelectric, the West is going to be economically extremely powerful, because energy is a fundamental industry.And the last thing is (and this is the iffiest of the whole thing), but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the ongoing recuperation of sovereignty by the 294 federally recognized Native nations in the West is going to continue. That's been going in this very jagged way, but definitely for the last 50 or 60 years, as long as I've been around, the overall trend is in a very clear direction. So then you think, okay, this West is going to be wildly ethnically diverse, full of competing sovereignties and overlapping sovereignties. Nature is also going to really be in kind of a terminal. Well, that actually sounds like the 1200s! And the conventional history starts with Lewis and Clark and so forth. There's this breakpoint in history when people who looked like me came in and sort of rolled in from the East and kind of took over everything. And the West disappears! That separate entity, the native people disappear, and nature is tamed. That's pretty much what was in the textbooks when I was a kid. Do you know who Frederick Jackson Turner is? Dwarkesh Patel No.Charles C. Mann So he's like one of these guys where nobody knows who he is. But he was incredibly influential in setting intellectual ideas. He wrote this article in 1893, called The Significance of the Frontier. It was what established this idea that there's this frontier moving from East to West and on this side was savagery and barbarism, and on this other side of civilization was team nature and wilderness and all that. Then it goes to the Pacific, and that's the end of the West. That's still in the textbooks but in a different form: we don't call native people “lurking savages” as he did. But it's in my kids' textbooks. If you have kids, it'll very likely be in their textbook because it's such a bedrock. What I'm saying is that's actually not a useful way to look at it, given what's coming up. A wonderful Texas writer, Bruce Sterling, says, “To know the past, you first have to understand the future.”It's funny, right? But what he means is that all of us have an idea of where the trajectory of history is going. A whole lot of history is about asking, “How did we get here? How do we get there?” To get that, you have to have an idea of what the “there” is. So I'm saying, I'm writing a history of the West with that West that I talked about in mind. Which gives you a very different picture: a lot more about indigenous fire management, the way the Hohokam survived the drought of the 1200s, and a little bit less about Billy the Kid. Gender Ratios and Silicon Valley Dwarkesh Patel I love that quote hahaha. Speaking of the frontier, maybe it's a mistaken concept, but I remember that in a chapter of 1493, you talk about these rowdy adventurer men who outnumber the women in the silver mines and the kind of trouble that they cause. I wonder if there's some sort of distant analogy to the technology world or Silicon Valley, where you have the same kind of gender ratio and you have the same kind of frontier spirit? Maybe not the same physical violence––– more sociologically. Is there any similarity there?Charles C. Mann I think it's funny, I hadn't thought about it. But it's certainly funny to think about. So let me do this off the top of my head. I like the idea that at the end of it, I can say, “wait, wait, that's ridiculous.“ Both of them would attract people who either didn't have much to lose, or were oblivious about what they had to lose, and had a resilience towards failure. I mean, it's amazing, the number of people in Silicon Valley who have completely failed at numbers of things! They just get up and keep trying and have a kind of real obliviousness to social norms. It's pretty clear they are very much interested in making a mark and making their fortunes themselves. So there's at least a sort of shallow comparison, there are some certain similarities. I don't think this is entirely flattering to either group. It's absolutely true that those silver miners in Bolivia, and in northern Mexico, created to a large extent, the modern world. But it's also true that they created these cesspools of violence and exploitation that had consequences we're still living with today. So you have to kind of take the bitter with the sweet. And I think that's true of Silicon Valley and its products *chuckles* I use them every day, and I curse them every day.Dwarkesh Patel Right.Charles C. Mann I want to give you an example. The internet has made it possible for me to do something like write a Twitter thread, get millions of people to read it, and have a discussion that's really amazing at the same time. Yet today, The Washington Post has an article about how every book in Texas (it's one of the states) a child checks out of the school library goes into a central state databank. They can see and look for patterns of people taking out “bad books” and this sort of stuff. And I think “whoa, that's really bad! That's not so good.” It's really the same technology that brings this dissemination and collection of vast amounts of information with relative ease. So with all these things, you take the bitter with the sweet. Technological Stupidity in the New WorldDwarkesh Patel I want to ask you again about contingency because there are so many other examples where things you thought would be universal actually don't turn out to be. I think you talked about how the natives had different forms of metallurgy, with gold and copper, but then they didn't do iron or steel. You would think that given their “warring nature”, iron would be such a huge help. There's a clear incentive to build it. Millions of people living there could have built or developed this technology. Same with the steel, same with the wheel. What's the explanation for why these things you think anybody would have come up with didn't happen?Charles C. Mann I know. It's just amazing to me! I don't know. This is one of those things I think about all the time. A few weeks ago, it rained, and I went out to walk the dog. I'm always amazed that there are literal glistening drops of water on the crabgrass and when you pick it up, sometimes there are little holes eaten by insects in the crabgrass. Every now and then, if you look carefully, you'll see a drop of water in one of those holes and it forms a lens. And you can look through it! You can see that it's not a very powerful lens by any means, but you can see that things are magnified. So you think “How long has there been crabgrass? Or leaves? And water?” Just forever! We've had glass forever! So how is it that we had to wait for whoever it was to create lenses? I just don't get it. In book 1491, I mentioned the moldboard plow, which is the one with a curving blade that allows you to go through the soil much more easily. It was invented in China thousands of years ago, but not around in Europe until the 1400s. Like, come on, guys! What was it? And so, you know, there's this mysterious sort of mass stupidity. One of the wonderful things about globalization and trade and contact is that maybe not everybody is as blind as you and you can learn from them. I mean, that's the most wonderful thing about trade. So in the case of the wheel, the more amazing thing is that in Mesoamerica, they had the wheel on child's toys. Why didn't they develop it? The best explanation I can get is they didn't have domestic animals. A cart then would have to be pulled by people. That would imply that to make the cart work, you'd have to cut a really good road. Whereas they had these travois, which are these things that you hold and they have these skids that are shaped kind of like an upside-down V. You can drag them across rough ground, you don't need a road for them. That's what people used in the Great Plains and so forth. So you look at this, and you think “maybe this was the ultimate way to save labor. I mean, this was good enough. And you didn't have to build and maintain these roads to make this work” so maybe it was rational or just maybe they're just blinkered. I don't know. As for assembly with steel, I think there's some values involved in that. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those things they had in Mesoamerica called Macuahuitl. They're wooden clubs with obsidian blades on them and they are sharp as hell. You don't run your finger along the edge because they just slice it open. An obsidian blade is pretty much sharper than any iron or steel blade and it doesn't rust. Nice. But it's much more brittle. So okay, they're there, and the Spaniards were really afraid of them. Because a single blow from these heavy sharp blades could kill a horse. They saw people whack off the head of a horse carrying a big strong guy with a single blow! So they're really dangerous, but they're not long-lasting. Part of the deal was that the values around conflict were different in the sense that conflict in Mesoamerica wasn't a matter of sending out foot soldiers in grunts, it was a chance for soldiers to get individual glory and prestige. This was associated with having these very elaborately beautiful weapons that you killed people with. So maybe not having steel worked better for their values and what they were trying to do at war. That would've lasted for years and I mean, that's just a guess. But you can imagine a scenario where they're not just blinkered but instead expressive on the basis of their different values. This is hugely speculative. There's a wonderful book by Ross Hassig about old Aztec warfare. It's an amazing book which is about the military history of The Aztecs and it's really quite interesting. He talks about this a little bit but he finally just says we don't know why they didn't develop all these technologies, but this worked for them.Dwarkesh Patel Interesting. Yeah, it's kind of similar to China not developing gunpowder into an actual ballistic material––Charles C. Mann Or Japan giving up the gun! They actually banned guns during the Edo period. The Portuguese introduced guns and the Japanese used them, and they said “Ahhh nope! Don't want them.” and they banned them. This turned out to be a terrible idea when Perry came in the 1860s. But for a long time, supposedly under the Edo period, Japan had the longest period of any nation ever without a foreign war. Dwarkesh Patel Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, it's concerning when you think the lack of war might make you vulnerable in certain ways. Charles C. Mann Yeah, that's a depressing thought.Religious DemoralizationDwarkesh Patel Right. In Fukuyama's The End of History, he's obviously arguing that liberal democracy will be the final form of government everywhere. But there's this point he makes at the end where he's like, “Yeah, but maybe we need a small war every 50 years or so just to make sure people remember how bad it can get and how to deal with it.” Anyway, when the epidemic started in the New World, surely the Indians must have had some story or superstitious explanation–– some way of explaining what was happening. What was it?Charles C. Mann You have to remember, the germ theory of disease didn't exist at the time. So neither the Spaniards, or the English, or the native people, had a clear idea of what was going on. In fact, both of them thought of it as essentially a spiritual event, a religious event. You went into areas that were bad, and the air was bad. That was malaria, right? That was an example. To them, it was God that was in control of the whole business. There's a line from my distant ancestor––the Governor Bradford of Plymouth Colony, who's my umpteenth, umpteenth grandfather, that's how waspy I am, he's actually my ancestor––about how God saw fit to clear the natives for us. So they see all of this in really religious terms, and more or less native people did too! So they thought over and over again that “we must have done something bad for this to have happened.” And that's a very powerful demoralizing thing. Your God either punished you or failed you. And this was it. This is one of the reasons that Christianity was able to make inroads. People thought “Their god is coming in and they seem to be less harmed by these diseases than people with our God.” Now, both of them are completely misinterpreting what's going on! But if you have that kind of spiritual explanation, it makes sense for you to say, “Well, maybe I should hit up their God.”Critiques of Civilization Collapse TheoriesDwarkesh Patel Yeah, super fascinating. There's been a lot of books written in the last few decades about why civilizations collapse. There's Joseph Tainter's book, there's Jared Diamond's book. Do you feel like any of them actually do a good job of explaining how these different Indian societies collapsed over time?Charles C. Mann No. Well not the ones that I've read. And there are two reasons for that. One is that it's not really a mystery. If you have a society that's epidemiologically naive, and smallpox sweeps in and kills 30% of you, measles kills 10% of you, and this all happens in a short period of time, that's really tough! I mean COVID killed one million people in the United States. That's 1/330th of the population. And it wasn't even particularly the most economically vital part of the population. It wasn't kids, it was elderly people like my aunt–– I hope I'm not sounding callous when I'm describing it like a demographer. Because I don't mean it that way. But it caused enormous economic damage and social conflict and so forth. Now, imagine something that's 30 or 40 times worse than that, and you have no explanation for it at all. It's kind of not a surprise to me that this is a super challenge. What's actually amazing is the number of nations that survived and came up with ways to deal with this incredible loss.That relates to the second issue, which is that it's sort of weird to talk about collapse in the ways that they sometimes do. Like both of them talk about the Mayan collapse. But there are 30 million Mayan people still there. They were never really conquered by the Spaniards. The Spaniards were still waging giant wars in Yucatan in the 1590s. In the early 21st century, I went with my son to Chiapas, which is the southernmost exit province. And that is where the Commandante Cero and the rebellions were going on. We were looking at some Mayan ruins, and they were too beautiful, and I stayed too long, and we were driving back through the night on these terrible roads. And we got stopped by some of these guys with guns. I was like, “Oh God, not only have I got myself into this, I got my son into this.” And the guy comes and looks at us and says, “Who are you?” And I say that we're American tourists. And he just gets this disgusted look, and he says, “Go on.” And you know, the journalist in me takes over and I ask, “What do you mean, just go on?” And he says, “We're hunting for Mexicans.” And as I'm driving I'm like “Wait a minute, I'm in Mexico.” And that those were Mayans. All those guys were Maya people still fighting against the Spaniards. So it's kind of funny to say that their society collapsed when there are Mayan radio stations, there are Maya schools, and they're speaking Mayan in their home. It's true, they don't have giant castles anymore. But, it's odd to think of that as collapse. They seem like highly successful people who have dealt pretty well with a lot of foreign incursions. So there's this whole aspect of “What do you mean collapse?” And you see that in Against the Grain, the James Scott book, where you think, “What do you mean barbarians?” If you're an average Maya person, working as a farmer under the purview of these elites in the big cities probably wasn't all that great. So after the collapse, you're probably better off. So all of that I feel is important in this discussion of collapse. I think it's hard to point to collapses that either have very clear exterior causes or are really collapses of the environment. Particularly the environmental sort that are pictured in books like Diamond has, where he talks about Easter Island. The striking thing about that is we know pretty much what happened to all those trees. Easter Island is this little speck of land, in the middle of the ocean, and Dutch guys come there and it's the only wood around for forever, so they cut down all the trees to use it for boat repair, ship repair, and they enslave most of the people who are living there. And we know pretty much what happened. There's no mystery about it.Virginia Company + HubrisDwarkesh Patel Why did the British government and the king keep subsidizing and giving sanctions to the Virginia Company, even after it was clear that this is not especially profitable and half the people that go die? Why didn't they just stop?Charles C. Mann That's a really good question. It's a super good question. I don't really know if we have a satisfactory answer, because it was so stupid for them to keep doing that. It was such a loss for so long. So you have to say, they were thinking, not purely economically. Part of it is that the backers of the Virginia Company, in sort of classic VC style, when things were going bad, they lied about it. They're burning through their cash, they did these rosy presentations, and they said, “It's gonna be great! We just need this extra money.” Kind of the way that Uber did. There's this tremendous burn rate and now the company says you're in tremendous trouble because it turns out that it's really expensive to provide all these calves and do all this stuff. The cheaper prices that made people like me really happy about it are vanishing. So, you know, I think future business studies will look at those rosy presentations and see that they have a kind of analogy to the ones that were done with the Virginia Company. A second thing is that there was this dog-headed belief kind of based on the inability to understand longitude and so forth, that the Americas were far narrower than they actually are. I reproduced this in 1493. There were all kinds of maps in Britain at the time showing these little skinny Philippines-like islands. So there's the thought that you just go up the Chesapeake, go a couple 100 miles, and you're gonna get to the Pacific into China. So there's this constant searching for a passage to China through this thought to be very narrow path. Sir Francis Drake and some other people had shown that there was a West Coast so they thought the whole thing was this narrow, Panama-like landform. So there's this geographical confusion. Finally, there's the fact that the Spaniards had found all this gold and silver, which is an ideal commodity, because it's not perishable: it's small, you can put it on your ship and bring it back, and it's just great in every way. It's money, essentially. Basically, you dig up money in the hills and there's this long-standing belief that there's got to be more of that in the Americas, we just need to find out where. So there's always that hope. Lastly, there's the Imperial bragging rights. You know, we can't be the only guys with a colony. You see that later in the 19th century when Germany became a nation and one of the first things the Dutch said was “Let's look for pieces of Africa that the rest of Europe hasn't claimed,” and they set up their own mini colonial empire. So there's this kind of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” aspect, it just seems to be sort of deep in the European ruling class. So then you got to have an empire that in this weird way, seems very culturally part of it. I guess it's the same for many other places. As soon as you feel like you have a state together, you want to index other things. You see that over and over again, all over the world. So that's part of it. All those things, I think, contributed to this. Outright lying, this delusion, other various delusions, plus hubris.Dwarkesh Patel It seems that colonial envy has today probably spread to China. I don't know too much about it, but I hear that the Silk Road stuff they're doing is not especially economically wise. Is this kind of like when you have the impulse where if you're a nation trying to rise, you have that “I gotta go here, I gotta go over there––Charles C. Mann Yeah and “Show what a big guy I am. Yeah,––China's Silver TradeDwarkesh Patel Exactly. So speaking of China, I want to ask you about the silver trade. Excuse another tortured analogy, but when I was reading that chapter where you're describing how the Spanish silver was ending up with China and how the Ming Dynasty caused too much inflation. They needed more reliable mediums of exchange, so they had to give up real goods from China, just in order to get silver, which is just a medium of exchange––but it's not creating more apples, right? I was thinking about how this sounds a bit like Bitcoin today, (obviously to a much smaller magnitude) but in the sense that you're using up goods. It's a small amount of electricity, all things considered, but you're having to use up real energy in order to construct this medium of exchange. Maybe somebody can claim that this is necessary because of inflation or some other policy mistake and you can compare it to the Ming Dynasty. But what do you think about this analogy? Is there a similar situation where real goods are being exchanged for just a medium of exchange?Charles C. Mann That's really interesting. I mean, on some level, that's the way money works, right? I go into a store, like a Starbucks and I buy a coffee, then I hand them a piece of paper with some drawings on it, and they hand me an actual coffee in return for a piece of paper. So the mysteriousness of money is kind of amazing. History is of course replete with examples of things that people took very seriously as money. Things that to us seem very silly like the cowry shell or in the island of Yap where they had giant stones! Those were money and nobody ever carried them around. You transferred the ownership of the stone from one person to another person to buy something. I would get some coconuts or gourds or whatever, and now you own that stone on the hill. So there's a tremendous sort of mysteriousness about the human willingness to assign value to arbitrary things such as (in Bitcoin's case) strings of zeros and ones. That part of it makes sense to me. What's extraordinary is when the effort to create a medium of exchange ends up costing you significantly–– which is what you're talking about in China where people had a medium of exchange, but they had to work hugely to get that money. I don't have to work hugely to get a $1 bill, right? It's not like I'm cutting down a tree and smashing the papers to pulp and printing. But you're right, that's what they're kind of doing in China. And that's, to a lesser extent, what you're doing in Bitcoin. So I hadn't thought about this, but Bitcoin in this case is using computer cycles and energy. To me, it's absolutely extraordinary the degree to which people who are Bitcoin miners are willing to upend their lives to get cheap energy. A guy I know is talking about setting up small nuclear plants as part of his idea for climate change and he wants to set them up in really weird remote areas. And I was asking “Well who would be your customers?” and he says Bitcoin people would move to these nowhere places so they could have these pocket nukes to privately supply their Bitcoin habits. And that's really crazy! To completely upend your life to create something that you hope is a medium of exchange that will allow you to buy the things that you're giving up. So there's a kind of funny aspect to this. That was partly what was happening in China. Unfortunately, China's very large, so they were able to send off all this stuff to Mexico so that they could get the silver to pay their taxes, but it definitely weakened the country.Wizards vs. ProphetsDwarkesh Patel Yeah, and that story you were talking about, El Salvador actually tried it. They were trying to set up a Bitcoin city next to this volcano and use the geothermal energy from the volcano to incentivize people to come there and mine cheap Bitcoin. Staying on the theme of China, do you think the prophets were more correct, or the wizards were more correct for that given time period? Because we have the introduction of potato, corn, maize, sweet potatoes, and this drastically increases the population until it reaches a carrying capacity. Obviously, what follows is the other kinds of ecological problems this causes and you describe these in the book. Is this evidence of the wizard worldview that potatoes appear and populations balloon? Or are the prophets like “No, no, carrying capacity will catch up to us eventually.”Charles C. Mann Okay, so let me interject here. For those members of your audience who don't know what we're talking about. I wrote this book, The Wizard and the Prophet. And it's about these two camps that have been around for a long time who have differing views regarding how we think about energy resources, the environment, and all those issues. The wizards, that's my name for them––Stuart Brand called them druids and, in fact, originally, the title was going to involve the word druid but my editor said, “Nobody knows what a Druid is” so I changed it into wizards–– and anyway the wizards would say that science and technology properly applied can allow you to produce your way out of these environmental dilemmas. You turn on the science machine, essentially, and then we can escape these kinds of dilemmas. The prophets say “No. Natural systems are governed by laws and there's an inherent carrying capacity or limit or planetary boundary.” there are a bunch of different names for them that say you can't do more than so much.So what happened in China is that European crops came over. One of China's basic geographical conditions is that it's 20% of the Earth's habitable surface area, or it has 20% of the world's population, but only has seven or 8% of the world's above-ground freshwater. There are no big giant lakes like we have in the Great Lakes. And there are only a couple of big rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River. The main staple crop in China has to be grown in swimming pools, and that's you know, rice. So there's this paradox, which is “How do you keep people fed with rice in a country that has very little water?” If you want a shorthand history of China, that's it. So prophets believe that there are these planetary boundaries. In history, these are typically called Malthusian Limits after Malthus and the question is: With the available technology at a certain time, how many people can you feed before there's misery?The great thing about history is it provides evidence for both sides. Because in the short run, what happened when American crops came in is that the potato, sweet potato, and maize corn were the first staple crops that were dryland crops that could be grown in the western half of China, which is very, very dry and hot and mountainous with very little water. Population soars immediately afterward, but so does social unrest, misery, and so forth. In the long run, that becomes adaptable when China becomes a wealthy and powerful nation. In the short run, which is not so short (it's a couple of centuries), it really causes tremendous chaos and suffering. So, this provides evidence for both sides. One increases human capacity, and the second unquestionably increases human numbers and that leads to tremendous erosion, land degradation, and human suffering.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, that's a thick coin with two sides. By the way, I realized I haven't gotten to all the Wizard and Prophet questions, and there are a lot of them. So I––Charles C. Mann I certainly have time! I'm enjoying the conversation. One of the weird things about podcasts is that, as far as I can tell, the average podcast interviewer is far more knowledgeable and thoughtful than the average sort of mainstream journalist interviewer and I just find that amazing. I don't understand it. So I think you guys should be hired. You know, they should make you switch roles or something.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, maybe. Charles C. Mann It's a pleasure to be asked these interesting questions about subjects I find fascinating.Dwarkesh Patel Oh, it's my pleasure to get to talk to you and to get to ask these questions. So let me ask about the Wizard and the Prophet. I just interviewed WIll McCaskill, and we were talking about what ends up mattering most in history. I asked him about Norman Borlaug and said that he's saved a billion lives. But then McCaskill pointed out, “Well, that's an exceptional result” and he doesn't think the technology is that contingent. So if Borlaug hadn't existed, somebody else would have discovered what he discovered about short wheat stalks anyways. So counterfactually, in a world where Ebola doesn't exist, it's not like a billion people die, maybe a couple million more die until the next guy comes around. That was his view. Do you agree? What is your response?Charles C. Mann To some extent, I agree. It's very likely that in the absence of one scientist, some other scientist would have discovered this, and I mentioned in the book, in fact, that there's a guy named Swaminathan, a remarkable Indian scientist, who's a step behind him and did much of the same work. At the same time, the individual qualities of Borlaug are really quite remarkable. The insane amount of work and dedication that he did.. it's really hard to imagine. The fact is that he was going against many of the breeding plant breeding dogmas of his day, that all matters! His insistence on feeding the poor… he did remarkable things. Yes, I think some of those same things would have been discovered but it would have been a huge deal if it had taken 20 years later. I mean, that would have been a lot of people who would have been hurt in the interim! Because at the same time, things like the end of colonialism, the discovery of antibiotics, and so forth, were leading to a real population rise, and the amount of human misery that would have occurred, it's really frightening to think about. So, in some sense, I think he's (Will McCaskill) right. But I wouldn't be so glib about those couple of million people.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah. And another thing you might be concerned about is that given the hostile attitude that people had towards the green revolution right after, if the actual implementation of these different strains of biochar sent in India, if that hadn't been delayed, it's not that weird to imagine a scenario where the governments there are just totally won over by the prophets and they decide to not implant this technology at all. If you think about what happened to nuclear power in the 70s, in many different countries, maybe something similar could have happened to the Green Revolution. So it's important to beat the Prophet. Maybe that's not the correct way to say it. But one way you could put it is: It's important to beat the prophets before the policies are passed. You have to get a good bit of technology in there.Charles C. Mann This is just my personal opinion, but you want to listen to the prophets about what the problems are. They're incredible at diagnosing problems, and very frequently, they're right about those things. The social issues about the Green Revolution… they were dead right, they were completely right. I don't know if you then adopt their solutions. It's a little bit like how I feel about my editors–– my editors will often point out problems and I almost never agree with their solutions. The fact is that Borlaug did develop this wheat that came into India, but it probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Swaminathan hadn't changed that wheat to make it more acceptable to the culture of India. That was one of the most important parts for me in this book. When I went to Tamil Nadu, I listened to this and I thought, “Oh! I never heard about this part where they took Mexican wheat, and they made it into Indian wheat.” You know, I don't even know if Borlaug ever knew or really grasped that they really had done that! By the way, a person for you to interview is Marci Baranski–– she's got a forthcoming book about the history of the Green Revolution and she sounds great. I'm really looking forward to reading it. So here's a plug for her.In Defense of Regulatory DelaysDwarkesh Patel So if we applied that particular story to today, let's say that we had regulatory agencies like the FDA back then that were as powerful back then as they are now. Do you think it's possible that these new advances would have just dithered in some approval process that took years or decades to complete? If you just backtest our current process for implementing technological solutions, are you concerned that something like the green revolution could not have happened or that it would have taken way too long or something?Charles C. Mann It's possible. Bureaucracies can always go rogue, and the government is faced with this kind of impossible problem. There's a current big political argument about whether former President Trump should have taken these top-secret documents to his house in Florida and done whatever he wanted to? Just for the moment, let's accept the argument that these were like super secret toxic documents and should not have been in a basement. Let's just say that's true. Whatever the President says is declassified is declassified. Let us say that's true. Obviously, that would be bad. You would not want to have that kind of informal process because you can imagine all kinds of things–– you wouldn't want to have that kind of informal process in place. But nobody has ever imagined that you would do that because it's sort of nutty in that scenario.Now say you write a law and you create a bureaucracy for declassification and immediately add more delay, you make things harder, you add in the problems of the bureaucrats getting too much power, you know–– all the things that you do. So you have this problem with the government, which is that people occasionally do things that you would never imagine. It's completely screwy. So you put in regulatory mechanisms to stop them from doing that and that impedes everybody else. In the case of the FDA, it was founded in the 30 when some person produced this thing called elixir sulfonamides. They killed hundreds of people! It was a flat-out poison! And, you know, hundreds of people died. You think like who would do that? But somebody did that. So they created this entire review mechanism to make sure it never happened again, which introduced delay, and then something was solidified. Which they did start here because the people who invented that didn't even do the most cursory kind of check. So you have this constant problem. I'm sympathetic to the dilemma faced by the government here in which you either let through really bad things done by occasional people, or you screw up everything for everybody else. I was tracing it crudely, but I think you see the trade-off. So the question is, how well can you manage this trade-off? I would argue that sometimes it's well managed. It's kind of remarkable that we got vaccines produced by an entirely new mechanism, in record time, and they passed pretty rigorous safety reviews and were given to millions and millions and millions of people with very, very few negative effects. I mean, that's a real regulatory triumph there, right?So that would be the counter-example: you have this new thing that you can feed people and so forth. They let it through very quickly. On the other hand, you have things like genetically modified salmon and trees, which as far as I can tell, especially for the chestnuts, they've made extraordinary efforts to test. I'm sure that those are going to be in regulatory hell for years to come. *chuckles* You know, I just feel that there's this great problem. These flaws that you identified, I would like to back off and say that this is a problem sort of inherent to government. They're always protecting us against the edge case. The edge case sets the rules, and that ends up, unless you're very careful, making it very difficult for everybody else.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah. And the vaccines are an interesting example here. Because one of the things you talked about in the book–– one of the possible solutions to climate change is that you can have some kind of geoengineering. Right? I think you mentioned in the book that as long as even one country tries this, then they can effectively (for relatively modest amounts of money), change the atmosphere. But then I look at the failure of every government to approve human challenge trials. This is something that seems like an obvious thing to do and we would have potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives during COVID by speeding up the vaccine approval. So I wonder, maybe the international collaboration is strong enough that something like geoengineering actually couldn't happen because something like human challenge trials didn't happen.Geoengineering Charles C. Mann So let me give a plug here for a fun novel by my friend, Neal Stephenson, called Termination Shock. Which is about some rich person just doing it. Just doing geoengineering. The fact is that it's actually not actually against the law to fire off rockets into the stratosphere. In his case, it's a giant gun that shoots shells full of sulfur into the upper atmosphere. So I guess the question is, what timescale do you think is appropriate for all this? I feel quite confident that there will be geoengineering trials within the next 10 years. Is that fast enough? That's a real judgment call. I think people like David Keith and the other advocates for geoengineering would have said it should have happened already and that it's way, way too slow. People who are super anxious about moral hazard and precautionary principles say that that's way, way too fast. So you have these different constituencies. It's hard for me to think off the top of my head of an example where these regulatory agencies have actually totally throttled something in a long-lasting way as opposed to delaying it for 10 years. I don't mean to imply that 10 years is nothing. But it's really killing off something. Is there an example you can think of?Dwarkesh Patel Well, it's very dependent on where you think it would have been otherwise, like people say maybe it was just bound to be the state. Charles C. Mann I think that was a very successful case of regulatory capture, in which the proponents of the technology successfully created this crazy…. One of the weird things I really wanted to explain about nuclear stuff is not actually in the book.
4,5 ⭐ Brújulas, Krakens y Años de Servicio en el Holandés Errante para PIRATAS DEL CARIBE Y EL COFRE DE LA MUERTE, película del año 2006 que sigue las aventuras del pirata Jack Sparrow en esta oportunidad buscando saldar su deuda con el legendario pirata demoníaco Davy Jones y su barco insignia El Holandés Errante, como dato adicional se suma a la búsqueda del tesoro la East India Trading Company con el Almirante Beckett #Caribe #Piratas #Disney #JackSparrow #DavyJones
Clive of India, Pirates, the birth of the British Empire, Billionaires and hookahs. It's all there in this week's episode. Join us as we show how a small business can grow into the oppressor of an entire continent in just 50 years... You too, can be a despot!
The third entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise goes bigger than ever, pitting Sparrow and friends against Lord Cutler Beckett and the full might of the East India Trading Company, hell bent on extinguishing Pirates from the seas for good. This film is ambitious, entertaining and extremely well-made, resulting in a threequel that nearly rivals the original.
Download the Volley.FM app for more short daily shows!
A history of the all 6 global reserve currencies including my two favorites being related to Pieces of Eight and the East India Trading Company. Inflation is right around the corner when the US is focused on spending trillions only at home and how the United States dollar is in danger of being replaced. Foreign manufacturing in the future, the current market condition in Q4, how to protect your money from hyper inflation, green energy, crypto and more.Thoughts of a Random Citizen is a podcast oriented around open ideas, entrepreneurship, politics, investing, travel and an odd take on history. Check out Home | Thoughts of a Random Citizen (toarcunited.com) for more about how to get involved with the podcast, leads on investment opportunities, travel tips, or our entrepreneurial goals.
A lot of the films we cover are distinctly American, linking Christianity with patriotism and American individualism. But BEYOND THE MASK is fitting for our 4th of July special - powdered wigs, gunpowder, and plots of treason abound as a masked vigilante aids the founding fathers in their quest for American independence from the British empire. Protagonist William Reynolds, an agent for the East India Trading Company, defects from the company ranks to foil its evil schemes, and teams up with Ben Franklin and George Washington to do so. Along the way, he converts to Christianity to impress the woman who makes him the most horny. View our full episode list and subscribe to any of our public feeds: http://boysbiblestudy.com Unlock 2+ bonus episodes per month: http://patreon.com/boysbiblestudy Subscribe to our Twitch for monthly streams: http://twitch.tv/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy
So you made it through part 1 of our TEASTRAVAGANZA. Congratulations, and welcome to part deux! We hope you brought some cream and some hottttt gossip! This week we talk hard tea, and the worst party in history, The Boston Tea Party. So get yourself some Smooth Move and toss it all into the ocean, it's Life's a Banquet the podcast!Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support Life's A Banquet by becoming a member!Life's A Banquet is Powered by Simplecast.
We discuss all the way to the true ending of Lucas Pope's 'Return of the Obra Dinn'. A year after finishing your work aboard the ghost ship, a package arrives that promises to answer your remaining questions, but it seems only more ambiguity is abound. We're super excited to be joined by Lucas Pope himself to talk about what went into making the game, the tough journey that nearly sank the game, and the lasting impact the game had on its players. Lucas' timelapse of creating the dioramas that make the bulk of the game.Be sure to check out the livestream we did playing this section of the game!
Ahoy, mateys! Set sail with us on a voyage to the end of the world to rescue witty Jack! It's At World's End! On this third voyage, the pirates unite under the call of the Brethren Court to raise Jack, free Calypso, foil East India Trading Company, lick brains, marry Will and Elizabeth, and set sail again as the franchise starts anew. At least, so was their plan. Were they successful? Did they do all these characters justice? What was the year 2007 like? How many actual franchises began that year?! For all these questions and more, listen to the scuttlebutt this NYFM crew trade back and forth over grog. Find our other episodes at NYFMovies.com and our socials HERE and reach out to us at notyourfathersmovies@gmail.com
We discuss up to the incomplete end of Lucas Pope's modern classic mystery game 'Return of the Obra Dinn'. The highest body-count we've ever encountered is a vast challenge as Herds takes the wheel for our second step into interactive fiction. After the titular ship appears, unmanned, off the coast of Falmouth in the UK, you're sent on as an insurance assessor to find out why the good ship never made it around the tip of Africa, and how it got back with no souls onboard. With a magical pocketwatch, you're here to solve the death of every single one of the sixty people on board when the ship departed.We're also joined by B. Michael Radburn to talk about his latest novel 'The Reach', blending the supernatural with crime fiction, and the masks we put on our monsters in horror fiction. Thanks to regular co-conspirator Sean Britten for joining us with some great monster-related queries.Be sure to check out the livestream we did of Herds' first experience playing the game!
https://www.patreon.com/ruinedheroeshttps://www.ruinedheroes.com/home-1Theme music by Tyler C. Dones and Jon BolichPrimary Sources:https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-East-India-Company/https://www.thoughtco.com/east-india-company-1773314https://www.britannica.com/topic/East-India-Companyhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/the-east-india-company-how-a-trading-corporation-became-an-imperial-ruler/https://www.ranker.com/list/worst-things-the-east-india-company-did/melissa-sartorePodcasts: Behind the Bastards, History Extra Podcast
Download the Volley.FM app for more short daily shows!
Bill rambles about Chappelle's camp in Ohio, the East India Trading Company, and funeral arrangements.
Dive into the murky depths and discover the lore, legend and curse surrounding the Flying Dutchman.
Captain Kidd was one of the great real pirates of history. Scottish born William Kidd lived a remarkable life, but was he a true pirate? Known as the accidental pirate, this fascinating man nonetheless ticked many of the boxes including his very own long lost treasure! Travelling to famous pirate waters around Madagascar and the Caribbean and tangling with other famous names such as the East India Trading Company, King William III, Robert Culliford and the Earl of Bellomont, the tale of Captain Kidd is not one to be missed. Here at Raconteur, we bring to life the greatest stories from history and mythology to both entertain and educate. We are also on YouTube! For video versions of each story visit and subscribe https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU4yfCCgXTUYcSPI0_5rP9w Video version of this story - https://youtu.be/lJGZ7sByTMo Music by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au New stories weekly. Thanks for listening!
This episode is an interview with one of the most influential professors of my undergraduate career. Dr. Wilson not only possesses an extremely enlightening perspective on today’s world, but he also is an extremely versatile researcher who is currently writing an academic novel on the differences and similarities between modern views corruption with those identified within the East India Trading Company. In this interview we dive into the world of sociology, academic writing, and the trends we see today, with an emphasis on how we as members of society can utilize a skilled known as the sociological imagination to attempt at removing ourselves from the context of our lives to analyze current events from an omnidirectional perspective. Learn more here! https://nickwilsonsoc.org/blog/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Ahoy maties, The following is a timeline of events important to the mythology of Pirates of the Caribbean, the story of the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and their friends, enemies, and inspirations. I will start by stating that The Curse of the Black Pearl most likely took place in 1782, so some dates will be referenced in relation to that date. Also, in effort to avoid spoilers, I will not recite the plots of the live action films. However, some events that took place after the Curse of the Black Pearl could spoil parts of the films. If you have not seen the films, I recommend watching them before continuing this timeline. The best place to start the timeline is with the birth of Montezuma. Around 1466, approximately 262 years before The Curse of the Black Pearl, Montezuma was born and would become Aztec Emperor. In 1474, Juan Ponce de Leon was born in Spain. He would go on to become an explorer and a conquistador. In 1485, Hernan Cortes was born in Spain. He would become one of history’s most well-known conquistadors. In 1497, a Spanish currency reform led to the creation of the pieces of eight, silver coins. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon discovered Florida while searching the New World for the Fountain of Youth. Around 1519, about 209 years before the Curse of the Black Pearl. Hernan Cortes and his armies conquered the Aztec empire. Cortes did so wielding a powerful sword, which would become known as the Sword of Cortes. Montezuma urged his people to retreat, and they stoned him to death, binding his spirit to a single stone. To end the slaughter, the Aztecs delivered a stone chest of 882 identical pieces of Aztec gold, blood money. Cortes accepted the gold, but he did not stop his conquest. Therefore, a curse was placed upon the treasure by the Aztec Gods. Anyone who took a coin from the chest would become an undead skeleton. The treasure would find its way to the Isla de Muerta, a mysterious phantom island in the Caribbean that was all but unfindable. In 1523, as captain of the Santiago, Juan Ponce de Leon discovered the Fountain of Youth on an unnamed mysterious Caribbean island. The journey was documented on the Mao Koon Map, also known as the navigational charts or the Map to the Land of the Dead. An ancient storm stranded the Santiago inland on the edge of a rocky cliff. In 1547, Hernan Cortes died, and his spirit was bound to the Sword of Cortes. In 1576, the Dutch colonized Douwesen, a small island in the South Archipelago of the Caribbean Sea. In 1580, the French colonized Falaise de Fleur, another island in the South Archipelago. Only months later, the Spanish destroyed the colony. In 1600, on December 31, London Merchants founded the East India Trading Company, a British joint-stock company and megacorporation, to monopolize trade with the Indian subcontinent... --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Volley.FM - Click here for more great shows!
On this episode Joe and Travis read the famous history article "Why Arabs Lose Wars" by former US Naval Institute professor Norvell B. De Atkine and discover what happens when someone so racist they could have worked for the East India Trading Company ends up having an impact in American Foreign Policy. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy some Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store follow us on twitter: @lions_by @jkass99 @haycraft_travis
Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and William Thrasher discuss Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) takes a crew of pirates to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from a bizarre underworld. Now in possession of Davey Jones' (Bill Nighy) heart, the East India Trading Company uses his tentacled help to start their final assault to get of pirates once and for all. Finishing up the half dozen plot threads from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, this third film in the series has a more confident story and pace. A concept of Pirate Lords from around the globe helps freshen up the franchise, as does a large scale battle between pirate ships in the midst of a supernatural storm. Mat enjoys the cinematography and deliberate pacing of Unbreakable, the first film in M. Night Shyamalan's superhero trilogy. Thrasher was amused by Mighty Orbots, a short-lived animated Transformers knock-off from the 1980s. The next few movie series we'll be covering are: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) The Fugitive (1993) U.S. Marshals (1998) Follow the show on Twitter @Sequelcast2 Like our Sequelcast 2 Facebook Page The theme song to the Sequelcast is written and performed by Marc with a C. Sequelcast 2 is delighted to be a member of The Batman Podcast Network. Hear more great podcasts here! Watch Thrasher's tabletop RPG YouTube show d-infinity Live!. Listen to Marc with a C's music podcast Discography. Buy One Starry Night, a Cthulhu Live scenario Thrasher contributed to, from DriveThruRPG!
Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and William Thrasher discuss Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is working undercover for the East India Trading Company to steal Jack Sparrow's enchanted compass. Somehow there's an Obeah Priestess (Naomi Harris), the titular Dead Man's Chest with Davy Jones' (Bill Nighy) heart in it, and a Kraken involved in all of this. Sporting a more bountiful budget than its predecessor, this sequel introduces more backstory to Captain Jack Sparrow and makes him less interesting in the process. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is more convoluted than the original film and often feels like nothing else but loads of exposition to set the viewer up for the third flick. The tone often lurches between the fun of the original (a vertical race up a cliff) and the self serious tone of something else entirely (soapy family dynamics between Will Turner and his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard)). Mat felt Aquaman was an overlong dopey superhero epic with heaps of on the nose dialogue. Thrasher caught the animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, feeling this is the best theatrical Spider-Man to date with its deep cuts to decades of Spider-Man lore. The next few movie series we'll be covering are: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) The Fugitive (1993) U.S. Marshals (1998) Follow the show on Twitter @Sequelcast2 Like our Sequelcast 2 Facebook Page The theme song to the Sequelcast is written and performed by Marc with a C. Sequelcast 2 is delighted to be a member of The Batman Podcast Network. Hear more great podcasts here! Watch Thrasher's tabletop RPG YouTube show d-infinity Live!. Listen to Marc with a C's music podcast Discography. Buy One Starry Night, a Cthulhu Live scenario Thrasher contributed to, from DriveThruRPG!
The Father and Son Financial Planning Team Podcast by Stokes Financial Group
In this episode, Brian and Skyler discuss the stock market and how it works. Join us on the history of stocks, what a stock is and more. From Bob... wait, no... Jacob Marley to the East India Trading Company (yes, it was an actual thing outside of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies), you'll learn some interesting facts about what we in the finance industry call "The Markets". Please subscribe to the show and share with your friends and family. We appreciate your ongoing listening support! Cheers!
The gang is back together! This episode, we talk about how Robert Fortune stole tea plants from China for the East India Trading Company, how a secret nuclear bunker constructed for the US government made no sense, and about Horace Coal’s strange, specific pranks. Robert Fortune’s Tea Theft at 1:05 Greek Island Project at 30:45 … Continue reading "Ep 13- Tea Heist, Greek Island Project, Dreadnaught Hoax"
This week DogWatch celebrates April Fool's Day when Dale and regular guest host Craig Schneider smoke an unbanded Cigar of the Week supplied by Bob. Bob receives his April Fool's surprise when he smokes the What's my band? cigar suggested by long-time listener Dan Crouch. Liz is back with another What's hot? What's not? What's next? segment with Bryan Newbury from Centro Cigars. The Cigar of the Week is the Wicked Indie from The East India Trading Company line of The Gurkha Cigar Group. The What's my Band? cigar is the Flor de Copan (factory seconds - bundle) suggested by Dan Crouch. The winner of this month's Palio cutter is David Dennis. Wes Thorne wins a box of Commonwealth Cedar Spills and David Zack wins a five-pack of of La Tradicion Cubana cigars during the live show chatroom. Chad Miller writes in with a question about coffee and cigars and Dana Poling asks about citrus and orange cigar flavors. Bob and Dale discuss their plans for a DogWatch Cigar Radio Herf which will be held on July 27th and July 28th at Tranquilo Cigars in Melbourne Florida. Tickets are $35 and only 25 spots are available for this intimate gathering. (Spots are going fast!) Friday night will feature a live version of DWCR with everyone in the crowd experiencing the Cigar of the Week and the Unbanded cigar. Saturday we will have a Tasting seminar, meetings with manufacturers, lunch and door prizes. More is in the planning stages and additional details will be coming out every week. Each registrant will receive a gift bag worth more than the $35 admission fee. To reserve your spot now, email Liz@cigarmedia.tv. You can vote to get Cigarmony's patented Humidity Bead System® on the shelves of Walmart through April 3rd. Go to http://www.getontheshelf.com/product/2550/Humidity-Bead-System and vote daily (You can vote twice daily if you vote by text and facebook.) Check out the live show! Go to http://www.cigarmedia.tv/live/ where the show is broadcast live most Friday evenings at 9 PM EST. Be a part of the show while participating in the chatroom. Enter April's Palio contest to win a black Palio cutter by sending a photo of you or your friends enjoying a cigar to theshow@cigarmedia.tv. (Don't forget to include your mailing address and type "Palio" on the subject line.) To see the contest pictures, click on the Contest icon on the www.cigarmedia.tv home page. Remember you must re-enter each month to be eligible to win. March's contest winner of a black Palio cutter is David Dennis. Cigar of the Week - Wicked Indie from The East India Trading Company line of The Gurkha Cigar Group The Wicked Indie blend is comprised of an oily Habano, Nicaraguan wrapper; a carefully selected Nicaraguan binder; and a rare, 3-year aged Nicaraguan filler. It will be available in 4 sizes with an MSRP ranging from $4.79 - $5.90. This cigar encompasses a rich and complex taste profile, full of sweet spice and nuttiness that evolves to a long and cool finish. 5 x 52 Robusto 6 x 54 Toro, 7 x 50 Churchill 6 x 60 XO What else have you been smokin' Dale? Punch Rare Corojo Magnum (5.25 x 54) and Punch Rare Corojo 10th Anniversary Robusto (5.0 x 50 - For those who want to taste the difference between wrappers, this comparison is a good one. Both of these cigars use the exact same filler (Dom, Hon & Nic) & binder (Connecticut Broadleaf). The original Rare Corojo is wrapped in a Sumatra leaf with a beautiful reddish color with lots of oiliness. The 10th Anny version uses a Connecticut leaf with a lighter reddish color that appears more delicate. I find the original to be a bolder cigar and a bit stronger then the 10th Anniversary. The original has more sweetness, the Anny has more floral notes. Both burn well, provide a lot of smoke and are med-full bodied. I like them both and seem to choose the original after dinner while the Anny fits me better in mid-day. What else have you been smokin' Craig? Cabaiguan Maduro - From a box I bought after returning from Esteli. These cigars are always evolving, never intimidating. Great ‘daily’ smoker, even if you smoke much less often then that. Padilla - 1932 - These 1932s were some of the best cigars ever produced by Jose Pepin Garcia, or sold by Ernesto Padilla. Now nearly 5 years old, they represent the quintessential mellowed Nicaraguan tobacco that when rolled was some of the highest quality coming out of Central America. Toasty, nutty, rich & savory. Truly a discontinued cigar to seek out. Bought from a vintage cigar retailer, these cigars are even a bargain at their $14/stick asking price today. Reynaldo 2010 - This custom Cuban cigar is rolled as a Petit Cimarones vitola (aprox 5”x58 figurado). Delivering cocoa & chocolate sweetness they demonstrate how Cuban tobacco can be molded to provide different flavor profiles than the typical Marques give you. A good cigar that really shined when it was even fresher. What else have you been smokin' Bob? ORTSAC Bulletproof 1962 Torpedo - Complex, full flavored and medium bodied. A very good smoke. What's My Band?- This week's unbanded, the Flor de Copan bundle cigar was suggested by Dan Crouch. Bob, who swears that he won't buy any cigar that starts with "Flor de" liked this cigar! Bob: A slight grassy sourness that I found very light on my palate. I genuinely enjoyed this cigar. Craig: 4-7/8”x44rg - I have $400 to spend on cigars left over from 2011 taxes & a year of penny pinching. After this cigar I am strongly considering sending it to DC to have him stock my humidor. Yet again he provides a delicious unbanded example. The initial light delivered strong woody flavors that were typical to Nicaraguan tobacco from the Jalapa region. 5 puffs later and the woodiness I tend to dislike transitioned beautifully into a lovely Nicaraguan sweetness. Like sugary orange juice concentrate, the flavor sticks to your palate & provides a tremendous finish that continues right until you take your next puff. I can type a few sentences and still taste the cigar. Epic. A bready, yeasty flavor jumps in there like a cranberry orange breakfast loaf. Do you have a suggestion for the unbanded cigar of the week? Every week Bob and Dale include an “unbanded cigar” segment in their show in which they smoke a cigar without any markings and give their honest opinions. Bob then opens a sealed envelope and discovers the cigar’s name and manufacturer. If you have suggestions for the "What's My Band?" segment, or would like to provide 2-4 What's my Band? cigars, please email liz@cigarmedia.tv. Anyone providing samples will receive a DogWatch Cigar Radio pin and sticker! Do you have a Cigar Review or a comment about the show? If you call and leave a cigar review or comment on the herfline and it is played on the show, you will receive a DogWatch Cigar Radio pin and sticker! You can reach the Herfline at 321-594-4373 - or cigar.radio on Skype. You can also send email to theshow@cigarmedia.tv. Music provided by the Figurados and The Surfonics. Please visit our sponsors and let them know you heard about them from DogWatch! Black Dog Coffee: http://www.blackdogcoffee.net/ Cigar Tourism: http://cigartourism.com/ Cigar Journal: http://www.cigarjournal.co/ Cuban Cigar Creation App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cuban-cigar-creation/id441057146?mt=8 Cigar Volante: http://www.cigarvolante.com/ CommonWealth Cedar Spills: http://www.cedarspills.com/ DogWatch Cigar Radio iTunes App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dogwatch-cigar-radio-weekly/id338128296?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D6 DogWatch Cigar Radio Android App: http://www.appbrain.com/app/dogwatch-cigar-radio/tv.wizzard.android.dogwatchsocialclub850 Esencia Cigars: http://www.esenciacigar.com/ Flatbed Cigars, makers of Panacea Cigars: http://www.flatbedcigarcompany.com/ La Palina: http://www.lapalinacigars.com/ La Tradicion Cubana: http://www.tradicion.com/ Miami Cigar and Company: http://www.miamicigarandcompany.com/ Mobile Stogie Pro App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobile-stogie-by-cigar-research/id395661756?mt=8 Mobile Stogie Ref App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobile-stogie-reference/id431376892?mt=8 Monte Pascoal Cigars: http://www.montepascoalcigars.com/ Palio Cigar Cutters:http://paliocutters.com/ Scotch Pro App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scotch-pro/id457390580?mt=8 Vanderburgh Humidors: www.vanderburghhumidors.com
This week’s discussion on A Taste of the Past focuses on curry, one of the most widley used – and misused – terms in the culinary lexicon. Joining Linda is Colleen Taylor Sen, a food historian and journalist specializing in the cuisine of India. Linda and Colleen trace the history of curry, from the East India Trading Company to British fast food chains. Tune in and learn what should and shouldn’t be considered curry and how curry leaves differ from curry powder. This episode was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery. For more information visit www.cainfive.com