25. Richard Rhodes — Energy: A Human History

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2018

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is one of the best dialogues Dr. Shermer has ever had in his quarter century of talking to the leading scientists and scholars of our time. Listen in as he and Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes discuss nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, the psychology of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), human violence and its causes, the “Bullet Holocaust” (the millions of Jews and others shot to death in Eastern Europe before the death camps ramped up their killing by gas), how people become serial killers (the socialization of violence), and his new book Energy: A Human History, which reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over time—wood to coal to oil to electricity and beyond. People have lived and died, businesses have prospered and failed, and nations have risen to world power and declined, all over energy challenges. Ultimately, the history of these challenges tells the story of humanity itself.

In Energy, Rhodes highlights the successes and failures that led to each breakthrough in energy production; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine, from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He addresses how we learned from such challenges, mastered their transitions, and capitalized on their opportunities. Rhodes also looks at the current energy landscape, with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100.

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Highland, we're all about celebrating little wins, and little ways to innovate digital processes.
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0:25.0	Highland, intelligent content solutions for innovators everywhere at Highland.com.
0:30.0	This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations
0:40.4	with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.
0:47.0	And my guest today is Richard Rhodes. His new book is Energy, a
0:54.3	human history, a 400 year human history. And I just finished it. I did the
0:59.0	audio version of it. It's really quite good. Actually I've listened to many your books on audio. I started with the
1:07.2	making of the atomic bomb for which you won the Pulitzer Prize. I'll tell you how long
1:11.7	ago that was. I listened to that on books on tape with
1:14.4	cassettes. Stuffed into my cycling jersey as I was riding around training and
1:20.4	listening to how the atomic bomb was made and that's you won the poet surprise for that I have to say that's one of the great books in the history of science of all time it really is a terrific read and and the dark sun making the hydrogen bomb a lot of people don't know you
1:35.3	wrote a book on the Aitesons Groupon which I discovered when I was
1:38.0	researching my book on the Holocaust deniers and then I got into the history of
1:41.7	the Holocaust and I had no idea how bad these dudes were I mean how we only hear about the
1:47.9	camps but but the actions of these soldiers in the Eastern Front was terrible.
1:53.0	Well, and I think that the bullet holocaust, as it's been called,
1:58.0	one and a half million people shot to death into killing pits.
2:02.0	I think it was the predecessor of the death camps in the sense that.
	...

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