364 - The Mystery of the Great Library of Ancient Alexandria

Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Dan Cummins

True Crime, Society & Culture, Religion, Conspiracies, History, Biographies, Education, Adult Humor, Comedy, Dark Humor, Conspiracy, Cults

4.7 • 21.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2023

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Did the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria truly set humanity's progress back 1,000 years? Or is that total speculation? What was stored in what was supposedly the greatest library of the ancient world? What happened to all that knowledge?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The library.
0:01.0	To some, I can see how libraries almost seem archaic in today's digital world, cute but
0:06.3	redundant, relics have increasingly distant past, but libraries are of course still out
0:11.3	there.
0:12.3	Lots of them.
0:13.3	They're still being used heavily, and they're still very important.
0:16.3	There are more than 320,000 libraries worldwide, 73% of them in developing and transitioning
0:22.3	countries, and many of them contain unique works not found elsewhere, or not found in many
0:27.9	other places at least.
0:29.7	Not every book has been converted into digital form.
0:33.8	Actually many books have not.
0:35.7	I know because it's something that continually drags me crazy when I'm looking for additional
0:39.3	sources on topics that haven't been heavily covered in the past few decades, and I'm not
0:43.7	looking for rare and ancient books, which are even harder to find digital copies of online
0:48.1	outside of a, you know, private digital databases.
0:51.5	Maybe I should consider taking more trips to the library to find physical copies of sources.
0:55.9	I wouldn't be alone.
0:56.9	In 2017, more than 172 million registered US library users representing 55% of the 312 million
1:05.4	Americans who lived within a public library service area at that time visited public libraries
1:10.4	a total of 1.32 billion times.
1:15.0	Now not everyone is heading to the library for books.
1:18.0	Some are going to the library for internet access, some are maybe going to use the bathroom.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dan Cummins, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dan Cummins and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.