Everyone leaves a legacy.

But a legacy can change over time as new generations re-examine old reputations.

From Wundery and Goalhanger Podcasts, I'm Afu Hirsch.

I'm Peter Frankepan, and in a brand new series we're exploring the lives of some of the biggest characters in history, from Napoleon to Picasso.

And asking, what does their past tell us about our present? This is legacy.

Follow now, wherever you get your podcasts. This is the CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Peter Frankepan of Oxford University

Worcester College Professor of Global History. The new book is The Earth

transformed looking at climate College, Professor of Global History, the new book is The Earth Transformed,

Looking at Climate, Ecology, Pandemic, Volcanoes, all of that, and how

humankind, especially the civilizations that reach back the last 5,000 years, have

responded. Now we come to a debate that is ongoing, whether or not there is a way of explaining why Europe seems to accelerate in terms

of science and technology.

Over Asia, where much of the innovation of the earlier thousand or two thousand years took place.

I know that having visited Central Asia, the city states of Tejkent, of Kabul, of Samar Khan. All of those city states were well established

with science and learning and education. Thousands of years before that came to Europe. I date European universities remembering 1222

Padua. That is the period of time when universities in guilds are mixing with what is known as the

feudal revolution and the professor teaches me that that is too shorthand.

There's a lot of complication that went on in the 13th century in Europe, but in any event, Europe is said to accelerate.

Professor, the Great Divergence, is there an explanation or are we too close to it?

Well, that's a great question.

There are so many fantastic scholars to work on this question, most notably Ken Bomerans

at University of Chicago.

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