Decoder Ring | How Books About Things That Changed the World… Changed the World

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chickens—there are books about all of them, and many more besides, with the phrase “changed the world” or something similarly grandiose right there in the title. These books are sometimes called “microhistories” or “thing biographies” and they’ve been a trope in publishing for decades. In this episode, we establish where this trend came from, figure out why it’s been so persistent, and then we put a bunch of authors on the spot, asking them to make the case for why their subjects changed the world. The writers you’ll hear from include: Simon Garfield (Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World) Mark Kurlansky (Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World) George Gibson, publisher of Cod and Dava Sobel’s Longitude Historian Bronwen Everill Slate writer Henry Grabar (Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World) Gastropod co-host Nicola Twilley (Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves) Tim Queeney (Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization) Leila Philip (Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America). This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman also produce our show. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Thank you to Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America; Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World; Tina Lupton; Dan Kois; and Nancy Miller. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front.
0:04.7	Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off.
0:09.2	The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin.
0:15.1	By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching their peak in the afternoon.
0:21.3	Not in the mood for miserable weather?
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0:26.4	Sun Express, nonstop sunshine.
0:30.9	Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet.
0:36.2	You know the feeling when you're trying to book a trip, too many choices, too much fine print,
0:40.2	and no real way to know if you're actually getting the best deals.
0:43.1	Smart Travel helps you skip that stress and book with confidence.
0:46.8	NerdWallet's travel journalists break down the pros and cons of travel decisions,
0:51.3	like when lounge access is worth paying for, how a travel agent could save you money, and which hotel loyalty programs give you the best value.
0:59.7	So before you book, learn how to get the most out of your travel dollars.
1:03.6	Follow smart travel on your favorite podcast app, and stay tuned later in the show for a special segment on travel.
1:16.8	Music and stay tuned later in the show for a special segment on travel. In the late 1990s, the author Simon Garfield found himself leafing through a book his son had brought home from school.
1:23.9	It was like a horrible history's kind of book, and it was about all these experiments that people had conducted, mostly men, mostly Victorians, that had gone wrong in some way.
1:36.4	Like think of scientists who caused eye-gouging, life-taking explosions while trying to isolate compounds and elements, or the one who discovered that wastes from an ammunition factory made a good toilet bowl cleaner.
1:49.0	But one story in the book particularly grabbed Simon.
1:52.0	It had a two-page spread on this man called William Perkin.
1:58.0	In 1856, Perkin was an 18-year-old chemist living in London.
2:03.2	He was trying to find a way to make an artificial quinine
	...

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