MOTHER NATURE (AKA ZEUS) HAS A VOTE: 6/8: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Hardcover by Peter Frankopan (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
MOTHER NATURE (AKA ZEUS) HAS A VOTE: 6/8: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Hardcover by Peter Frankopan (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Transformed-Untold-History/dp/0525659161/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.
Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformedwill radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.
1934 BARCELONA
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | At Honda, we've been engineering cars for over 70, 75 years actually. |
| 0:06.5 | We know that excellence takes time. |
| 0:09.2 | So you can rely on the Honda engineering in the all-new ENY1 with a range of up to 250 miles on a |
| 0:15.4 | single charge and up to five years warranty servicing and roadside assistance. |
| 0:19.3 | Our first electric SUV, the ENY1. |
| 0:24.0 | Oh, a whole in one. |
| 0:26.0 | Yes! Honda, the Power of Dreams. |
| 0:28.0 | Range based on fast conditions and may vary. This is the CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Peter Frankapan of Oxford University |
| 0:39.6 | Worcester College, a professor of global history. The new book is The Earth |
| 0:42.4 | transformed, looking of Global History. The new book is The Earth Transformed, |
| 0:43.8 | looking at climate, ecology, pandemic, volcanoes, |
| 0:49.0 | all of that, and how humankind, especially |
| 0:52.2 | the civilizations that reach back the last 5,000 years, have |
| 0:56.8 | responded. Now we come to a debate that is ongoing, whether or not there is a way of explaining why Europe seems to accelerate |
| 1:06.3 | in terms of science and technology. |
| 1:09.8 | Over Asia where much of the innovation of the earlier thousand or two thousand years took place. |
| 1:17.0 | I know that having visited Central Asia, the city states of Tejkent, of Kabul, of Samar Khan. |
| 1:25.2 | All of those city states were well established with science and learning and education. |
| 1:30.3 | Thousands of years before that came to Europe. I date European universities |
| 1:36.7 | in remembering 1222 Padua. That is the period of time when universities in guilds are mixing with what is known as the |
| 1:45.3 | feudal revolution and the professor teaches me that that is too shorthand. |
| 1:51.0 | There's a lot of complication that went on in the 13th century in Europe, but in any event, Europe is said to accelerate. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

