Hi everyone. Welcome to the A6 and C podcast. I'm Sonal. Today we have the very first

episode for a new book coming out November 10th by Virginia Postrel. The Fabric of civilization, how textiles made the world, which is all

about the central role of textiles in the history of technology, science, commerce, civilization

itself, but it's really a history and evolution of innovation across all kinds of fields.

So there's something for everyone in this episode.

Virginia has written several best-selling books, including the substance of style, a long-time favorite of mine,

the power of glamour, which I excerpted when I was at Wired.

She also wrote The Future in its enemies in the late 90s

and was the former editor-in-chief of Reason and has been a columnist for various magazines

and newspapers and currently she has a regular column in Bloomberg opinion.

But we're here today to talk about her soon-to-be release book.

And in the long discussion that follows, probably the longest we've done here,

we both delve deep as well as lightly dip into a wide range of topics. The first segment covers fabrics from the genetics of cotton to the supply chain of silk, including early machines, early management techniques, what was considered expertise. We then cover the storage and

transmission of knowledge, both explicit and tacit, including artifacts and

manuals to notation and measurement and especially mathematics, touching briefly on

NASA's space program, needing an AI and the environmental impact of dies, and in the

last section we go Meta on how innovation happens, from the zeitgeist of the times

to the dynamics of codifying and sharing knowledge and the industrial enlightenment to the demographics and symbols involved.

We actually go deep on the story of evolution and meaning of kentaclotte and other patterns in

Ghana, to finally ending on the difference between cultures and

civilizations, because the throughline that resonated most deeply with me throughout this book

is that the story of textiles is one of human ingenuity, which is also

...