Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal, and I'm excited to do another one of our co-hosted

episodes with Mark Andreessen, who joins me in interviewing MIT economist Andrew McAfee, who we've actually

had on the podcast a couple years ago on a great episode with his co-author, Eric Bin Yolveson,

on their book, Machine Platform Crowd. But Andy's new book takes a very different turn from that

previous series of books and focus on the theme of bits to focusing on atoms, the physical world,

basically the environment. It's called more from less, the surprising story of how we learn to prosper

using fewer resources and what happens next. And I think it's a really important

book contributing to the important dialogue we're having right now on taking care of our planet

and also of taking care of human progress, especially because these two don't have to be a zero-sum

game of the two in conflict with each other. So what does it take to go from that narrative of

extraction and destruction to one of protection and progress? So in this episode, we cover everything from what capitalism's

role is in all this, including what it is and isn't, to the global environment, including

China and India. And throughout, we discussed the technology from energy use and types of energy

to dematerialization. And surprisingly, the idea of technology from energy use and types of energy to dematerialization.

And surprisingly, the idea of that well before software was even invented.

Stay tuned for that bit.

But we quickly begin with the technology and effects of the Industrial Revolution.

The industrial era kicked off with the Industrial Revolution and the James Watch steam engine and all those other technologies was this period of amazing human growth, the growth of our economies, growth of our prosperity, growth of our population. And that was great in a sense, but it really did feel like there was a tradeoff between improving the human condition and improving the

state of the world. And in the industrial era, if you looked at the evidence, you could make a

pretty strong case that we were increasing our growth at the expense of the planet that we all lived

on. We took more resources from the earth every year. We chopped down more trees. We cleared more

cropland. We took more fossil fuels out of the earth.

...