You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Past, present future is the History of Ideas podcast with me, David Rundsman, exploring ideas from politics to philosophy, from science to fiction, where they come from what they mean, why they matter.

We have series on the great political fictions, the great historical what-ifs,

the history of bad ideas, and much more. How ideas change and explain our world. Twice a week,

every week, wherever you get your podcasts, past, present, future. If you like this podcast,

can we recommend another one? It's called Big Picture Science. You can hear

it wherever you get your podcast and its name tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the

most interesting research in science. Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist. I am Molly and I'm a

science journalist.

And we talk to people smarter than us and we have fun along the way.

The show is called Big Picture Science.

And as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcast.

This episode was revised, re-recorded, and produced, according to my higher standards, in

24, around seven years after the original episode was produced.

It's now more representative of the kind of work you'll eventually find that I produce for

the podcast.

So if, after listening to this episode, you find you dislike the content,

voiceovers, choice of background music, or the audio mix of other early episodes, and the

background music was definitely too loud on some early ones, feel free to skip ahead to episodes

from 2018 or 2019 when you can expect far better quality.

In the mid-16th century, as King Philip II oversaw his expanding Spanish Empire with its stranglehold on the Americas,

he saw little reason to expand his colonial presence into eastern North America.

...