Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages - By Ada Palmer

In this post, Ada Palmer challenges the familiar story that the Black Death “caused” the Renaissance, and that the Renaissance was a simple golden age after a dark medieval past. Instead, she uses the comparison with COVID to ask what history can and cannot tell us about crisis, recovery, myth-making, and the choices societies face after catastrophe. It is a thoughtful, bracing essay about why we should want something better than a new Renaissance—and why achieving that depends on human action, not historical inevitability.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:07:56 - Part 1: Renaissance Life was Worse than the Middle Ages (super-condensed version)* 00:35:12 - Part 2: Where did the Myth Come From in the First Place? (A Renaissance Story)* 00:52:43 - Part 3: Why is the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age Retold so Much? (a post-Renaissance story)* 01:18:40 - Conclusion: We Should Aim for Something Better than the Renaissancehttps://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe