Optimism vs. Hope: How to Build a Better Future, with Historian Ada Palmer

The return of our wonderful guest, author and historian Ada Palmer! (If you haven’t listened to our first episode with her, scroll back a bit and listen to Romeo & Juliet & Everything else.)  This time we talk about the Black Death, Covid-19 as a historian sees it, and helping each other make a better world.  Topics include: Titus Andronicus, Romeo & Juliet, Petrarch, tranquil souls, the gayest city in Europe, cuneiform tweet tablets, jelly baby models of the Battle of Helm’s Deep, Prometheus, the correct way to time travel, Machiavelli, Beethoven, Rosalind Franklin, John Brown, and hopepunk. Note: we briefly talk about autoimmune disorders, and the science is of course much more complex than we were able to get into.  If you want to read up a little, here are a couple articles: https://www.science.org/content/article/black-death-left-mark-human-genome https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6925958/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★