The Burning Archive brings you a special two-part interview with the esteemed world historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto.
Listen at Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast players.
Did you know the first case of animal farming was the humble snail? How does the world’s leading historian of the world see the accelerating pace of change today affecting identity and mental health?
In this first episode (released 18/8/23) we discuss
1. World History, Food, Environment and Civilizations – how no civilization is better than another, and all civilizations adapt the environment to human needs – sometimes disastrously
2. Ideas, Culture and Change in World History – how human imagination and ideas drive history, and why do things change so much?
Felipe Fernández-Armesto‘s latest book is Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan (Bloomsbury, 2022). He has written some of the best history books, including these discussed in the podcast:
- Civilizations (Macmillan, 2000) or Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (Free Press, 2001)
- Food: A History (Macmillan, 2001) or Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (Free Press, 2002)
- The Americas: A Hemispheric History (Modern Library, 2003) or The Americas: A History of A Hemisphere (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)
- Ideas That Changed the World (Dorling Kindersley, 2003)
- Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2004)
- Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (W. W. Norton, 2006; Oxford University Press, 2007)
- Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006; Random House, 2007)
- The World: A Brief History (Pearson, 2007)
- 1492. The Year the World Began (HarperOne, 2009; Bloomsbury, 2010)
- Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Co., 2014)
- A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change–and the Limits of Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2015)
- The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (Oxford University Press, 2019)
- Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It (Oneworld, 2019)
Keywords: history, world history, best history books, best historians, civilization, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, agricultural revolution, culture, social change, environment, climate change, mental health.
Please listen to my extended interview with Felipe Fernández-Armesto on The Burning Archive podcast this week. It is full of such wisdom, wit and humour. I will be releasing part two on 25 August.
I also released on the YouTube channel a video introduction to my Mindful History course.
You can enrol at the course here. I am offering an additional 30% off the early adopters price to my substack readers it you enter the coupon code ‘Burning23’.