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Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird

Posted by (Florida) on

I watched this amazing interview with Renaissance historian Ada Palmer. All sorts of fascinating info on that period I never knew. I could bullet point the most interesting bit, but the video's timestamps are pretty descriptive (warning: it's 2 hours and has the occasional bits of adult content).

π“πˆπŒπ„π’π“π€πŒππ’
(00:00:00) - How cosplaying Ancient Rome led to the Renaissance
(00:28:49) - How Florence's weird republic worked
(00:38:13) - How the Medicis took over Florence
(00:58:12) - Why it was so hard for Gutenberg to make any money off the printing press
(01:17:34) - Why the industrial revolution didn't happen in Italy
(01:23:02) - The Library of Alexandria isn’t where most ancient books were lost
(01:41:21) - The Inquisition accidentally invented peer review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAIhVfGbREA&t=3s

Posted by
2353 posts

Thanks Eddie for this interview,

Have to say that two hours of listening is a bit too much to digest for me. So I only listened more specifically what she has to tell about Gutenberg and the invention of printing. I know that it played a very important role for the Protestant Reformation, but that the latter actually played an important role for printing itself too is new to me. And that he went bankrupt because he had not the necessary network to distribute his printed bibles, to make his business profitable. Very interesting to learn how this worked.

Frankly speaking instead of only listening, would discussing history with her about some of the subjects for me even better. Nevertheless very interesting what she has to tell.

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