196. What Would A Manual For Civilization Look Like? feat. Lewis Dartnell

Having a background in planetary science gives our guest an interesting perspective on the world. In his work, Lewis can tie together things like the existence of humanity, and how the human experience has been impacted or even made possible by things like the movement of the tectonic plates and the great oxidation event.

Lewis Dartnell is a research scientist, and author based in London, UK. His books include “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch,” and “Origins: How the Earth Made Us.”

He is currently a Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster, after having spent some time at the UK Space Agency.

Lewis sits down with Greg to talk about building seed banks and prepping for the future, the scientific method, what a manual for civilization might look like, and how to change people's perspectives on the overwhelming weight of history of our species.

Episode Quotes:

On terraforming Mars

43:07: So when people talk about terraforming Mars or making the Martian environment much more like the earth is today. We're not really talking about creating something new, but we're basically talking about turning back the hands of time, turning back Martian history to its primordial state when it did have a much more habitable environment.

Our planet’s problem is the one we created

48:25: The problem we're finding with our planet's environments and global climate is a problem that we created as an unintended consequence of the solution we found to a previous global problem, which was energy scarcity.

Africa as a place of greatest genetic diversity

34:08: The vast majority of human evolution, human history has been in Africa. And that is where we find the greatest genetic diversity across the entire species is still in our home stomping grounds in the African continent. And there's actually very, very little genetic diversity across people living everywhere else in the world.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• The-knowledge.org
• Connecticut Yankee goes to king Arthur's court book by Mark Twain
• The Leftovers by Tom Perotta
• Joseph Tainter
• unSILOed: In Defense of Genetic Engineering feat. Beth Shapiro 

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Westminster
• Lewis Dartnell’s Website
• Lewis Dartnell on LinkedIn
• Lewis Dartnell on Twitter
• Lewis Dartnell on Facebook
• Lewis Dartnell on TEDTalk
• Lewis Dartnell on Talks at Google | Origins 
• Lewis Dartnell on Talks at Google | The Knowledge

His Work:

• Article on Aeon
• Origins: How the Earth Made Us
• The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch
• My Tourist Guide to the Solar System
• Life in the Universe: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides series- Astrobiology

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