Western Civ

You probably know the name, Copernicus. But you likely don't know the name, Rheticus. Well, today I explain why you should. Without Rheticus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies might never get published and the Father of Astronomy might have been an unknown. In this history podcast, we take a look at Copernicus between roughly 1531 and 1540.

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Copernicus completes his studies and begins his major astronomical research. Before long, the Father of Modern Astronomy becomes convinced Ptolemy was wrong. The sun does not revolve around the earth. And that is not all Ptolemy was wrong about.

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Today we begin the life of Nicholas Copernicus - the father of modern astronomy. While there is a lot of validity to Copernicus' title, what I cover today are his immediate predecessors: George Peurbach and Regiomontanus. Without these two men, Copernicus might never have written On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies.

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Bismarck. Napoleon III. France. Prussia. Germany. The siege of Paris. The great precursor to World War One. Today I talk about it all when I sit down with Rachel Chrastil and talk about her new book: Bismarck's War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe. Click the link to buy the book. But, honestly, even if you don't, you are going to love this excellent historian interview.

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In our last overview episode, before we start Copernicus, I want to cover the concept of the "fact" and the "experiment" as each pertains to the Scientific Revolution. Both were products of the Scientific Revolution and did not exist, at least in our modern sense, in the Middle Ages or prior. While Francis Bacon usually gets the credit for the "fact", the true story is more complicated.

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Today I sit down with Historian Mark William Jones and discuss his newest book: 1923: The Crisis of German Democracy in the Year of Hitler's Putsch.

The story of Hitler's rise to power is documented in many histories. Jones, however, gives a much more detailed account that describes how Hitler's rise was anything but inevitable. More than anything, the work serves as a cautionary tale about how we can never take democracy for granted.

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Prior to the Scientific Revolution, math was considered a part of philosophy. But with a new emphasis on measurement and objective facts, it did not take long for mathematics to have a profound impact on the European world.

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Today we continue exploring the origins of the Scientific Revolution. If it was possible to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, and if there were large landmasses directly opposite Asia, then how the ancients had thought about the earth was wrong. The idea of Earth would need to be rethought and reconsidered. Moreover, while Columbus' discovery might have implications for the continents, it also had implications for the cosmos.

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It is weird to think about, but when Columbus "discovered" the New World there was no word for "discover" in English. Or French. Or Latin for that matter. Discover, as a word, did not exist because it was not something one did. Today I talk about the origins of the Scientific Revolution which are inherently grounded in the Age of Discovery. I also answer the question: can there be a Scientific Revolution without discovery?

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***NOTE: I was not able to upload this episode as one file which is not what I originally planned. So I had to break it in half.

In this episode, I begin a deep dive into Hernando de Soto who, in so many ways, absolutely represents the conquistador era. I over Soto's travails through Panama with Balboa, in Nicaragua on his own, in Peru with Pizarro, and, ultimately, to La Florida. Soto would die in the wilds of Arkansas, still searching for that El Dorado he would never find.

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