The World in Time

Gaia Vince

Friday, January 31, 2020

Bedouins in Camp at Night. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Bedouins in Camp at Night. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Fire, language, beauty, and time: these are the four things that author and broadcaster Gaia Vince says are responsible for turning primitive hunter-gatherers into the modern smartphone-carrying humans capable of listening to podcasts about books. On this week’s episode of The World in Time, Lewis H. Lapham and Vince work backward from the present to see how we got here and how our ability to change the environment is partly to blame—and how we’re presently, thanks to the processes that brought us to 2020, on the brink of a brand-new relationship with nature.

 

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

More Podcasts

April 17, 2017

The World in Time:

Andrew Bacevich

Lewis Lapham talks to Andrew J. Bacevich about America’s shift from the Cold War to war in the Middle East. More

June 01, 2018

The World in Time:

Stephen Greenblatt

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Stephen Greenblatt, author of Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. More

May 27, 2022

The World in Time:

Eric Jay Dolin

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. More

Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

August 18, 2023

The World in Time:

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

October 28, 2022

The World in Time:

Stacy Schiff

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. More