Tomás Pueyo — Explaining the World Through Geography, History and Data (EP. 297)

I don't think we've evolved in a world where anything grows exponentially. I don't think we have an intuition at all. We see lines when we zoom in and we need to zoom out and see history for us to understand these exponential curves. Like ludicrous were actually right. Most of them lost their job and the alternative that they had was actually not better if they found one.

And so it's something that was better over the decades. It's great for us it wasn't before then well hello everyone it's Jim O'Chauvisi with yet another Infinite Loops i'm very excited about today's guest Thomas Poe a French-Spanish writer engineer entrepreneur whose work sits at the intersection of maps math and imagination oh man i'm gonna love talking to you his work came to global attention early 2020 When his viral essays Coronavirus, Why You Must Act Now, and The Hammer and the Dance helped millions to understand what exponential spread really meant. You know, what's interesting is that those two pieces led to an incredibly popular substack called Uncharted Territories, where you use geography, history, and technology.

and data to explain the world, where it's been, where it's going. But I always think about that Bartlett quote, and I want your opinion on it. The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. Why? And welcome.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (99 minutes, 16,507 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.