Why Eastbound Flights Are Faster, and Other Strange Things About Wind (Simon Winchester)

Man hoisted a sail long before he invented a wheel. Polynesians, who must rank as the greatest navigators on the planet, they invented the how trigger, which is an extra hull attached to the main hull by horizontal struts. It won't or it'll be very, very difficult to make it capsize, so they could sail very fast, very close to the wind. And they, using how triggers, went thousands of miles and if you've been to the Pacific, obviously you have it's there are very few islands and huge distances to travel between them.

How did these people do this? It's just astonishing. All right everybody, it's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. My guest today is the legendary author Simon Winchester. The author of many acclaimed New York Times bestselling books that you'll be familiar with, including The Professor and the Madman, which was made into a uh motion picture, The Men Who United the States, The Map that Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, The Perfectionists, how the precision how precision engineers created the modern world.

Knowing what we know, the transmission of knowledge from ancient wisdom to modern magic, which he was on the show before, so he's our returning champion. Uh, Krakatoa was I think that was the first book I read of yours, Simon, Krakatoa, another great, uh, another great one. But here's the new book. The Breath of the Gods, The History and Future of the Wind. Simon, you're the only person I know of that could take a subject like the wind, of which I would think, how could you write a book about that and turn it into a really uh gripping page turner?

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