Ada Palmer on Dwarkesh Patel: Why Petrarch’s Plan Backfired

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

March 6, 2026

Duration

2h 2m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

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📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Renaissance history is so much wilder and weirder than you would have expected. Very fun chatting with Ada Palmer (historian, novelist, and composer based at the University of Chicago). Some especially fascinating things I learned from the conversation and her excellent book, Inventing the Renaissance: https://a.co/d/03EjyByR 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

• Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ada-palmer
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-cosplaying-ancient-rome-led-to-the-scientific/id1516093381?i=1000753675325
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/00AFjws53vNchZYgKGmFCU?si=08ae3a78c7dd4a4a

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

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To sponsor a future episode, visit https://dwarkesh.com/advertise. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00:00) - How cosplaying Ancient Rome led to the Renaissance (00:28:49) - How Florence's weird republic worked (00:38:13) - How the Medicis took over Florence (00:58:12) - Why it was so hard for Gutenberg to make any money off the printing press (01:17:34) - Why the industrial revolution didn't happen in Italy (01:23:02) - The Library of Alexandria isn’t where most ancient books were lost (01:41:21) - The Inquisition accidentally invented peer review 𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐌𝐒 & 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 Eligible Mercury Business users who apply for and maintain a Mercury Personal account may have their Mercury Personal subscription fee waived provided they remain a user on an active Mercury Business account in good standing. Standard Mercury Platform Subscription fees will apply if they no longer meet eligibility requirements, including but not limited to no longer being associated with an eligible Mercury Business account, or if the program is modified or terminated. Mercury may modify or discontinue this offering at any time and will provide notice as required by law. See Subscription Terms for full details.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

• Ada Palmer

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Dwarkesh Patel and Ada Palmer, Ada Palmer on Dwarkesh Patel: Why Petrarch’s Plan Backfired explores renaissance humanism’s messy pipeline to science, power, printing, and progress Palmer argues the Renaissance wasn’t a simple “rediscover classics → get science” story but a long, stepwise process: building libraries, expanding access to texts, learning new ways to use information, and only later applying those habits to nature.

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