Why Rome actually fell: plagues, slavery, & ice age — Kyle Harper

800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the population in many areas. Also, back-to-back volcanic eruptions caused a mini Ice Age, leaving Rome devastated by famine and disease. I chatted with historian Kyle Harper about this and much else: * Rome as a massive slave society * Why humans are more disease-prone than other animals * How agriculture made us physically smaller (Caesar at 5'5" was considered tall) 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 * Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/kyle-harper * Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dwarkesh-podcast/id1516093381?i=1000704767817 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LhE123eOtQoOm0IPusEiT?si=4d7d8b25374a4f92 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 * WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. They have APIs for all the most common enterprise requirements—things like authentication, permissions, and encryption—so you can quickly plug them in and get back to building your core product. If you want to make your product enterprise-ready, join companies like Cursor, Perplexity and OpenAI, and head to https://workos.com * Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier of capabilities at https://scale.com/dwarkesh To sponsor a future episode, visit https://dwarkesh.com/advertise. 𝐊𝐘𝐋𝐄'𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 * The Fate of Rome: https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Rome-Climate-Disease-Princeton/dp/0691166838 * Plagues upon the Earth: https://www.amazon.com/Plagues-upon-Earth-Princeton-Economic/dp/069119212X * Slavery in the Late Roman World: https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Late-Roman-World-275-425/dp/0521198615 I highly recommend all of these. Kyle is also working on a new book called The Last Animal. Stay tuned for the release! 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 - Plague's impact on Rome's collapse 00:07:08 - Rome’s little Ice Age 00:12:35 - Why did progress stall in Rome’s Golden Age? 00:24:39 - Slavery in Rome 00:37:06 - Was agriculture a mistake? 00:48:26 - Disease’s impact on cognitive function 01:00:30 - Plague in India and Central Asia 01:06:00 - The next pandemic 01:17:32 - How Kyle uses LLMs 01:19:35 - De-extinction of lost species