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Joseph Tainter was recently interviewed by Nate Hagens: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/27-joe-tainte...


Came here to mention the interview by Nate and am happy to see you did.

In addition, and on a similar conceptual basis, I'd recommend:

The Great Simplification [1] The Century of the Self [2] Can't Get You Out of My Head [3] The Resilience web site content [4] The Consilience Project [5]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xr9rIQxwj4 [2] https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/ [3] https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/#top [4] https://www.resilience.org/ [5] https://consilienceproject.org/


This is just scratching the surface of anthropology, if you want to go on a wild ride, read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269264-the-dawn-of-eve... Oxford also has a similar shop to Resilience / Consilience, the Future of Humanity Institute: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ Toby Ord is a member, his book The Pricipe: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity is quite interesting: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50485582-the-precipice


The Dawn of Everything has to be one of the worst books on anthropology out there. It's a thing disguised polemic dressed up as archeological history.

I find Yuval's work to be more digestible, in part due to better writing, and in part due to less pretense.

I would also suggest Susan RiceBauer's The History of Ancient Civilizations, Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the making is the modern world, and Lars Brownworths Lost to the West: the forgotten Byzantine Empire.




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