Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird – Ada Palmer

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... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/00AF... 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 Jane Street is still waiting on someone to solve their backdoor puzzle… They’re accepting submissions until April 1st and have set aside $50,000 for the best attempts. Separately, applications are live for Jane Street’s summer ML internships in NY, London, and Hong Kong. Go check all of this out at https://janestreet.com/dwarkesh Labelbox can help ensure your agents don’t need to rely on overspecified prompts. They tailor real-world scenarios to whatever domain you’re focused on, and they make sure the data you train on rewards real understanding, not just instruction-following. Learn more at https://labelbox.com/dwarkesh Mercury’s personal accounts let you add users, issue cards, and customize permissions. This is super useful for sharing finances with a partner, a roommate… or even an OpenClaw agent. And, if you’re already a Mercury Business user, your personal account is free! See terms and conditions below, and learn more at https://mercury.com/personal-banking 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.