The Long History of AI: From Descartes to Astro Boy & ChatGPT

The Long History of AI: From Descartes to Astro Boy & ChatGPT

What if artificial intelligence isn't just about machines? What if it's part of a much longer story about how we understand ourselves?   In every age, humans have questioned what separates us from animals, machines, and each other. In this episode, Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer explore our changing ideas of consciousness and intelligence. From Descartes and religion to Astro Boy and the futures we once imagined, this conversation connects our history of consciousness with today's AI debate.   In this conversation: • What Descartes would make of artificial intelligence?  • Why Japan gave Astro Boy a birth certificate?  • What Ada's science fiction epic, Terra Ignota, got right about AI  • And is consciousness really a yes-or-no question?   Timestamps: 00:54 What Descartes would say if you gave him Claude? 04:51 How our theories of consciousness have changed history 09:22 How Astro Boy influenced Silicon Valley 11:16 The history of Manga 19:12 Do you need to be alive to be conscious? 21:50 What Aristotle got right in defining the differences between things 24:37 Appetites. Passions. Reason. 29:32 The religious debate - Body v The Soul 32:10 Dante’s Inferno unlocked 34:24 Our history of monsters 36:49 The Empathy Sphere 41:08 The Power of Science Fiction 42:37 What Ada’s novel 'Terra Ignota' reveals about consciousness, rights and intelligence 45:18 Our desire for First Contact 47:08 How the future failed us in the year 2000 53:09 What Montaigne learned from concussion 01:00:32 Final Thoughts   Subscribe & follow: If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories. Production credits: Hosted by Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer Produced by Amy Davoren-Rose, Fix The News [https://fixthenews.com/] Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That! [https://www.hearthat.com.au/]

How the World Survives Information Revolutions: Fake news, censorship & what history teaches us about echo chambers

Every generation thinks it’s living through an unprecedented information crisis. But according to historian Ada Palmer, we’ve been here before.  In this episode, Angus and Ada explore the first great information revolution - from Machiavelli hiding The Prince and Leonardo da Vinci’s coded notebooks to the printing press, censorship, and Shakespeare’s anxieties about misinformation.   In this episode:  ·      Is fake news really new? ·      What happens when information suddenly becomes available to everyone? ·      Why do new technologies amplify both progress and extremism? ·      Are social media and the internet following a familiar historical pattern? ·      And… what does fruit have to do with democracy?   From Renaissance Florence to modern algorithms, this conversation reveals how societies adapt to upheaval - and why history may offer clues for navigating today’s information chaos. Because the world doesn’t get saved once. It gets saved - again and again.   Timestamps:  00:50 Why Machiavelli hid The Prince  03:48 Why Leonardo wasn’t really a scientist  06:37 The printing press changes everything  12:48 “Children of gold, parents of iron”  19:36 What social media has in common with the Renaissance  23:09 Why censorship rarely works  30:21 Is change actually accelerating?  35:15 The case for free speech  38:27 The strange reason cantaloupe helped spark revolution  48:51 Democracy, experts & the future Subscribe & follow: If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories. Production credits: Hosted by Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer Produced by Amy Davoren-Rose, Fix The News [https://fixthenews.com/] Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That! [https://www.hearthat.com.au/]

A Short History of Saving the World - Official Trailer

Every generation thinks it’s living through unprecedented change. A Short History of Saving the World is a new history podcast with Angus Hervey and historian Ada Palmer that explores the turning points, crises, and ideas that shaped world history - and the hidden patterns that connect them. From ancient civilisations to modern global events, this series zooms out to ask a bigger question: what actually happens when the world feels like it’s falling apart? Part conversation, part historical deep dive, this series reveals history not as a timeline of collapse, but as a story of human ingenuity, adaptation, and resilience.Because if you read history closely enough, you start to see it differently.  The world doesn’t just break. It changes. It adapts. It gets saved - again and again.