Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Let’s jump right in. The first question comes from Nafeesah Scott, who asks, Hi Gary! I must just say thank you for such a great informative, and concise podcast about everything everywhere! I loved your recent episode on air conditioning. It got me thinking: what do you think are the top 3 contributors to the advancement of today’s world are?

That is a very difficult question. To use your example, air conditioners have indeed been very important to the creation of the modern world for all the reasons I mentioned in the episode.

However, air conditioners are dependent on electricity—no electricity, no air conditioning. The same holds true for something like the internet. The internet, as important as it is, is predicated on computers, which is predicated on electricity.

So, if I were to pick three things, electricity and electrification would have to be on that list.

The next thing would probably have to be the development of the heat engine. I’m using “heat engine” as a catch-all for both the steam engine and the internal combustion engine, which, while different, have a similar lineage. This would cover most transportation and industrialization, as well as creating electricity.

Finally, and I have covered this on several episodes, I’d have to include the development of germ theory. The discovery that microscopic organisms were responsible for most infectious diseases was the one thing that led to a dramatic drop in deaths and an increase in life expectancy.

If you were to start civilization over from scratch, you could avoid centuries of human misery by just knowing the basics of these three things.