Scott Williams:

There were some really interesting parts and all the interesting

Scott Williams:

parts were the parts about sort of the ideas that people had and and those things

Scott Williams:

that changed, people's perspectives and after about a year of struggling with

Scott Williams:

this , I realized where the story was, and I realized what I needed to write.

Scott Williams:

And the thing was, it had been there all along.

Scott:

Welcome to Talk With History.

Scott:

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

Scott:

Hello.

Scott:

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired world travels,

Scott:

YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations

Scott:

with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.

Scott:

Now, today, we are joined by Scott Williams, the author of Lightbulb Moments

Scott:

in Human History from Cave to Coliseum.

Scott:

Welcome, Scott.

Scott Williams:

Hey Scott, how are you doing?

Scott:

Now, before we get into chatting with Scott about his book, I want to

Scott:

remind our listeners that you can find Scott's book on Amazon in various But if

Scott:

you can't remember the exact title after you're done listening to today's episode,

Scott:

as we say in our past episodes, you can always find links to light bulb moments

Scott:

over at our website, talkwithhistory.

Scott:

com.

Scott:

So just go to talkwithhistory.

Scott:

com, search for light bulb moments.

Scott:

That's talkwithhistory.

Scott:

com and search for light bulb moments and you'll be able to find

Scott:

links directly to Scott's book.

Scott Williams:

Fantastic.

Scott:

We try to share history as much as we can.

Scott:

now, as I mentioned earlier, we're joined today by Scott Williams,

Scott:

the author of Lightbulb Moments in Human History from Cave to Coliseum.

Scott:

Now, Scott is a self described optimistic smartass, writer,

Scott:

humorist, and history nerd.

Scott:

His fascination with humanity's lightbulb moments began as a child

Scott:

while watching the first moon landing.

Scott:

I appreciated your opening in the book.

Scott:

He also has his own podcast that he hosts with his friend

Scott:

CJ called What's My Age Again.

Scott:

Now, thank you again for joining us tonight, Scott.

Scott:

I, I really do appreciate it.

Scott Williams:

thank you for having me.

Scott Williams:

And just, just back on the moon landing, I don't know if you can see over the

Scott Williams:

back of me, obviously the listeners can't see this, but I've got a, a signed

Scott Williams:

Neil Armstrong photo up there, as so I'm Definitely a history in space nerd.

Scott:

Yeah, no, I, I actually really appreciated the, the opening.

Scott:

I didn't get to read the whole book.

Scott:

I poked around a little bit.

Scott:

But you sharing that kind of drew me right in to, to your perspective

Scott:

and why you wrote this book.

Scott:

So maybe we can jump right into that.

Scott:

So was that moon landing, was that really something that kind of sparked

Scott:

the flame of your interest in history and these kind of large historical moments?

Scott Williams:

Oh, absolutely.

Scott Williams:

I mean if you're six years old I mean I used to get up obviously in Australia

Scott Williams:

the the the launches and landings were totally different times for what it was

Scott Williams:

for you guys and Often I'd get up in the morning at like in the morning with my

Scott Williams:

dad and we'd sit there watching launches.

Scott Williams:

We actually saw the moon landing at school because we were actually at school

Scott Williams:

and they rolled out the TV set and we watched the moon landing at school.

Scott Williams:

And I mean, those kinds of things really stick with you.

Scott Williams:

I, I fully understood the import of it.

Scott Williams:

I knew it was a, a moment in history that was possibly, may never be, never

Scott Williams:

be surpassed the way we're going.

Scott Williams:

But it's, it's it was incredible.

Scott Williams:

And certainly it sparked a love of those kind of big moments, big historical

Scott Williams:

moments and big breakthroughs that I follow through now, obviously.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

So, so for, I mean, that, that was obviously when you were younger, was

Scott:

there something else and you as you went through school, I mean, I know you

Scott:

joked in that opening okay, now I got to start training to be an astronaut, but I

Scott:

mean, that's, that's a little different.

Scott:

Track , it's more of a, , go fly and learn engineering and all that stuff.

Scott:

Then, then end up writing about history.

Scott:

What kind of led you down the path of, eventually writing a book?

Scott Williams:

Look, I think it's just one of those things that

Scott Williams:

I've been fascinated with history.

Scott Williams:

I only really wrote, started writing in my late fifties, so I wanted to write

Scott Williams:

but I could never work out an angle.

Scott Williams:

And finally the angle was the hardest thing for me.

Scott Williams:

And it turned out that the angle was there all along.

Scott Williams:

I just had to recognise that this, these big moments were the things

Scott Williams:

that fascinated me, and the things that made me realise that the

Scott Williams:

world continues to get better.

Scott Williams:

I think, I hear a lot of people being very negative.

Scott Williams:

And I know that the world, there are lots of problems in the world at the

Scott Williams:

moment, obviously we can see in Ukraine, and in the Middle East and everything.

Scott Williams:

But, in the end, if you, if you sort of went to any other time in

Scott Williams:

history, things were still worse.

Scott Williams:

And think where we've continued to iteratively get better and

Scott Williams:

better by building on all the developments of people before us.

Scott Williams:

And I think people have lost track of that.

Scott Williams:

And I really wanted to to sort of bring that back for people to see

Scott Williams:

that, hey, things aren't that bad.

Scott Williams:

And I think my experience of things I've read over the years and my

Scott Williams:

fascinations with all these things just made me realize that this is

Scott Williams:

a lens to look at that through.

Jenn:

You're very optimistic and I appreciate that because I think that's

Jenn:

where we have to be with history And I'm I'm very much I don't like that

Jenn:

term history repeats itself because I'm like You're never gonna be in the

Jenn:

exact same place exact same time for history to actually repeat itself It

Jenn:

can echo in some ways, but it will never actually repeat itself What would you

Jenn:

define a lightbulb moment as like how big of a aha moment does it have to be?

Jenn:

What what is?

Jenn:

When you're writing a book like what did what do you

Jenn:

constitute a lightbulb moment as?

Scott Williams:

Okay, they can be, they, they don't have to be massive,

Scott Williams:

but they have to be things that are unprecedented and eventually lead

Scott Williams:

to something like the first caveman who chipped the first stone tool.

Scott Williams:

Hitting two rocks together is not a big deal.

Scott Williams:

But that iteratively led to machines, to all sorts of things.

Scott Williams:

Just it took.

Scott Williams:

Millions of years, but the, so it doesn't have to be a big thing, but one of the

Scott Williams:

reasons why it seemed for so long humans in our current form have been around

Scott Williams:

for hundreds of thousands of years, yet it's only in the last, probably

Scott Williams:

two or three hundred years that things have really started to change big time.

Scott Williams:

And that's because it took so long to get all the little building blocks in place.

Scott Williams:

I mean like, they had to, cavemen had to learn how to communicate with each other.

Scott Williams:

They had to make tools, they had to do all these things that, that took a long time.

Scott Williams:

These things didn't happen overnight.

Scott Williams:

And once things started to, to build, once we started to get these

Scott Williams:

little sort of sparks of ingenuity.

Scott Williams:

Building one upon the other, then things start to speed up to the point where

Scott Williams:

we're now sort of, can't keep up with it.

Scott Williams:

There's no one person could be Leonardo da Vinci now because there's just

Scott Williams:

no one could keep all the different strands of knowledge in their head.

Scott Williams:

a Lightbulb moment is just something that sparks.

Scott Williams:

Some kind of paradigm shift.

Scott Williams:

Yeah,

Jenn:

remember in a grad school learning about what constitutes

Jenn:

a civilization, right?

Jenn:

When do anthropologists give the The term civilization to a group of people

Jenn:

and it's when they can find proof that there have a bone that is healed So if

Jenn:

there was a broken bone and it has healed they prove civilization because there's

Jenn:

a group of people that can Set a bone.

Jenn:

They're taking care of someone.

Jenn:

They're helping someone to mend So they're they're doing all of those things

Jenn:

you said it's like the result of the lightbulb moments It's the result of

Jenn:

the communications result of learning about medicine it's the result of

Jenn:

learning and being together as a group that the bone heals and they can see

Jenn:

that on a skeleton and that's when they can tell that that was a civilization.

Jenn:

So I can see what you're saying.

Scott Williams:

Yeah, it's like collective learning.

Scott Williams:

I mean, once we start to get a body of knowledge, we have to somehow pass it on.

Scott Williams:

Now, for thousands and thousands of years, there was no writing.

Scott Williams:

So the only way they could pass it on was by speech.

Scott Williams:

But if someone got old and they died, they lost their information, and

Scott Williams:

they were, like you were saying, when they can look after somebody who is

Scott Williams:

unwell, that means they're beginning to appreciate what they bring to the group

Scott Williams:

in knowledge, and that, that appreciation from knowledge then sort of, they then

Scott Williams:

get a chance to pass that knowledge on.

Scott Williams:

It just, it just shows, like you say, it's civilization building.

Jenn:

Like you said, we're at this point now where AI, it's so fast.

Jenn:

No one person can do it.

Jenn:

It has to be like these collective, like now you can, maybe, maybe

Jenn:

you can specialize in your one.

Jenn:

area, your one field of study and have something great happen

Jenn:

and you put the face of it.

Jenn:

But if there's nobody who's going to be like a Thomas Edison today, like

Jenn:

you just don't have the capacity to do it to people moving so fast as

Jenn:

2000 Thomas Edison's living right now that are working really fast.

Scott Williams:

I totally agree.

Scott Williams:

And in fact, I see a problem with the fact that that one person can't

Scott Williams:

monitor everything because I think a lot of the big ideas that I write

Scott Williams:

about are things that are different strands of knowledge brought together

Scott Williams:

by people who understood that this could be relevant to something else.

Scott Williams:

But if you've got people who are so focused in their field, they don't

Scott Williams:

know about another field, they can't see the connection, they can't see the

Scott Williams:

relevance, you're not going to have.

Scott Williams:

Transcribed Some of those big lightbulb moments, unless there's someone who

Scott Williams:

is like a polymath who can just look at everything and say, Hey, hold

Scott Williams:

on, that that's pertinent to that.

Scott Williams:

So it's, it's difficult.

Jenn:

Yes.

Jenn:

And you, you've taken your light bulb moments and you've categorized them.

Jenn:

You've put them into four groups.

Scott Williams:

yeah, that's.

Scott Williams:

That was I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's legit but I'm not a, I'm not

Scott Williams:

a historian as such, and I'm not, it's not an intellectual book.

Scott Williams:

I wanted to try and have something, a framework to hang it off, and I

Scott Williams:

did characterize them into different groups, but that was more for anyone

Scott Williams:

who was reading it who wanted to have something to, to sort of, just

Scott Williams:

to look at and see what See how it, things related, but also my editor had

Scott Williams:

said to me, you should do something a little bit more intellectual here.

Scott Williams:

So that wasn't a part of the original book.

Scott Williams:

And I, I chafed at that a bit because it made it seem like I was more

Scott Williams:

of a theorist than I really am.

Scott Williams:

So.

Jenn:

I appreciate it.

Scott:

I appreciated that.

Scott:

I mean, I, so I appreciated, again, that was kind of in the, in the early part

Scott:

of your book, you say, okay, here's the categories, but you do caveat listen,

Scott:

I'm not a huge fan of these cats.

Scott:

You poke, you poke fun at yourself right away.

Scott:

And so I appreciate the humor, the humor right up front.

Scott:

And I'm actually looking forward to digging deep, dig digging deeper into

Scott:

the, into the book, because I feel like your book is one of those ones

Scott:

that I could, someone could pick up at any given time and just flip to

Scott:

a chapter or flip to a certain spot.

Scott:

They can either read it all the way through, or they could just say, Hey,

Scott:

this is an interesting, this caught my.

Scott:

Caught my eye on TV.

Scott:

Oh, yeah, that's one of the chapters in this book.

Scott:

I mean, is that kind of how you intended this was to, to be easy

Scott:

to read, either front to back or pick it up whenever you, you could.

Scott Williams:

I tend to be one of those people who pick, pick things

Scott Williams:

out of books and, and read what I can.

Scott Williams:

So, but I didn't, I wouldn't say I intended that to happen.

Scott Williams:

What I intended was to have, I mean, like we were talking before about an

Scott Williams:

overarching view of like technology and things that I wanted to have an

Scott Williams:

overarching view of history, which I mean there's, there's actually a kind

Scott Williams:

of history called big history and it's basically just pulling back from all

Scott Williams:

the minutiae and, and, and looking at trends and looking at things like that.

Scott Williams:

I didn't want to get quite that far away, but I wanted to be able to pull back

Scott Williams:

enough that you could see the patterns.

Scott Williams:

I know, I know that there's not.

Scott Williams:

History doesn't repeat itself.

Scott Williams:

I I agree totally with what you said there, but there are patterns that

Scott Williams:

recur, that are dealt with in different ways by different civilizations.

Scott Williams:

And the, the, when you do that, when you pull back and do what I've, I've

Scott Williams:

done, even for me, I didn't realize until I started to write what I was

Scott Williams:

looking at here, where there was a lot of patterns and a lot of things that,

Scott Williams:

that echoed in even present day stuff.

Scott:

And that's, and that's where I could see your, the categorization.

Scott:

that you, we, we joke about earlier, that would probably help you from a writing

Scott:

perspective, at least for me, right?

Scott:

That's the way my brain works, is I gotta outline something, I gotta have some

Scott:

categories, and then, okay, I can pick and choose, okay, if, if it's a religion,

Scott:

okay, this is when this religion came to the forefront, or that religion came to

Scott:

the forefront, or that concept came out.

Scott:

With that, I mean, when you're researching a book like this, there's, there's

Scott:

no kind of One single source aside, if you just say the internet for all

Scott:

of history, if we interviewed someone who is, who is, writing on John Quincy

Scott:

Adams the other day, and he had a very specific source and one place he could

Scott:

go to for some personal journals.

Scott:

But for you, what were you using for your, for your research for this book?

Scott Williams:

Oh, look, it was, it was, I say the internet, but

Scott Williams:

I would also, I would look at the internet and then I'd go, okay, I

Scott Williams:

would, I would pick something up.

Scott Williams:

I wanted to look for big ideas.

Scott Williams:

But I wanted odd angles on big ideas too.

Scott Williams:

I wanted, I wanted there to be stories involved.

Scott Williams:

So I would look to see if there were stories involved with something.

Scott Williams:

And I would, I would even look at Wikipedia.

Scott Williams:

And then I would, once I saw that, then I'd go, okay, deep dive

Scott Williams:

on their sources then on other sources to see the veracity of it.

Scott Williams:

That's why I don't regard myself at any stretch, by any stretch of

Scott Williams:

the imagination as a historian.

Scott Williams:

I am not a historian because I don't do the proper groundwork

Scott Williams:

a historian would do.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott Williams:

I, I mean, I, I, and I would I would be loath to, people

Scott Williams:

sometimes say, oh, you're a historian.

Scott Williams:

No, I'm not.

Scott Williams:

And that's not because I, I respect historians too much to

Scott Williams:

equate myself with a historian.

Scott Williams:

But I also, I respect history and I don't write stuff that's not true or that isn't

Scott Williams:

any that hasn't been reported as true.

Scott Williams:

If any history I've written is debated, I will then put a caveat

Scott Williams:

on that and say, hey this is a great story, but it's debatable.

Scott Williams:

But I will go with the great story, if there's one there,

Scott Williams:

purely for entertainment's sake.

Scott Williams:

It's an entertainment book.

Scott Williams:

It's not, it's not, it is informative, but it's meant to be entertaining.

Scott Williams:

, Jenn: see it as inspiring.

Scott Williams:

It's one of those inspiring books, right?

Scott Williams:

It's one of those If this person could do that, maybe I could do that.

Scott Williams:

If that person was in this situation, I'd like to think I

Scott Williams:

would do that in that situation.

Scott Williams:

I think that's what history, we want to hear these, these history makers that

Scott Williams:

made these hard decisions and did things that we can look at and be like, wow, I,

Scott Williams:

I'm inspired to do something like that.

Scott Williams:

Like Neil Armstrong.

Scott Williams:

Right?

Scott Williams:

I'm inspired to reach for the moon and then have a really

Scott Williams:

great line once I hit the moon.

Scott Williams:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott Williams:

Absolutely.

Scott Williams:

A glitch in the recording.

Scott:

exactly.

Jenn:

So how long did it take you to write the book?

Scott Williams:

When I started, I started writing it as a history of education.

Scott Williams:

That was, that, it began as that.

Scott Williams:

And I spent probably about a year putting together as a history of education.

Scott Williams:

And then I started to go There were some really interesting parts and

Scott Williams:

all the interesting parts were the parts about sort of the ideas that

Scott Williams:

people had and and those things that changed, people's perspectives and

Scott Williams:

I'm a, I'm a teacher by, by trade.

Scott Williams:

I, I, and so that was why I thought education was good.

Scott Williams:

I was looking for an angle, education was the angle I was going for.

Scott Williams:

Then I realized that A, not many people would be super interested and

Scott Williams:

B, there was a better story there, or there was a better book there.

Scott Williams:

And so.

Scott Williams:

After about a year of struggling with this history of education, I

Scott Williams:

realized where the story was, and I realized what I needed to write.

Scott Williams:

And the thing was, it had been there all along.

Scott Williams:

Ever since, like I say in the book, I don't know if you got that far, but my dad

Scott Williams:

would read to me at night, and I wanted to be read non fiction books, so he'd

Scott Williams:

read to me about ancient Egypt, he'd read to me about all these history things.

Scott Williams:

And it started all back then.

Scott Williams:

And then over the years I've just always touched base with, with

Scott Williams:

history things, and even my my love of science fiction, to me science

Scott Williams:

fiction is the history of the future.

Scott Williams:

The history I'll never get to see.

Scott Williams:

So I, I love science fiction because obviously I'll be dead, but that gives

Scott Williams:

me a bit of an idea as to what history might be like, so it's, it, everything

Scott Williams:

for me is about Historical moments.

Scott:

SO what, what are some of your.

Scott:

If I'm gonna tell a friend about this book, and, and even just the quick reading

Scott:

that I did of the first, 20 or 30 pages I, I actually really started getting into it.

Scott:

And then my kids, yelled at me about something and I had to go warm

Scott:

up a hot dog or whatever it was.

Scott:

But so what are some of your favorites that, as you were writing this or

Scott:

that kind of stood out to you the most in this, particular book?

Scott Williams:

Okay, some of the things that, I mean, not all of

Scott Williams:

them are life changing moments.

Scott Williams:

One of the ones I really like is the beer, beer before bread hypothesis,

Scott Williams:

which is a hypothesis that humanity didn't band together in cities and,

Scott Williams:

and farm and everything to, to, to grow food and to make bread.

Scott Williams:

They, they needed to make beer.

Scott Williams:

And so one of the reasons that they they sort of develop farming was to create a a

Scott Williams:

reliable source of grain for making beer.

Scott:

Grain for making beer.

Scott Williams:

and that's, that's actually a, a bona fide theory.

Scott Williams:

That's not someone off the internet.

Scott Williams:

That's actually, there's a scientific paper that, that, that, it's only a

Scott Williams:

theory, but it's still an interesting one.

Scott Williams:

And it certainly,

Scott:

fun one, yeah.

Scott Williams:

it's a fun one.

Scott Williams:

And when you see how important beer was to early civilizations,

Scott Williams:

the Mesopotamians loved beer.

Scott Williams:

Although the beer they drank wasn't exactly like what

Scott Williams:

we would drink, apparently.

Scott Williams:

It was more like porridge and they had to drink it with a straw because of all

Scott Williams:

the bits and pieces that were in it.

Scott:

Oh my gosh.

Scott Williams:

the,

Scott:

Hardy

Scott Williams:

yeah, the Egyptians loved beer.

Scott Williams:

The Chinese love beer.

Scott Williams:

So it was a, it was one of those things that, it's universal.

Scott Williams:

And it's conceivable that, that, that beer before bread

Scott Williams:

hypothesis was true, was true.

Scott Williams:

The fact that writing was pretty much invented by accountants.

Scott Williams:

So even though we see writing now as literary, literary sort

Scott Williams:

of pursuits and all that kind of stuff, it was the accountants of

Scott Williams:

Mesopotamia that that really started to sort of put things down on.

Scott Williams:

Not paper, obviously on clay, but they start to make marks in clay.

Scott Williams:

Those marks became more important, more complex and then a bit length,

Scott Williams:

a written language came out of that.

Scott Williams:

That was interesting.

Scott:

I mean, that, that makes sense.

Scott:

That it, it's, it's useful for money.

Scott:

Useful for money.

Scott:

That's right.

Scott:

Right.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

Leave it, to leave it to the accountants and, the IRS types,

Scott:

here, at least here in the States.

Scott:

Mm-Hmm.

Scott:

, that, to, to invent the system that would that would track all

Scott:

the taxes that, that I gotta

Scott Williams:

Oh, yeah.

Scott Williams:

Yeah.

Scott Williams:

I mean, what, and that's, that's definitely a lightbulb moment.

Scott Williams:

Some of them, there's a story in there about Sun Tzu, the,

Scott Williams:

the famous Chinese general.

Scott Williams:

And I wouldn't say it's a lightbulb moment other than the fact that he codified some

Scott Williams:

of the, sort of the ideas to do with war.

Scott Williams:

But there was a story in the, in the book about how his emperor had challenged

Scott Williams:

him to get a a group of, like female I think concubines to, to act like an army.

Scott Williams:

So he he divided them into two groups and he made one of the king's, of

Scott Williams:

the emperor's concubines, the leader of each group, and then basically

Scott Williams:

taught them some manoeuvres.

Scott Williams:

And when he brought the king out, or the emperor out to watch, they

Scott Williams:

mucked it all up, they fell about laughing, and thought it was hilarious.

Scott Williams:

And so, he executed both of the concubines who were the leaders, and

Scott Williams:

then retrained the ones that were left, and they performed perfectly after that.

Scott:

Absolutely.

Scott:

It's motivation.

Scott:

Yeah, that, that, that, that'll teach you to learn the art

Scott:

of war very, very quickly.

Scott:

Oh, my goodness.

Scott Williams:

So yeah, there's loads of stuff like that.

Scott Williams:

A lot of, a lot of the stories to do with mythology and ancient

Scott Williams:

Egypt and Rome and Greece.

Scott Williams:

I mean, I, I won't give away, there's, there's a lot in there and obviously

Scott Williams:

and this one could be a little bit controversial in the States, but there's

Scott Williams:

some interesting stuff about Christianity too, but we might not go there right now.

Scott:

Yeah I mean, there's lots of things.

Scott:

I mean, and that's a great point.

Scott:

And that's why I appreciated you setting the stage of hey, there are categories.

Scott:

If you, the reader, wants to think of things in a certain category,

Scott:

you're giving us the tools.

Scott:

And then you say, hey, you don't have to use them because

Scott:

I don't even like using them.

Scott:

But to your point, religion, politics, the idea of government

Scott:

and all that, that kind of stuff.

Scott:

I mean, I'm sure a lot of those things are those, those light bulb moments.

Jenn:

And I think that it's important to know your, the history.

Jenn:

No matter if you like it or not, or if it sits well with you, you need

Jenn:

to, you should know it because if you're going to have a conversation,

Jenn:

a critical thinking conversation about something, then you need to know what's

Jenn:

the other side and what's the evidence and let's have a conversation about it.

Jenn:

So I think that's good that you put that in there.

Jenn:

Don't shy away from that.

Scott Williams:

Oh, absolutely.

Scott Williams:

And I think one thing we have done recently, and I, I suppose we're

Scott Williams:

looking at the dumbing down of society the people don't tend to quick think

Scott Williams:

critically, and they don't look at the past, they don't look at science

Scott Williams:

and so many of these things that we really need to move forward.

Scott Williams:

And I mean, I've, I've hear my saying that I think the world keeps getting better.

Scott Williams:

But.

Scott Williams:

We're in a bit of a downturn now.

Scott Williams:

I'd say if, if, if I always say that it's like the stock market.

Scott Williams:

We're on a steady uptick, but there are corrections along the way.

Scott Williams:

And right now I think we're in a correction.

Scott:

Is there anything when you were studying kind of these

Scott:

lightbulb moments, and I think you alluded to it, like even writing,

Scott:

it depends on what's done with it.

Scott:

Writing could have been positive, like the Bible, or it could have been negative

Scott Williams:

Mein Kampf.

Scott Williams:

Yeah.

Scott:

That's what you wrote in the book.

Scott:

I mean, was there other things like that, in, in your book for lightbulb

Scott:

moments that were could have, that were both, I guess, positive and negative?

Scott Williams:

Oh look, tools can be used for multiple, multiple things.

Scott Williams:

You can use a knife to, to sort of butter bread.

Scott Williams:

You can also stab someone with a knife.

Scott Williams:

There's lots of, there's lots of alternate uses for seemingly good things.

Scott Williams:

Free speech is a great thing, but free speech can be abused.

Scott Williams:

And I think I'm, no one's calling for the, for free speech to be curtailed, but.

Scott Williams:

You do wonder why people can get away with saying blatant untruths and, and

Scott Williams:

changing Like basically changing people's outlook on history based on untruths.

Scott Williams:

That, that to me is, is wrong and shouldn't be allowed.

Scott Williams:

But then how do you police that when free speech is so important?

Scott:

Now, I think I saw when I was poking around on Amazon,

Scott:

that do you have another another, like a volume two coming out here

Scott Williams:

I do, I do have volume two coming out.

Scott Williams:

There's, there we go.

Scott Williams:

There's volume one, volume two.

Scott:

Oh, there you

Jenn:

go.

Jenn:

There you go.

Jenn:

There was just so many that you found that you had another book.

Scott Williams:

well, basically what I'm doing is I'm, I'm, I'm

Scott Williams:

just moving through history.

Scott Williams:

The first book goes from the first humans up to the end of the Roman Empire.

Scott Williams:

And then I'm picking up from, yeah, from the middle ages up

Scott Williams:

to the scientific revolution.

Scott Williams:

Right now I'm working on book three.

Scott Williams:

which is the Enlightenment.

Scott Williams:

In fact, it's that the working title at the moment is Revolution to

Scott Williams:

Evolution, which is going to pick up on the the French Revolution, American

Scott Williams:

Revolution, and then up to Darwin.

Scott Williams:

And then I'm going to keep on going basically.

Scott Williams:

But the idea is to, is to, to do it chronologically.

Scott Williams:

So you can iteratively, iteratively build.

Scott Williams:

And the fact that the first book.

Scott Williams:

Covers probably two million years of history.

Scott Williams:

The second book covers a thousand years.

Scott Williams:

The third book is going to cover 200 years maybe.

Scott Williams:

And, and that

Scott Williams:

how fast things are growing.

Scott Williams:

Yeah.

Scott Williams:

So in fact, the original idea was to do three books.

Scott Williams:

It's probably going to end up being five.

Scott:

Wow.

Scott:

That's

Scott Williams:

I'm, I'm, I'm sort of, making it, stretching

Scott Williams:

it out to try to do whatever.

Scott Williams:

I'm basically, I'm struggling to fit it all in.

Scott Williams:

And in fact, I'm sure any, I'm sure anyone could look at the first book and go, why

Scott Williams:

didn't you put this, this, this, or this?

Scott Williams:

And the further I go along.

Scott Williams:

The more there's going to be.

Scott Williams:

So I think if you've read in the introduction I'm putting in

Scott Williams:

ones that I think are important.

Scott Williams:

They're not the only important lightbulb moments.

Scott Williams:

I think I can't possibly do it It's just a way of me sort of showing this

Scott Williams:

iterative building and how how the world is getting better and how we

Scott Williams:

need to appreciate that our lives are You know, immensely better than the

Scott Williams:

lives of people even 200 years ago.

Scott Williams:

So I think sometimes we just don't appreciate what we've got.

Jenn:

I like that

Scott:

gratitude.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

And, and that's one thing.

Scott:

And if you've been listening, if you have been listening to podcasts and you,

Scott:

you would know that, that I tell people all the time, I'm not the history nerd,

Scott:

but I've learned a lot doing all this stuff with Jen and learning about the

Scott:

lens that we look at things through.

Scott:

And you even mentioned that in the very beginning, right?

Scott:

As long as, as you can.

Scott:

Be curious and be open enough to know that you are looking at something

Scott:

through a lens and you can be willing enough to be open to that conversation.

Scott:

You can be grateful and studying history and even knowing just a little bit

Scott:

about history, whether it's watching one of our videos or reading your book

Scott:

about those big light bulb moments that will give you that perspective

Scott:

and help you understand like, Hey, I really don't have it that bad.

Jenn:

Yeah.

Jenn:

And I like it's that Scott like this is your book.

Jenn:

So you're going to choose the light bulb moments, right?

Jenn:

If someone else has other ones, and they can go write their book.

Scott:

No,

Scott Williams:

I saw something and went, Oh my God, why

Scott Williams:

didn't I put that in the book?

Scott Williams:

Then I just, I just stopped being hard on myself and going, I did the

Scott Williams:

best I could, and there's loads of things I could have put in that I

Scott Williams:

haven't put in, and I know that.

Scott Williams:

But yeah, I'm, I'm really happy with how it's come out.

Scott Williams:

I'm happy with The feel.

Scott Williams:

I think the, the feedback I've got is, it meant I'm trying to make

Scott Williams:

history appealing, interesting.

Scott Williams:

A bit funny 'cause there are funny parts in history.

Scott Williams:

I wanna, I want to tease those things out so people get to see the

Scott Williams:

interesting, fun parts of history.

Scott Williams:

It isn't all just dates and things like that.

Scott Williams:

It's, it's a living thing that, that these people were alive.

Scott Williams:

I mean, they, they had lives like you and I, they.

Scott Williams:

were, they lived, they died, they had problems, and to see them as real people

Scott Williams:

who were stupid and did dumb things and, but also did amazing things, it's

Scott Williams:

and that people like say Churchill, who was incredible, but also had a really

Scott Williams:

bad side to him, and I think you can acknowledge that You could acknowledge

Scott Williams:

the greatness and still say, hey, this person wasn't, he was a bit of a

Scott Williams:

racist and he was a bit of this and a bit of that, but he also was inspiring

Scott Williams:

and did all these amazing things.

Scott Williams:

I have a real problem with people trying to revise history in a way which

Scott Williams:

takes away the, that greatness factor and say George Washington's our own

Scott Williams:

slaves, therefore he was a bad person.

Scott Williams:

And and not looking at The way things were at the time.

Scott Williams:

You can't judge people by today's standards.

Scott Williams:

That's not how history works.

Scott:

not at all.

Scott:

And I think we were just talking about that

Jenn:

earlier.

Jenn:

I think that's the whole point, I was they just took down that

Jenn:

they removed the Thomas Jefferson statue from the New York city hall.

Jenn:

It's been up there for a hundred and it's been in there for 187 years.

Jenn:

And I say, we're not doing our jobs as historians.

Jenn:

If that stuff is happening, because if people can, can dumb people down

Jenn:

to one thing about them and it's a bad thing and then remove everything

Jenn:

else that they've influenced and done and created and changed.

Jenn:

Then we're not doing job as historians to provide context.

Jenn:

And that is what historians do because nothing is happening today.

Jenn:

That is 200 years ago that we live off of today.

Jenn:

And so I, I totally agree with you.

Jenn:

I find it very, It's fascinating that people want to just take all the past

Jenn:

and judge it today and then put it on a side and I really dislike the former

Jenn:

President Obama had used this right and wrong side of history and I really

Jenn:

dislike those terms because there is no right and wrong side of history.

Jenn:

It's all the accurate side of history.

Jenn:

It's all the truth side of history.

Jenn:

If you're looking for a right side, it's the side that's the truth.

Jenn:

That's the right side.

Jenn:

The wrong side is.

Jenn:

changing it or saying something different or, or making something else more

Jenn:

important than what it is for an agenda.

Jenn:

That's the wrong side of history.

Jenn:

So I have a hard time with this, this trying to judge history and

Jenn:

and, and clean it out from what.

Jenn:

People had to have done in the past because nobody was perfect.

Scott Williams:

No, it doesn't mean you can't look at history through different

Scott Williams:

lenses and say like I, I use the example of my grandmother who was born in 1895.

Scott Williams:

She was born when Australia or before Australia even was a country, but she

Scott Williams:

grew up during what was called the time of the white Australia policy where

Scott Williams:

basically, no one who wasn't white and Anglo Saxon could come into the country.

Scott Williams:

She was a terrible racist.

Scott Williams:

But, she was a lovely person, but she was a terrible racist because of the era she

Scott Williams:

grew up in, and everyone was racist then.

Scott Williams:

I mean, Australia wasn't that far away from South Africa, in many respects.

Scott Williams:

So, you gotta look at it in that respect.

Scott Williams:

And, she, she grew up through the World War I, Great Depression, World War II.

Scott Williams:

She ended up, she saw the moon landing.

Scott Williams:

I mean, society changed so much in that time.

Scott Williams:

And I'm sure some of her attitudes change, but there's a certain point

Scott Williams:

where when you're a person of a certain age, there's only so far you can change.

Scott Williams:

And I think, I look at her, I remember the good person she was, but I acknowledge

Scott Williams:

that There were problems, but I also know why those problems happened.

Scott Williams:

And I don't, I don't, I don't sort of say she's not my grandmother anymore because

Scott Williams:

she said mean things about black people.

Scott Williams:

I mean, she did, she was awful.

Scott Williams:

I, I was actually quite shocked at some of the things she said, even as a child.

Scott Williams:

So that was, it was a wake up call.

Scott Williams:

There's no doubt about that, but she was also a good person in other respects,

Scott Williams:

but she came from a time when the default position was everyone was a racist.

Scott Williams:

. Scott: And that's why I always appreciate our conversations on talk

Scott Williams:

with history because, I think our guests, have that perspective of,

Scott Williams:

of learning about history and being willing to say yes, that that wasn't.

Scott Williams:

By today's lens those actions back then weren't right.

Scott Williams:

However, people have gotten better and we have to understand where they

Scott Williams:

came from And so again, that's what I appreciate about books like yours

Scott Williams:

that bring some humor into this and make it a little bit more accessible

Scott Williams:

for the non history nerds like myself.

Scott Williams:

And it, it's something that I, I can, I would mention to my friends at work

Scott Williams:

and say, Hey, if, if you want a good, kind of coffee table, history book, or

Scott Williams:

if you want to check out a history book, this one's super fun because it talks

Scott Williams:

about all these, these larger concepts that most people will, be familiar with,

Scott Williams:

but maybe not the details behind them.

Scott Williams:

And then you interjecting your humor.

Scott Williams:

Throughout the book, is, is great.

Scott Williams:

So for for those listening, Scott, what's the best place that you would

Scott Williams:

want them to come to you if you, they wanted to look for your, your current

Scott Williams:

book or your book that's coming out?

Scott Williams:

I think in the spring is what I saw.

Scott Williams:

Yeah, look, it's if you come to my website

Scott Williams:

lightbulbmomentshistory.

Scott Williams:

com, it's got links to all the places you can get it, but you can, the other thing

Scott Williams:

is I've just released a, an audio book of the first book that came out this month.

Scott Williams:

Okay.

Scott Williams:

So for, for listeners who don't like sitting down reading books,

Scott Williams:

but like to listen to things cause, Hey, I'm a podcast listener and

Scott Williams:

I'm an audio book listener too.

Scott Williams:

Like I, most of my reading is done.

Scott Williams:

while walking or doing housework.

Scott Williams:

And I don't get time to sit down and read as much as I'd like.

Scott Williams:

So that's there.

Scott Williams:

It's there now.

Scott Williams:

It's it's available.

Scott Williams:

It's not quite there and audible for some reason yet, but everywhere else, Spotify,

Scott Williams:

it's the audio books available out there.

Scott Williams:

I think it's quite accessible.

Scott Williams:

I'm not reading it.

Scott Williams:

So but I engaged a professional person to do that But as far as yeah everywhere else

Scott Williams:

The books are the first books available everywhere Amazon and everywhere else.

Scott Williams:

The second book will be available everywhere as well but certainly my

Scott Williams:

website's a good place to come and I can you can sign up for my mailing list.

Scott:

awesome.

Scott:

No, that's, that's great.

Scott:

And, and we will we're, we're actually planning on putting

Scott:

together like a little kind of holiday gift guide, we're going to.

Scott:

Put out maybe on our channel or something like that.

Scott:

So we're absolutely going to include your, your book in that.

Scott:

Cause I think it's a great one.

Scott:

It's fun.

Scott:

It's got, got a little bit of a different tone compared to some of the, some of

Scott:

the active academic book that Jen reads that I, I can't, I just can't pick up.

Scott:

It's just not my thing.

Scott:

It's okay.

Scott:

I

Jenn:

like the fun ones too.

Jenn:

I like, we learn in all

Scott:

different ways.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott Williams:

my book has lots of pictures too,

Scott:

perfect for someone like me.

Scott:

It's perfect for someone like me.

Scott:

As Scott writes in his foreword quoting Sir Isaac Newton, if I have

Scott:

seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Scott:

If you want a book that will inspire you by learning about the light bulb

Scott:

moments of history, I highly encourage you to check out Scott's book,

Scott:

light bulb moments in human history.

Scott:

yOu can find Scott's book.

Scott:

book, Pretty Much Anywhere, and for those listening, thank you for

Scott:

listening to the Talk With History podcast, and please reach out to

Scott:

us at our website, TalkWithHistory.

Scott:

com.

Scott:

But more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this

Scott:

podcast, especially if you think they'd be interested in this book,

Scott:

please share this episode with them.

Scott:

We rely on you, our community, to grow, and we appreciate you all every day.

Scott:

We'll talk to you next time.

Scott:

Thank you.