In this engaging episode of ‘Talk With History’, hosts Scott and Jenn welcome Scott Williams, author of ‘Lightbulb Moments in Human History from Cave to Coliseum’. 💡
Link to Lightbulb Moments in Human History
They dive into the essential moments and ideas that shaped humanity’s progression, discussing everything from the origins of writing to the importance of beer in ancient civilizations. 🍺
Scott Williams emphasizes the need for a balanced understanding of our past, acknowledging both the greatness and the flaws of historical figures. He also highlights the importance of history in sparking conversations, facilitating understanding, and promoting progress.
The discussion also previews Scott’s future books which will chronologically explore significant historical ‘lightbulb’ moments.💡
0:00 Lightbulb Moments in Human History author Scott Williams
00:31 Introduction and Welcome
00:49 Introducing the Guest and His Book
01:47 Discussion on Scott Williams’ Background and Inspiration
05:32 Exploring the Concept of ‘Lightbulb Moments’
06:08 The Impact of Historical Innovations and Discoveries
10:31 The Role of History in Shaping Society
16:02 The Process of Writing ‘Lightbulb Moments in Human History’
18:13 Favorite ‘Lightbulb Moments’ from the Book
22:43 The Importance of Understanding and Appreciating History
23:19 Negative Lightbulb moments
24:27 Lightbulb Moments Volume 2
33:53 Preview of Upcoming Books
35:31 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Transcript
93 Lightbulb Moments in Human History author Scott Williams
[00:00:00] Scott Williams: There were some really interesting parts and all the interesting parts were the parts about sort of the ideas that people had and and those things that changed, people’s perspectives and after about a year of struggling with this , I realized where the story was, and I realized what I needed to write.
[00:00:19] And the thing was, it had been there all along.
[00:00:31] Scott: W
[00:00:31] Introduction and Welcome
[00:00:31] Scott: elcome to Talk With History. I’m your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen. Hello. On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired world travels, YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.
[00:00:49] N
[00:00:49] Introducing the Guest and His Book
[00:00:49] Scott: ow, today, we are joined by Scott Williams, the author of Lightbulb Moments in Human History from Cave to Coliseum. Welcome, Scott.
[00:00:59] Scott Williams: Hey Scott, how are you doing?
[00:01:02] Scott: Now, before we get into chatting with Scott about his book, I want to remind our listeners that you can find Scott’s book on Amazon in various But if you can’t remember the exact title after you’re done listening to today’s episode, as we say in our past episodes, you can always find links to light bulb moments over at our website, talkwithhistory.
[00:01:19] com. So just go to talkwithhistory. com, search for light bulb moments. That’s talkwithhistory. com and search for light bulb moments and you’ll be able to find links directly to Scott’s book.
[00:01:31] Scott Williams: Fantastic.
[00:01:32] Scott: We try to share history as much as we can. now, as I mentioned earlier, we’re joined today by Scott Williams, the author of Lightbulb Moments in Human History from Cave to Coliseum.
[00:01:47] Discussion on Scott Williams’ Background and Inspiration
[00:01:47] Scott: Now, Scott is a self described optimistic smartass, writer, humorist, and history nerd. His fascination with humanity’s lightbulb moments began as a child while watching the first moon landing. I appreciated your opening in the book. He also has his own podcast that he hosts with his friend CJ called What’s My Age Again.
[00:02:08] Now, thank you again for joining us tonight, Scott. I, I really do appreciate it.
[00:02:13] Scott Williams: thank you for having me. And just, just back on the moon landing, I don’t know if you can see over the back of me, obviously the listeners can’t see this, but I’ve got a, a signed Neil Armstrong photo up there, as so I’m Definitely a history in space nerd.
[00:02:27] Scott: Yeah, no, I, I actually really appreciated the, the opening. I didn’t get to read the whole book. I poked around a little bit. But you sharing that kind of drew me right in to, to your perspective and why you wrote this book. So maybe we can jump right into that. So was that moon landing, was that really something that kind of sparked the flame of your interest in history and these kind of large historical moments?
[00:02:48] Scott Williams: Oh, absolutely. I mean if you’re six years old I mean I used to get up obviously in Australia the the the launches and landings were totally different times for what it was for you guys and Often I’d get up in the morning at like in the morning with my dad and we’d sit there watching launches. We actually saw the moon landing at school because we were actually at school and they rolled out the TV set and we watched the moon landing at school.
[00:03:15] And I mean, those kinds of things really stick with you. I, I fully understood the import of it. I knew it was a, a moment in history that was possibly, may never be, never be surpassed the way we’re going. But it’s, it’s it was incredible. And certainly it sparked a love of those kind of big moments, big historical moments and big breakthroughs that I follow through now, obviously.
[00:03:46] Scott: Yeah. So, so for, I mean, that, that was obviously when you were younger, was there something else and you as you went through school, I mean, I know you joked in that opening okay, now I got to start training to be an astronaut, but I mean, that’s, that’s a little different. Track , it’s more of a, , go fly and learn engineering and all that stuff.
[00:04:03] Then, then end up writing about history. What kind of led you down the path of, eventually writing a book?
[00:04:10] Scott Williams: Look, I think it’s just one of those things that I’ve been fascinated with history. I only really wrote, started writing in my late fifties, so I wanted to write but I could never work out an angle. And finally the angle was the hardest thing for me. And it turned out that the angle was there all along.
[00:04:29] I just had to recognise that this, these big moments were the things that fascinated me, and the things that made me realise that the world continues to get better. I think, I hear a lot of people being very negative. And I know that the world, there are lots of problems in the world at the moment, obviously we can see in Ukraine, and in the Middle East and everything.
[00:04:53] But, in the end, if you, if you sort of went to any other time in history, things were still worse. And think where we’ve continued to iteratively get better and better by building on all the developments of people before us. And I think people have lost track of that. And I really wanted to to sort of bring that back for people to see that, hey, things aren’t that bad.
[00:05:17] And I think my experience of things I’ve read over the years and my fascinations with all these things just made me realize that this is a lens to look at that through.
[00:05:28]
[00:05:32] Exploring the Concept of ‘Lightbulb Moments’
[00:05:32] Jenn: You’re very optimistic and I appreciate that because I think that’s where we have to be with history And I’m I’m very much I don’t like that term history repeats itself because I’m like You’re never gonna be in the exact same place exact same time for history to actually repeat itself It can echo in some ways, but it will never actually repeat itself What would you define a lightbulb moment as like how big of a aha moment does it have to be?
[00:06:00] What what is? When you’re writing a book like what did what do you constitute a lightbulb moment as?
[00:06:08] The Impact of Historical Innovations and Discoveries
[00:06:08] Scott Williams: Okay, they can be, they, they don’t have to be massive, but they have to be things that are unprecedented and eventually lead to something like the first caveman who chipped the first stone tool. Hitting two rocks together is not a big deal. But that iteratively led to machines, to all sorts of things.
[00:06:31] Just it took. Millions of years, but the, so it doesn’t have to be a big thing, but one of the reasons why it seemed for so long humans in our current form have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, yet it’s only in the last, probably two or three hundred years that things have really started to change big time.
[00:06:52] And that’s because it took so long to get all the little building blocks in place. I mean like, they had to, cavemen had to learn how to communicate with each other. They had to make tools, they had to do all these things that, that took a long time. These things didn’t happen overnight. And once things started to, to build, once we started to get these little sort of sparks of ingenuity.
[00:07:15] Building one upon the other, then things start to speed up to the point where we’re now sort of, can’t keep up with it. There’s no one person could be Leonardo da Vinci now because there’s just no one could keep all the different strands of knowledge in their head. a Lightbulb moment is just something that sparks.
[00:07:36] Some kind of paradigm shift. Yeah,
[00:07:39] Jenn: remember in a grad school learning about what constitutes a civilization, right? When do anthropologists give the The term civilization to a group of people and it’s when they can find proof that there have a bone that is healed So if there was a broken bone and it has healed they prove civilization because there’s a group of people that can Set a bone.
[00:08:05] They’re taking care of someone. They’re helping someone to mend So they’re they’re doing all of those things you said it’s like the result of the lightbulb moments It’s the result of the communications result of learning about medicine it’s the result of learning and being together as a group that the bone heals and they can see that on a skeleton and that’s when they can tell that that was a civilization.
[00:08:28] So I can see what you’re saying.
[00:08:30] Scott Williams: Yeah, it’s like collective learning. I mean, once we start to get a body of knowledge, we have to somehow pass it on. Now, for thousands and thousands of years, there was no writing. So the only way they could pass it on was by speech. But if someone got old and they died, they lost their information, and they were, like you were saying, when they can look after somebody who is unwell, that means they’re beginning to appreciate what they bring to the group in knowledge, and that, that appreciation from knowledge then sort of, they then get a chance to pass that knowledge on.
[00:09:05] It just, it just shows, like you say, it’s civilization building.
[00:09:08] Jenn: Like you said, we’re at this point now where AI, it’s so fast. No one person can do it. It has to be like these collective, like now you can, maybe, maybe you can specialize in your one. area, your one field of study and have something great happen and you put the face of it. But if there’s nobody who’s going to be like a Thomas Edison today, like you just don’t have the capacity to do it to people moving so fast as 2000 Thomas Edison’s living right now that are working really fast.
[00:09:39] Scott Williams: I totally agree. And in fact, I see a problem with the fact that that one person can’t monitor everything because I think a lot of the big ideas that I write about are things that are different strands of knowledge brought together by people who understood that this could be relevant to something else.
[00:09:57] But if you’ve got people who are so focused in their field, they don’t know about another field, they can’t see the connection, they can’t see the relevance, you’re not going to have. Transcribed Some of those big lightbulb moments, unless there’s someone who is like a polymath who can just look at everything and say, Hey, hold on, that that’s pertinent to that.
[00:10:19] So it’s, it’s difficult.
[00:10:22] Jenn: Yes. And you, you’ve taken your light bulb moments and you’ve categorized them. You’ve put them into four groups.
[00:10:30] Scott Williams: yeah, that’s.
[00:10:31] The Role of History in Shaping Society
[00:10:31] Scott Williams: That was I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s legit but I’m not a, I’m not a historian as such, and I’m not, it’s not an intellectual book. I wanted to try and have something, a framework to hang it off, and I did characterize them into different groups, but that was more for anyone who was reading it who wanted to have something to, to sort of, just to look at and see what See how it, things related, but also my editor had said to me, you should do something a little bit more intellectual here.
[00:11:04] So that wasn’t a part of the original book. And I, I chafed at that a bit because it made it seem like I was more of a theorist than I really am. So.
[00:11:12] Jenn: I appreciate it.
[00:11:13] Scott: I appreciated that. I mean, I, so I appreciated, again, that was kind of in the, in the early part of your book, you say, okay, here’s the categories, but you do caveat listen, I’m not a huge fan of these cats. You poke, you poke fun at yourself right away. And so I appreciate the humor, the humor right up front.
[00:11:31] And I’m actually looking forward to digging deep, dig digging deeper into the, into the book, because I feel like your book is one of those ones that I could, someone could pick up at any given time and just flip to a chapter or flip to a certain spot. They can either read it all the way through, or they could just say, Hey, this is an interesting, this caught my.
[00:11:50] Caught my eye on TV. Oh, yeah, that’s one of the chapters in this book. I mean, is that kind of how you intended this was to, to be easy to read, either front to back or pick it up whenever you, you could.
[00:12:02] Scott Williams: I tend to be one of those people who pick, pick things out of books and, and read what I can. So, but I didn’t, I wouldn’t say I intended that to happen. What I intended was to have, I mean, like we were talking before about an overarching view of like technology and things that I wanted to have an overarching view of history, which I mean there’s, there’s actually a kind of history called big history and it’s basically just pulling back from all the minutiae and, and, and looking at trends and looking at things like that.
[00:12:35] I didn’t want to get quite that far away, but I wanted to be able to pull back enough that you could see the patterns. I know, I know that there’s not. History doesn’t repeat itself. I I agree totally with what you said there, but there are patterns that recur, that are dealt with in different ways by different civilizations.
[00:12:53] And the, the, when you do that, when you pull back and do what I’ve, I’ve done, even for me, I didn’t realize until I started to write what I was looking at here, where there was a lot of patterns and a lot of things that, that echoed in even present day stuff.
[00:13:10] Scott: And that’s, and that’s where I could see your, the categorization. that you, we, we joke about earlier, that would probably help you from a writing perspective, at least for me, right? That’s the way my brain works, is I gotta outline something, I gotta have some categories, and then, okay, I can pick and choose, okay, if, if it’s a religion, okay, this is when this religion came to the forefront, or that religion came to the forefront, or that concept came out.
[00:13:33] With that, I mean, when you’re researching a book like this, there’s, there’s no kind of One single source aside, if you just say the internet for all of history, if we interviewed someone who is, who is, writing on John Quincy Adams the other day, and he had a very specific source and one place he could go to for some personal journals.
[00:13:50] But for you, what were you using for your, for your research for this book?
[00:13:54] Scott Williams: Oh, look, it was, it was, I say the internet, but I would also, I would look at the internet and then I’d go, okay, I would, I would pick something up. I wanted to look for big ideas. But I wanted odd angles on big ideas too. I wanted, I wanted there to be stories involved. So I would look to see if there were stories involved with something.
[00:14:12] And I would, I would even look at Wikipedia. And then I would, once I saw that, then I’d go, okay, deep dive on their sources then on other sources to see the veracity of it. That’s why I don’t regard myself at any stretch, by any stretch of the imagination as a historian. I am not a historian because I don’t do the proper groundwork a historian would do.
[00:14:33] Scott: Yeah.
[00:14:34] Scott Williams: I, I mean, I, I, and I would I would be loath to, people sometimes say, oh, you’re a historian. No, I’m not. And that’s not because I, I respect historians too much to equate myself with a historian. But I also, I respect history and I don’t write stuff that’s not true or that isn’t any that hasn’t been reported as true.
[00:14:57] If any history I’ve written is debated, I will then put a caveat on that and say, hey this is a great story, but it’s debatable. But I will go with the great story, if there’s one there, purely for entertainment’s sake. It’s an entertainment book. It’s not, it’s not, it is informative, but it’s meant to be entertaining.
[00:15:17] Jenn: ,
[00:15:22] see it as inspiring. It’s one of those inspiring books, right? It’s one of those If this person could do that, maybe I could do that. If that person was in this situation, I’d like to think I would do that in that situation. I think that’s what history, we want to hear these, these history makers that made these hard decisions and did things that we can look at and be like, wow, I, I’m inspired to do something like that.
[00:15:47] Like Neil Armstrong. Right? I’m inspired to reach for the moon and then have a really great line once I hit the moon.
[00:15:57] Scott Williams: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
[00:16:00] A glitch in the recording.
[00:16:02] The Process of Writing ‘Lightbulb Moments in Human History’
[00:16:02] Scott: exactly.
[00:16:04] Jenn: So how long did it take you to write the book?
[00:16:07] Scott Williams: When I started, I started writing it as a history of education. That was, that, it began as that. And I spent probably about a year putting together as a history of education. And then I started to go There were some really interesting parts and all the interesting parts were the parts about sort of the ideas that people had and and those things that changed, people’s perspectives and I’m a, I’m a teacher by, by trade.
[00:16:37] I, I, and so that was why I thought education was good. I was looking for an angle, education was the angle I was going for. Then I realized that A, not many people would be super interested and B, there was a better story there, or there was a better book there. And so. After about a year of struggling with this history of education, I realized where the story was, and I realized what I needed to write.
[00:16:59] And the thing was, it had been there all along. Ever since, like I say in the book, I don’t know if you got that far, but my dad would read to me at night, and I wanted to be read non fiction books, so he’d read to me about ancient Egypt, he’d read to me about all these history things. And it started all back then.
[00:17:18] And then over the years I’ve just always touched base with, with history things, and even my my love of science fiction, to me science fiction is the history of the future. The history I’ll never get to see. So I, I love science fiction because obviously I’ll be dead, but that gives me a bit of an idea as to what history might be like, so it’s, it, everything for me is about Historical moments.
[00:17:44] Scott: SO what, what are some of your. If I’m gonna tell a friend about this book, and, and even just the quick reading that I did of the first, 20 or 30 pages I, I actually really started getting into it. And then my kids, yelled at me about something and I had to go warm up a hot dog or whatever it was.
[00:18:01] But so what are some of your favorites that, as you were writing this or that kind of stood out to you the most in this, particular book?
[00:18:09]
[00:18:13] Favorite ‘Lightbulb Moments’ from the Book
[00:18:13] Scott Williams: Okay, some of the things that, I mean, not all of them are life changing moments. One of the ones I really like is the beer, beer before bread hypothesis, which is a hypothesis that humanity didn’t band together in cities and, and farm and everything to, to, to grow food and to make bread. They, they needed to make beer.
[00:18:37] And so one of the reasons that they they sort of develop farming was to create a a reliable source of grain for making beer.
[00:18:46] Scott: Grain for making beer.
[00:18:47] Scott Williams: and that’s, that’s actually a, a bona fide theory. That’s not someone off the internet. That’s actually, there’s a scientific paper that, that, that, it’s only a theory, but it’s still an interesting one.
[00:18:58] And it certainly,
[00:18:59] Scott: fun one, yeah.
[00:19:00] Scott Williams: it’s a fun one. And when you see how important beer was to early civilizations, the Mesopotamians loved beer. Although the beer they drank wasn’t exactly like what we would drink, apparently. It was more like porridge and they had to drink it with a straw because of all the bits and pieces that were in it.
[00:19:14] Scott: Oh my gosh.
[00:19:16] Scott Williams: the,
[00:19:16] Scott: Hardy
[00:19:17] Scott Williams: yeah, the Egyptians loved beer. The Chinese love beer. So it was a, it was one of those things that, it’s universal. And it’s conceivable that, that, that beer before bread hypothesis was true, was true. The fact that writing was pretty much invented by accountants. So even though we see writing now as literary, literary sort of pursuits and all that kind of stuff, it was the accountants of Mesopotamia that that really started to sort of put things down on.
[00:19:50] Not paper, obviously on clay, but they start to make marks in clay. Those marks became more important, more complex and then a bit length, a written language came out of that. That was interesting.
[00:20:03] Scott: I mean, that, that makes sense. That it, it’s, it’s useful for money. Useful for money. That’s right. Right. Yeah. Leave it, to leave it to the accountants and, the IRS types, here, at least here in the States. Mm-Hmm. , that, to, to invent the system that would that would track all the taxes that, that I gotta
[00:20:16] Scott Williams: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, what, and that’s, that’s definitely a lightbulb moment. Some of them, there’s a story in there about Sun Tzu, the, the famous Chinese general. And I wouldn’t say it’s a lightbulb moment other than the fact that he codified some of the, sort of the ideas to do with war. But there was a story in the, in the book about how his emperor had challenged him to get a a group of, like female I think concubines to, to act like an army.
[00:20:52] So he he divided them into two groups and he made one of the king’s, of the emperor’s concubines, the leader of each group, and then basically taught them some manoeuvres. And when he brought the king out, or the emperor out to watch, they mucked it all up, they fell about laughing, and thought it was hilarious.
[00:21:13] And so, he executed both of the concubines who were the leaders, and then retrained the ones that were left, and they performed perfectly after that.
[00:21:23] Scott: Absolutely. It’s motivation. Yeah, that, that, that, that’ll teach you to learn the art of war very, very quickly. Oh, my goodness.
[00:21:32] Scott Williams: So yeah, there’s loads of stuff like that. A lot of, a lot of the stories to do with mythology and ancient Egypt and Rome and Greece. I mean, I, I won’t give away, there’s, there’s a lot in there and obviously and this one could be a little bit controversial in the States, but there’s some interesting stuff about Christianity too, but we might not go there right now.
[00:21:53] Scott: Yeah I mean, there’s lots of things. I mean, and that’s a great point. And that’s why I appreciated you setting the stage of hey, there are categories. If you, the reader, wants to think of things in a certain category, you’re giving us the tools. And then you say, hey, you don’t have to use them because I don’t even like using them.
[00:22:09] But to your point, religion, politics, the idea of government and all that, that kind of stuff. I mean, I’m sure a lot of those things are those, those light bulb moments.
[00:22:20] Jenn: And I think that it’s important to know your, the history. No matter if you like it or not, or if it sits well with you, you need to, you should know it because if you’re going to have a conversation, a critical thinking conversation about something, then you need to know what’s the other side and what’s the evidence and let’s have a conversation about it.
[00:22:38] So I think that’s good that you put that in there. Don’t shy away from that.
[00:22:42] Scott Williams: Oh, absolutely.
[00:22:43] The Importance of Understanding and Appreciating History
[00:22:43] Scott Williams: And I think one thing we have done recently, and I, I suppose we’re looking at the dumbing down of society the people don’t tend to quick think critically, and they don’t look at the past, they don’t look at science and so many of these things that we really need to move forward. And I mean, I’ve, I’ve hear my saying that I think the world keeps getting better.
[00:23:06] But. We’re in a bit of a downturn now. I’d say if, if, if I always say that it’s like the stock market. We’re on a steady uptick, but there are corrections along the way. And right now I think we’re in a correction.
[00:23:19] Negative Lightbulb moments
[00:23:19] Scott: Is there anything when you were studying kind of these lightbulb moments, and I think you alluded to it, like even writing, it depends on what’s done with it.
[00:23:27] Writing could have been positive, like the Bible, or it could have been negative
[00:23:30] Scott Williams: Mein Kampf. Yeah.
[00:23:33] Scott: That’s what you wrote in the book. I mean, was there other things like that, in, in your book for lightbulb moments that were could have, that were both, I guess, positive and negative?
[00:23:42] Scott Williams: Oh look, tools can be used for multiple, multiple things. You can use a knife to, to sort of butter bread. You can also stab someone with a knife. There’s lots of, there’s lots of alternate uses for seemingly good things. Free speech is a great thing, but free speech can be abused. And I think I’m, no one’s calling for the, for free speech to be curtailed, but.
[00:24:06] You do wonder why people can get away with saying blatant untruths and, and changing Like basically changing people’s outlook on history based on untruths. That, that to me is, is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. But then how do you police that when free speech is so important?
[00:24:27] Lightbulb Moments Volume 2
[00:24:27] Scott: Now, I think I saw when I was poking around on Amazon, that do you have another another, like a volume two coming out here
[00:24:39] Scott Williams: I do, I do have volume two coming out. There’s, there we go. There’s volume one, volume two.
[00:24:46] Scott: Oh, there you
[00:24:46] Jenn: go. There you go. There was just so many that you found that you had another book.
[00:24:51] Scott Williams: well, basically what I’m doing is I’m, I’m, I’m just moving through history. The first book goes from the first humans up to the end of the Roman Empire. And then I’m picking up from, yeah, from the middle ages up to the scientific revolution. Right now I’m working on book three. which is the Enlightenment.
[00:25:11] In fact, it’s that the working title at the moment is Revolution to Evolution, which is going to pick up on the the French Revolution, American Revolution, and then up to Darwin. And then I’m going to keep on going basically. But the idea is to, is to, to do it chronologically. So you can iteratively, iteratively build.
[00:25:31] And the fact that the first book. Covers probably two million years of history. The second book covers a thousand years. The third book is going to cover 200 years maybe.
[00:25:43] And, and that
[00:25:44] how fast things are growing. Yeah. So in fact, the original idea was to do three books. It’s probably going to end up being five.
[00:25:52] Scott: Wow.
[00:25:53] That’s
[00:25:53] Scott Williams: I’m, I’m, I’m sort of, making it, stretching it out to try to do whatever. I’m basically, I’m struggling to fit it all in. And in fact, I’m sure any, I’m sure anyone could look at the first book and go, why didn’t you put this, this, this, or this? And the further I go along. The more there’s going to be.
[00:26:12] So I think if you’ve read in the introduction I’m putting in ones that I think are important. They’re not the only important lightbulb moments. I think I can’t possibly do it It’s just a way of me sort of showing this iterative building and how how the world is getting better and how we need to appreciate that our lives are You know, immensely better than the lives of people even 200 years ago.
[00:26:42] So I think sometimes we just don’t appreciate what we’ve got.
[00:26:47] Jenn: I like that
[00:26:52] Scott: gratitude. Yeah. And, and that’s one thing. And if you’ve been listening, if you have been listening to podcasts and you, you would know that, that I tell people all the time, I’m not the history nerd, but I’ve learned a lot doing all this stuff with Jen and learning about the lens that we look at things through.
[00:27:08] And you even mentioned that in the very beginning, right? As long as, as you can. Be curious and be open enough to know that you are looking at something through a lens and you can be willing enough to be open to that conversation. You can be grateful and studying history and even knowing just a little bit about history, whether it’s watching one of our videos or reading your book about those big light bulb moments that will give you that perspective and help you understand like, Hey, I really don’t have it that bad.
[00:27:37] Jenn: Yeah. And I like it’s that Scott like this is your book. So you’re going to choose the light bulb moments, right? If someone else has other ones, and they can go write their book.
[00:27:46] Scott: No,
[00:27:50] Scott Williams: I saw something and went, Oh my God, why didn’t I put that in the book? Then I just, I just stopped being hard on myself and going, I did the best I could, and there’s loads of things I could have put in that I haven’t put in, and I know that.
[00:28:03] But yeah, I’m, I’m really happy with how it’s come out. I’m happy with The feel. I think the, the feedback I’ve got is, it meant I’m trying to make history appealing, interesting. A bit funny ’cause there are funny parts in history. I wanna, I want to tease those things out so people get to see the interesting, fun parts of history.
[00:28:23] It isn’t all just dates and things like that. It’s, it’s a living thing that, that these people were alive. I mean, they, they had lives like you and I, they. were, they lived, they died, they had problems, and to see them as real people who were stupid and did dumb things and, but also did amazing things, it’s and that people like say Churchill, who was incredible, but also had a really bad side to him, and I think you can acknowledge that You could acknowledge the greatness and still say, hey, this person wasn’t, he was a bit of a racist and he was a bit of this and a bit of that, but he also was inspiring and did all these amazing things.
[00:29:07] I have a real problem with people trying to revise history in a way which takes away the, that greatness factor and say George Washington’s our own slaves, therefore he was a bad person. And and not looking at The way things were at the time. You can’t judge people by today’s standards.
[00:29:26] That’s not how history works.
[00:29:27] Scott: not at all. And I think we were just talking about that
[00:29:36] Jenn: earlier. I think that’s the whole point, I was they just took down that they removed the Thomas Jefferson statue from the New York city hall. It’s been up there for a hundred and it’s been in there for 187 years. And I say, we’re not doing our jobs as historians.
[00:29:52] If that stuff is happening, because if people can, can dumb people down to one thing about them and it’s a bad thing and then remove everything else that they’ve influenced and done and created and changed. Then we’re not doing job as historians to provide context. And that is what historians do because nothing is happening today.
[00:30:16] That is 200 years ago that we live off of today. And so I, I totally agree with you. I find it very, It’s fascinating that people want to just take all the past and judge it today and then put it on a side and I really dislike the former President Obama had used this right and wrong side of history and I really dislike those terms because there is no right and wrong side of history.
[00:30:43] It’s all the accurate side of history. It’s all the truth side of history. If you’re looking for a right side, it’s the side that’s the truth. That’s the right side. The wrong side is. changing it or saying something different or, or making something else more important than what it is for an agenda.
[00:31:00] That’s the wrong side of history. So I have a hard time with this, this trying to judge history and and, and clean it out from what. People had to have done in the past because nobody was perfect.
[00:31:14] Scott Williams: No, it doesn’t mean you can’t look at history through different lenses and say like I, I use the example of my grandmother who was born in 1895. She was born when Australia or before Australia even was a country, but she grew up during what was called the time of the white Australia policy where basically, no one who wasn’t white and Anglo Saxon could come into the country.
[00:31:36] She was a terrible racist. But, she was a lovely person, but she was a terrible racist because of the era she grew up in, and everyone was racist then. I mean, Australia wasn’t that far away from South Africa, in many respects. So, you gotta look at it in that respect. And, she, she grew up through the World War I, Great Depression, World War II.
[00:32:00] She ended up, she saw the moon landing. I mean, society changed so much in that time. And I’m sure some of her attitudes change, but there’s a certain point where when you’re a person of a certain age, there’s only so far you can change. And I think, I look at her, I remember the good person she was, but I acknowledge that There were problems, but I also know why those problems happened.
[00:32:25] And I don’t, I don’t, I don’t sort of say she’s not my grandmother anymore because she said mean things about black people. I mean, she did, she was awful. I, I was actually quite shocked at some of the things she said, even as a child. So that was, it was a wake up call. There’s no doubt about that, but she was also a good person in other respects, but she came from a time when the default position was everyone was a racist.
[00:32:50] Scott: .
[00:32:50] And that’s why I always appreciate our conversations on talk with history because, I think our guests, have that perspective of, of learning about history and being willing to say yes, that that wasn’t.
[00:33:02] By today’s lens those actions back then weren’t right. However, people have gotten better and we have to understand where they came from And so again, that’s what I appreciate about books like yours that bring some humor into this and make it a little bit more accessible for the non history nerds like myself.
[00:33:17] And it, it’s something that I, I can, I would mention to my friends at work and say, Hey, if, if you want a good, kind of coffee table, history book, or if you want to check out a history book, this one’s super fun because it talks about all these, these larger concepts that most people will, be familiar with, but maybe not the details behind them.
[00:33:36] And then you interjecting your humor. Throughout the book, is, is great. So for for those listening, Scott, what’s the best place that you would want them to come to you if you, they wanted to look for your, your current book or your book that’s coming out? I think in the spring is what I saw.
[00:33:53] Preview of Upcoming Books
[00:33:53] Scott Williams: Yeah, look, it’s if you come to my website lightbulbmomentshistory. com, it’s got links to all the places you can get it, but you can, the other thing is I’ve just released a, an audio book of the first book that came out this month. Okay. So for, for listeners who don’t like sitting down reading books, but like to listen to things cause, Hey, I’m a podcast listener and I’m an audio book listener too.
[00:34:18] Like I, most of my reading is done. while walking or doing housework. And I don’t get time to sit down and read as much as I’d like. So that’s there. It’s there now. It’s it’s available. It’s not quite there and audible for some reason yet, but everywhere else, Spotify, it’s the audio books available out there.
[00:34:36] I think it’s quite accessible. I’m not reading it. So but I engaged a professional person to do that But as far as yeah everywhere else The books are the first books available everywhere Amazon and everywhere else. The second book will be available everywhere as well but certainly my website’s a good place to come and I can you can sign up for my mailing list.
[00:35:00] Scott: awesome. No, that’s, that’s great. And, and we will we’re, we’re actually planning on putting together like a little kind of holiday gift guide, we’re going to. Put out maybe on our channel or something like that. So we’re absolutely going to include your, your book in that. Cause I think it’s a great one.
[00:35:13] It’s fun. It’s got, got a little bit of a different tone compared to some of the, some of the active academic book that Jen reads that I, I can’t, I just can’t pick up. It’s just not my thing. It’s okay. I
[00:35:23] Jenn: like the fun ones too. I like, we learn in all
[00:35:27] Scott: different ways. Yeah.
[00:35:28] Scott Williams: my book has lots of pictures too,
[00:35:30] Scott: perfect for someone like me.
[00:35:31] Conclusion and Final Thoughts
[00:35:31] Scott: It’s perfect for someone like me. As Scott writes in his foreword quoting Sir Isaac Newton, if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If you want a book that will inspire you by learning about the light bulb moments of history, I highly encourage you to check out Scott’s book, light bulb moments in human history.
[00:35:57] yOu can find Scott’s book. book, Pretty Much Anywhere, and for those listening, thank you for listening to the Talk With History podcast, and please reach out to us at our website, TalkWithHistory. com. But more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this podcast, especially if you think they’d be interested in this book, please share this episode with them.
[00:36:15] We rely on you, our community, to grow, and we appreciate you all every day. We’ll talk to you next time. Thank you.