Thread by @doctorow

This week on my podcast, I read my latest @Medium column, "Against The Great Forces of History," in which I describe how @AdaPalmer's pedagogic techniques as a Renaissance historian at the UChicago has changed my view of how the world works.

doctorow.medium.com/against-the-gr… 1/

If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/10/25/peo… 2/

Palmer specializes in banned information during the Inquisitions, specifically in Florence. She's an authority on how the Inquisitions dealt with witchcraft, homosexuality, pornography, heresy and banned science. You should read her blog!

exurbe.com 3/

Every year, Palmer takes a group of students through a #LARP that re-enacts the election of the Medicis' Pope in 1490. Students are assigned to role-play real cardinals from the powerful families of the day over a period of weeks.

history.uchicago.edu/news/papal-ele… 4/

The climax is a conclave, held in the Neo-Gothic Memorial Chapel, in full costume (Palmer has a Google Alerts for theater companies selling off their wardrobe). 5/

The cardinals, having spent weeks horse-trading and backstabbing, gather to choose a Pope from among the final four candidates.

Here's a funny thing: two of those candidates are always the same, year after year. But the other two? They've never been the same. 6/

In other words, the Great Forces of History are certainly bearing down on that moment. They are ordaining that the two most powerful families in the running will get a shot at elevation. But these forces don't determine the outcome - they influence it. 7/

The human choices, made by people with free will, set up fully half of the possible outcomes.

That is to say, history doesn't run on rails. It is steerable. Its great forces don't strip us of agency (and indeed, "great forces" are just the product of earlier human choices). 8/

We make history.

As you might expect from this brilliantly imaginative pedagogical method, Palmer isn't just an academic. 9/

She's also a musician - a librettist and singer of great breadth, whose works include an album-length retelling of the Norse mythos:

adapalmer.com/publication/su…

As well as a song about space travel that literally reduces me to tears every time I hear it: 10/

sassafrassmusic.com/songs/sci-fi-f…

She's also a BRILLIANT science fiction writer, whose profound understanding of the past has created an utterly original vision of the future in her Terra Ignota series:

adapalmer.com/series/terra-i… 11/

That series is concluding now with the fourth and final volume, Perhaps the Stars:

adapalmer.com/publication/pe…

Palmer has influenced my thinking a great deal. 12/

We co-hosted a seven-part seminar series comparing information control during the Inquisition with other information revolutions.

youtube.com/channel/UCeNP7… 13/

And hardly a day goes by that I don't think about her Papal LARP, and what it says about being an activist. History bears down upon us at every moment, but we are not its prisoners. We make history, through our choices. 14/

I delved into this last week at the @InternetArchive's 25th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco, in a talk entitled "Seize the Means of Computation."

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The podcast episode is here:

craphound.com/news/2021/10/2…

And here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

archive.org/download/Cory_…

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podca… 16/