Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century

Dwarkesh Podcast

Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860.

It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize - the best history of oil ever written (which makes it the best history of the 20th century ever written).

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Beginning of the oil industry

(00:13:37) – World War I & II

(00:25:06) – The Middle East

(00:47:04) – Yergin’s conversations with Putin & Modi

(01:04:36) – Writing through stories

(01:10:26) – The renewable energy transition

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