Christopher Brown

speaker

1,098 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 20 Jan

Christopher Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #145 Classic episode – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable · 20 Jan 2026 podcast

that folks have offered for thinking that slavery in one way or another was going to end in the 19th century because of 18th century's trends are just not convincing if you know the 18th century and you know the 19th century.

It's just not convincing that as of 1750 that this was the direction that things were likely to go by 1850.

This is the thing, to be able to talk about the past intelligibly, we have to talk about it in terms that we can communicate, that you can be understood.

We have to simplify things to be able to have a conversation.

The past is just incredibly complex, like the present is incredibly complex.

And our capacity to know about it is very fragmentary.

And so really everything that we're discussing is the best I can understand based on what I've read and what I know.

One of the things that historians are very well aware of that I think more general public might not be aware of is that understandings of subjects change.

You know, I mean, I'm doing a lot of work on the Atlantic slave trade right now.

Historians know a lot more about the Atlantic slave trade now than they did 25 years ago.

I mean, a lot of things that were kind of true are just not true in the same way anymore.

And that may be true, you know, for lots of subjects 25 years from now.

And so we're engaged in the exercise of just trying to understand the past better, not to have kind of the last or final word on the subject, but to suggest what the next word, you know, looks like.

So, yeah, it's super complex.

It's super complicated.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

I've never thought about it.

Inevitability is also an argument one way or another about points of no return.

So it's, it's inevitability is also a statement about when does something, when does it become the working out?

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