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Charles Mann is a historian and a journalist, whose books include 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. His most recent work is The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. It’s a book about how humans use science, technology, and policy to confront our impact on the planet and, ultimately, our own survival as a species.

In this interview, you’ll learn what wizards and prophets are, why the scale of a given technology might be more important to us than the technology itself, and whether humans have a special role in the Universe.