Historyspeaking topic
The peak of the witch hunts came not in the Middle Ages but during the Renaissance and after, just as science and rationalism were on the rise. If the era 'marching toward enlightenment' burned more innocent people than the one we call the 'dark ages,' can we be sure that progress and irrationality really move in opposite directions?
— The timing of the witch hunts, the early modern period
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Let's talk about how John Locke's idea of natural rights, life, liberty, and property, fed both the American and French revolutions.
- During the Cold War, the world came within a hair of nuclear war until a single Soviet officer judged the computer's 'US missile launch' alarm to be an error and defied his orders. The fate of billions resting on one person's intuition and disobedience exposes how fragile the belief that 'systems keep us safe' really is.
- The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed not for fast typing but to slow typists down so the keys of early typewriters would not jam; the mechanical problem was solved long ago, yet we still type through that old obstacle. Repeating the solution to a problem that no longer exists with our fingers every day makes you wonder how many of our habits are the ghosts of dead reasons.
- How did the 'invisible hand' metaphor in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations lay the groundwork for the idea of the free market?
- What set off the fall of the Berlin Wall was not a revolution but a spokesman misreading new travel rules at a press conference and saying they took effect 'immediately, without delay'; the crowds surged to the gates and there was no going back. An era ending not with a grand plan but with a slip of the tongue blurs the line between how much of history is intention and how much is accident.