Author Vaclav Smil’s New Book Makes Sense of the World Through Numbers

Vaclav Smil is an environmental scientist, policy analyst and prolific author. He is also Bill Gates’ go-to guy for making sense of the world and his new book, “Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World” explains how numbers reveal the true state of our world — through the exploration of a wide range of topics. 

“I’m trying to describe the inherent complexity of the world … Complexity is essential to understanding the world.” –Vaclav Smil

Listen: How numbers reveal the true state of our world.

Guest

Penguin Random House

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba. His new book is titled “Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World.” He says the book is a collection of essays written over five years, categorized by different parts of life. “Whenever I do my books, I don’t have an overarching thesis.” Smil says the underlying motivation of each essay is to explore the facts and variables of the world. “I’m trying to describe the inherent complexity of the world … Complexity is essential to understanding the world,” he says. 

Smil says the idea of American exceptionalism can often get in the way of this complexity. “I try to cut down everybody to size. All of us should be more humble … America is not what it used to be … Once you get on this downslide, it’s very hard to fix it.” Most of Smil’s work involves the environment, which he says is much larger than America. “For the first time in history, we are facing environmental problems that are totally global,” he says.