Why Some Diseases Only Traveled One Direction

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters point to it as a clear, short explanation of one-directional disease spread and the core argument of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

CGP Grey

Topic

history of epidemics

Format

explainer

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

11

HN mentions in dataset

16

Recommendation years in dataset

2015–2024

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• > So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492. What changed was technology. Once you have ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, everything changes. Europeans introduced cows, sheep, pigs, chickens. The New World's only …

• Expanding on this, CGP Grey had this amazing video ( [VIDEO] ) of why European diseases in the Americas were so bad on the people that were already here when the two worlds met but you hardly heard of Europeans getting any super contagious illness …

• >Indians had no trouble crisscrossing America Well yeah there weren't any human infectious illness where... there aren't any humans. This video explains the history of man kind's infectious illness very well [VIDEO]