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Podcast: PastMaster: Reshaping History
Episode: The Medieval African Billionaire Space Program: Mansa Musa and the Golden Rocket
Description: Timbuktu, 1330 CE. The Mali Empire at the height of its power. Gold dust literally fills the air. And sitting at the centre of it all is Mansa Musa — the richest human being who has ever lived, with a net worth of roughly $700 billion in today's money. Elon Musk is small fry by comparison. Ryan's been dropped into medieval West Africa with one mission: convince this golden emperor to fund humanity's first space programme.
The logic is simple: if modern billionaires spend their fortunes going to space, surely history's richest man should have got there first. The Mali Em...