What are your recommended books, audiobooks, podcasts??

I'm reading  Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott

"An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available that  contradicts the standard narrative for the beginnings of the earliest  civilizations

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering  for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and  governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant  and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and  form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible  civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living.  But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.  The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of  accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock,  subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal  family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over  reproduction.

Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow  agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable  disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and  why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree  labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control,  as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and  nonsubject peoples."

It fits my interest in big history. I like the contrarian narrative that uses evidence to undermine the "progress" story: "primitive hunters and gatherers" eventually discovered agriculture, which led to settlements, cities, civilization, and a better life for all. Maybe -- probably -- not, asserts Scott. Settlements in some circumstances predated agriculture by millennia, some hunter gatherers knew about agriculture but rejected it, and more.

What are your recommendations?