I thought this presentation by Armin Ronacher (the creator of Flask and Jinja) was very enlightening:

How Python was Shaped by leaky Internals(2016):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g

See also this HN post (Attempts to make Python fast):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24848318