The BlomCast looks at turning points in history, which have always fascinated me. My name is Philipp Blom, I am a historian and broadcaster and author of many b...
[32] The Collapse of the West and European Futures
The first episode in this new series of the BlomCast looks at a truly historic event: the end of the “West”. With the new US administration, the transatlantic alliance has practically collapsed leaving Europe exposed to a dictator on its eastern flank whose war has already cost some one million lives. Whither Europe? Will it become a collection of colonies and puppet states steered by hostile powers in a neo-imperial world? Or can European find the determination and energy to create a new alliance centred on a new kind of Europe? Nathalie Tocci is at the heart of the European project. She has advised on and written EU strategy, is director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome and has researched and written extensively, among others for the Guardian, the New York Times and Le Monde. In my conversation with Nathalie we try to understand whether the collapse of the West is analogous to that of the Soviet Union, how the global picture has shifted, and whether the values at the heart of the European project can be enough to motivate a real transformation.
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1:00:32
[31] Danilo Brozovic — How Societies Collapse
Societal collapse is a topic hotly debated not only among climate scientists and activists. But why do formerly prosperous and powerful societies break down? And what makes them resilient? Are the reasons the same for ancient Rome and the empire of the Incas, for the Chinese Tang dynasty and the culture of Rapanui (Easter Islands)? Danilo Brozovic has made a study of literature dealing with societal collapse throughout history. Talking to him was really, really fascinating, and we discussed past, present and future.
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1:22:18
[30] Raoul Schrott — Der Sternenhimmel oder, wie Homo sapiens die Welt eroberte
Alle Kulturen sehen dieselben Sterne (wenn auch auf beiden Hemisphären unterschiedlich), erzählen sich aber ganz unterschiedliche Geschichten darüber. Tatsächlich gibt es überraschende Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Sternbildern der Australischen Ureinwohner und der Mesopotamier, der Buschleute und der Maya, die nur schwer zu erklären sind, sagt Raoul Schrott, Dichter und Universalgelehrter. Ich habe aus diesem Gespräch immens viel gelernt und habe jetzt mehr fragen als davor. Was können uns Sternbilder und Mythen über die Geschichte der ältesten Kulturen erzählen? Und was sagen sie über den ersten Wendepunkt der Menschheitsgeschichte, als die ersten Homo sapiens Afrika verließen?
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1:34:46
[29] Richard Cockett — Vienna, City of Ideas
Modernity is a Viennese phenomenon, says historian Richard Cockett, who is currently working as senior editor at The Economist. The cauldron of Vienna ca. 1900 with its dynamism, its migrants and its cultural new beginnings and especially the political and intellectual energies after the First World War created panoply of new approaches which revolutionised life far beyond Vienna, and indeed Europe. As creative minds and experienced city planners, film directors, engineers, philosophers, economists, artists, and designers fled from the Nazis, the world would never be quite the same again, from fitted kitchens to neo-classical economics, from Hollywood to shopping malls, from nuclear physics to right-wing populism, all had their debut what had been an imperial capital and was now an experiment in living.
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1:07:44
[28] Musa Al-Gharbi — Symbolic Capitalism and the Pitfalls of Moral Righteousness
"We Have Never Been Woke" is the title of Musa Al-Gharbi’s brilliantly polemic analysis of an educational and social elite that believes it has all the answers. He calls this professional class symbolic capitalists — people who make their living from manipulating the symbols of our societies, i.e. journalists, academics, creative professions, the media, NGOs, etc. The turning point here is the arrival of wokeness as the ultimate arbiter of truth, coupled with great moral rigidity and intolerance of other opinions. The reason for this, Musa suggests, may be elite overproduction, which means that too many qualified people are competing for two few jobs, and therefore have to develop not only professional, but also ideological points of distinction and advantage. Has symbolic capitalism taken over the public sphere?
The BlomCast looks at turning points in history, which have always fascinated me. My name is Philipp Blom, I am a historian and broadcaster and author of many books about the Enlightenment, the story of modernity and climate history. The climate catastrophe places us at the greatest historical turning point hin human history. What, if anything, can we learn from moments in the past in which a model of life seemed to change, or had to change, in which whole societies were transformed?
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