RevDem Podcast

In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lucie Hunter, Oksana Sarkisova – Blinken OSA Research Fellow and the Director of Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival – discusses the role of filmmaking in today’s society; how festivals are reacting to contemporary global conflicts and challenges; the importance of safekeeping visual archives; and how micro-histories help us understand the wider context. Oksana Sarkisova is a Research Fellow at Blinken OSA Archive at Central European University and the Director of Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Budapest. Her fields of research are cultural history, memory and representation, film history, amateur photography, and visual studies. Besides university teaching, she also participated as a tutor in multiple workshops including Cinema Without Borders, and served as Jury member at international film festivals around the world. Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, 19th edition, November 8-20, 2022. https://www.verzio.org/en

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Lucan Way – co-author, with Steven Levitsky, of the new book Revolution and Dictatorship:The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism – introduces what revolutionary autocracies are; explains why they tend to prove much more durable than other kinds of authoritarian regimes; discusses how the revolutionary sequences so crucial for the emergence of such regimes have played out in the various cases across the globe; and reflects on the contemporary relevance of the book’s findings concerning autocratic longevity.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Zsuzsanna Szelényi – author of the new book Tainted Democracy. Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary – analyzes the main characteristics of the Orbán regime and the techniques Hungary’s current rulers have employed to establish their dominance over the country’s economy; reflects on the dilemmas and strategies of the Hungarian opposition; examines the role of gendered practices in Hungarian politics; and discusses the reasons behind the sharp democratic reversal and decline of the early 21st century.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ben Tarnoff – author of the new book Internet for the People. The Fight for Our Digital Future – discusses how the internet was created and how it has been privatized; how its current version fuels inequality and the rise of the political Right; why finding the right metaphors is crucial; and why the ongoing anti-monopoly push is not enough.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz – author of the book Brazilian Authoritarianism – contrasts mythological and critical-realistic versions of Brazilian history; discusses the main facets of authoritarianism in the country; compares the Bolsonaro phenomenon with the Trump one; and elaborates on her vision of democracy and full citizenship.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Karolina Watroba discusses her most recent book “Mann’s Magic Mountain — World Literature and Closer Reading,” published with Oxford University Press.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Timothy Shenk – author of Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy – discusses what motivated him to explore the making of majorities and key members of the democratic elite who made those majorities; how the strongest and strangest coalition in American history – the New Deal majority – was assembled; what a study of the parallel maturation of the civil rights revolution and the liberal establishment may reveal about the making and unmaking of that coalition; and why it has become so difficult to sustain majorities today.

In this latest RevDem Rule of Law section podcast, Oliver Garner speaks to Paolo Sandro, Lecturer in Law at the University of Leeds.  Sandro’s recently published monograph The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Hart Publishing, 2022) confronts the topic from a legal theoretical perspective. Their conversation considers the practical application of his work and the theme of (re)making constitutional democracy following recent significant events in Europe.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Till van Rahden – author of the new Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus (Multitude. Jewish History and the Ambivalences of Universalism) – discusses why the relationship between equality and difference is so crucial from the liberal democratic point of view; what new insights conceptual history can offer that take us beyond the social scientific ideal of analytical precision; how examining the relationship between the particular and the universal helps us reconsider European history; and how de-naturalizing our dominant political concepts can open spaces for timely reflections. Till van Rahden teaches modern and contemporary history at the Université de Montréal and the previous holder of the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies. His publications include the books Jews and other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860-1925 (2008) and Demokratie: Eine gefährdete Lebensform [Democracy. A Fragile Way of Life] (2019) which he discussed with Elias Buchetmann here at the Review of Democracy. Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus is published by Hamburger Edition.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Gaia Vince – author of the new book Nomad Century. How to Survive the Climate Upheaval – sketches the transformations climate change and the accompanying rise in global average temperature are likely to bring in the coming decades; reflects on the most promising innovations when it comes to mitigating temperature rise and moving towards a circular economy; discusses ways to plan for lawful and safe mass migration at a time when large parts of the Earth are becoming uninhabitable; and addresses the key political questions of how to set the right priorities at the global level and how to act to enforce them. Gaia Vince is a British environmental journalist, broadcaster, and award-winning non-fiction author who has contributed to the BBC, The Guardian, Nature, and New Scientist, among others. She is the author of two previous books: Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made (2014), for which she got awarded the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books in 2015, and Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time. Nomad Century. How to Survive the Climate Upheaval is published by Allen Lane.