The Burning Archive

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the events of 2021 against the theme of social fragmentation. For so many people around the world, 2020 and 2021 have been the years of the Great Seclusion. How has the response to the pandemic fired social fragmentation and been fuelled by social isolation and loss of community? Can we chart a course to a more forgiving and tolerant Society of Islands in 2022?

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the major events of 2021 against the theme of political decay. But should the The Burning Archive replace the idea of political decay with political disorder? 2021 has tested the limits of the (liberal) democratic political orders of many countries around the world. Experts and populists have clashed... we are still waiting on a verdict. It has been a bad year for two pillars of democratic political orders -  science and the mass media. What trouble lies ahead for 2022? Is there a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem?

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the events of the year in geopolitics against the theme of imperial rivalry. With the retreat from Afghanistan and dramatic diplomatic clashes, 2021 has been a pivotal year in relationships between the Great States of United States of America, China, Russia, the European Union and India. What does 2022 hold? Wars in Ukraine, Taiwan or Iran? Or the emergence of a new Concert of the globe, premised on a multipolar world?

In this first Summer Edition of The Burning Archive Jeff Rich reflects on 12 surprises, discoveries or gifts that mattered most in 2021. Be prepared to be surprised as well-known and obscure stories from the year are retold. Ranging across empire, politics, society, culture, history and the writer/podcaster's life, this episode will entertain you, and show how the past is not dead - the past is not even past. Full references are at www.theburningarchive.com.

Could computer games be the last best hope of culture vultures and history buffs? Should we turn to the dragon-slayers of Skyrim to save the treasures of the past from the dragon fire of the Burning Archive? Can we find solace in literature by reading the magical tomes of the floating city of Dalaran as it is imagined in that great total art work (Gesamtkunstwerk) of our times, World of Warcraft? In this playful episode of the Burning Archive, special guest and recent Monash University graduate, Isaac Rich poses six questions about history drawn from his scholarship of gaming. The question is - will the Burning Archive be prepared? With thanks to all the game developers, artists and crafts who made these worlds, this Burning Archive is for all the players. Full credits for the material used in the show are at www.theburningarchive.com

Can all the stories of the world be summarised as just seven basic plots, or even just the four narrative forms first defined by Aristotle? There is a long history of trying to make sense of the common patterns of stories, myths and legends. This episode of The Burning Archive examines tragedy and comedy, the story of the story of stories, the seven basic plots, and how even historians write their histories with these plots. But can the inventiveness of great storytellers really be limited to seven basic plots. Will Scheherazade outwit, outlast and outplay the critics? More details at www.theburningarchive.com  

Simon Sebag Montefiore writes: “Jerusalem, so loveable in many ways, so hate-filled in others, always bristling with the hallowed and the brash, the preposterously vulgar and the aesthetically exquisite, seems to live more intensely than anywhere else; everything stays the same yet nothing stays still. At dawn each day, the three shrines of the three faiths come to life in their own way.” But why - one Burning Archive listener, Josh, asks - do these three faiths all lay claim to the one Holy Land and the State of Israel? Full references and credits at www.theburningarchive.com

In 1095 Pope Urban II - whose real name was Odo of Chatillon - gave a rousing speech at Clermont in France. He promised forgiveness and pardon for all of the past sins of those who would fight to reclaim the holy land from Muslims and free the eastern churches. So began the crusades - the wars between Christendom and Islam for the Holy Lands in the Levant and by Western Christians against pagan and Orthodox communities in  North and Eastern Europe for several centuries from 1096. What were the crusades and how did they give brith to modern European nations? What made the crusaders and their opponents believe faith justified violence, that they fought a just war, a holy war, a jihad? Details of all references used in the show are at www.theburningarchive.com Credits: The Crusader song, Palästinalied

How did the Byzantine Empire acquire the secrets of silk production from China, and what does it tell us about the history of silk, the diffusion of silk trade across the world, and the Silk Roads of Eurasia? Full details of material referred to in the episode are at www.theburningarchive.com.

In October 1731 there was a fire in the Ashburnham House residence of the Keeper of the King’s libraries in Westminster, London. The fire threatened the one and only manuscript of the Old English poem, Beowulf. It was rescued by the librarian and others leaping from the window, clasping manuscripts. Singed but intact, Beowulf was literally saved from a Burning Archive. 200 years later in 1936 an English scholar of Beowulf sought to recover the poem and artistry of Beowulf from the dead hand of arid historical scholarship. That scholar was JRR Tolkien. One year later he began to write Lord of the Rings. Would we have had the Lord of the Rings if we did not first have Beowulf? Full credits and reference at www.theburningarchive.com.