BlomCast

Send us a textThe so-called Irish Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852 killed up to one million people and led to the emigration of hundreds of thousands of others. It left a deep imprint on Irish, European and American history and memory. But this was not a natural catastrophe, argues economic historian Padraic Scanian. He sees the famine as a result of globalisation, and of a very Victorian determination to let the market do its work and discipline the undeserving poor. The stereotype of the lazy Irishman was born out of the quasi colonial perspective of large landowners and London bureaucrats. The famine may be in the past, Padraic observes, but the mechanisms that led to it may still be more present than we think.Support the show

Send us a textDie russische Geschichte ist voller dramatischer Wendepunkte — von Peter dem Großen und Katharina II. bis zur Revolution und dem Fall der Sowjetunion — aber hinter den Ereignissen steht eine große Kontinuität von Macht, davon, wie sie funktioniert und worauf sie sich gründet. Macht in Russland hat schon seit Jahrhunderten anders funktioniert als im Westen, erzählt Jörg Baberowski, einer der profiliertesten Russland-Historiker. Das liegt nicht an einer “russischen Seele” oder einer besonderen historischen Mission der russischen Kultur, sondern daran, wer in Russland wen kontrolliert und beherrscht hat. Diese historischen Beharrungskräfte setzen sich bis ins heutige Russland fort. Kann eine Analyse der russischen Macht auch helfen, den Zusammenbruch des liberalen Westens besser zu verstehen?Support the show

Send us a textTrevor Jackson is an economic historian teaching at Berkeley. I talk to him about the current political situation of the universities and the science, and about his own research area, the history of capitalism, which has always been prone to crashes and other crises. The development of a capitalist economy is also the story of the elites learning to evade responsibility for the failures, while reaping the rewards of markets. What role does elite impunity play in the current crisis of political legitimacy? Could this be changed, and, if so, how? 

Send us a textIn a life lived between Ghana, Britain and the USA, Kwame Anthony Appiah has had ample opportunity to reflect on identities and difference, as well as what binds us together. Our conversation starts with the struggles of decolonisation and moves towards trying to understand the role and importance a liberal education for functioning democracies. Are people in charge of their own lives or do they need to be empowered to take charge of them, and of their societies? And have Western democracies been failed by their elites, which abolished the guardrails that kept democracies functioning? The liberal project may have failed. Can it be rescued by a groundswell of democratic determination? And what place could ideas like cosmopolitanism, identity and honour have in his process?

Send us a textThe current crisis of democracy and governance goes back a long way, and has a lot in common with the development of capitalism, says my guest Sunil Amrith, professor of history at Yale University. The logic of profit and exploitation not only damaged natural systems, it profoundly changed societies and their ways of organising themselves and understanding themselves. From its very beginnings, from the stock exchange Amsterdam to the foundation of Singapore, from the sugar plantations of Madeira to the palm oil plantings today, there are patterns that repeat themselves in different historical contexts. The crisis of the so-called West is one consequence of this development, but it is seen in a very different light within the global south with its historical experience of colonialism and globalised exploitations. Sunil and I also talk about what comes after the logic of humans exploiting nature and setting themselves apart from it. Is a different narrative possible, or is homo sapiens irretrievably caught up in the acceleration of history?

Send us a textThe 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.

Send us a textSocietal 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.

Send us a textAlle 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?

Send us a textModernity 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.

Send us a text"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?