For this episode, I am delighted to welcome the distinguished philosopher Michael Sandel, whose Harvard course on moral philosophy has been followed by millions of people online. Michael’s book The Tyranny of Merit trenchantly analyses the perversion of meritocracy  and what the rule of the credentialed and of technocrats is doing to our democracies. While the social and political elite claims for itself to rule through merit alone, the idea of merit itself has not only been corrupted by mechanisms of exclusion, it is also a fraught concept in itself. In our conversation, we explore the politics of humiliation, the theological dimension of thinking that we get what we deserve, the populist backlash against a sense of entitlement, and how to address these fault lines which threaten to split our societies in two.Michael Sandel will appear at the Vienna Humanities Festival 2023: https://www.humanitiesfestival.at/sandel

The idea that humans can dominate nature and rule over it has popped up quite recently in human history and has come to sweep the planet, and to change and degrade its natural systems. But where does this idea come from, how has it influenced human history and what will come after its collapse amid the climate crisis?

What part do our collective stories play in historical turning points? Can new narratives change a culture, a society, a political structure, or do narratives react to changes to explain them afterwards? What do narratives inspire, and how are they disseminated? Martin Puchner, professor for comparative literature at Harvard University and author of, among others, The Story of Culture, is the person to ask. We speak about the importance of technologies such as writing and print, but also of creative misunderstanding and appropriation, a political minefield, as well as a main mechanism of cultural transmission. What can we learn from this convoluted history, and is it possible to initiate a narrative turn today, away from destruction and domination towards a more symbiotic understanding of culture?

a conversation with Andrea WulfSometimes the world is reinvented and turned upside down not in a glittering metropolis, but in the provinces. This was the case in Jena, a tiny German town, at the end of the eighteenth century, as a gaggle of young and unconventional poets, scientists and philosophers descended on the university there. The result was the kernel of German Romanticism, Andrea Wulf tells me. She has written a stunning group biography on the German romantics, their ideas and their personal lives. In this episode, we discuss the importance of German Romanticism, its idea of the self and its new ways of relating to nature, a historical turning point that is still colouring our current debates and our thinking about ourselves, and the climate crisis.

Do we need a New Enlightenment to cut through a new obscurantism? Or is the Enlightenment part of a bad past of racism, slavery, and exploitation? In many ways, the ideas of the Enlightenment are tarnished by their historical association with historical injustices, dictatorships and utopian experiments that left a bloody trace throughout history, an inhuman rationalism more akin to capitalist excess than to liberté-égalité-fraternité. But this is only one face of Enlightenment thinking, an invention of later historians. Behind this sanitised facade lies a landscape of hair-raising debates, doubts and discussions that have lost nothing of their power to astonish and to question the status quo and the lies societies like to tell themselves.

Seit Ikarus zu nahe an der Sonne flog, spricht die gemeinsame Geschichte von Menschen und Maschinen von Ängsten und Hoffnungen, von menschlichem Ehrgeiz. Von Leonardos Entwürfen über die Industrialisierung, den Ersten Weltkrieg und die Atombombe hat diese Beziehung viele Kapitel gehabt. Menschen haben sich in Maschinen wiedererkannt, haben ihre Fähigkeiten und ihre Intelligenz imitiert, haben vor ihnen Angst gehabt und sich parallel zu ihnen entwickelt. Mit dem Aufstieg der künstlichen Intelligenz — einer Maschine, die selbst lernt — könnte dieses Gleichgewicht kippen. Sind Menschen nur Prototypen einer komplexeren Maschinen-Intelligenz?

Since Icarus flew too close to the sun, the common story of humans and their machines tells of hopes, fears and ambitions. From Leonardo to industrialisation, the First World War and the nuclear threat, this relationship has had many chapters. People have built machines to imitate their faculties and have recognised themselves in them and developed in parallel with them. With the rise of artificial intelligence — machines that can learn by themselves — the traditional balance could be upset. Are human beings merely carbon-based prototypes of a more complex machine intelligence?

When the Roman empire was at its zenith it was the largest empire ever seen, an unchallengeable power with mighty legions, an efficient administration, unparalleled economic power and a glittering metropolis at its centre. The fact that it took just a few generations to unravel was intimately connected not only to corruption and decadence, but also to climate change and imported epidemics sweeping the empire, argues Kyle Harper, author of the bestselling: The Fall of Rome. I am excited to speak to Kyle about the many reasons of the Fall of Rome, and the lessons its epic collapse might hold for our future.

Around 1450, the greatest empires and the greatest markets of the world were China, India and the Ottoman empire, while also cultures like the Khmer in Cambodia and the Aztecs in Mesoamerica projected great power and achievements. Europe was a collection of small countries in a constant state of war, a great step back from the civilisation of the Roman empire. 300 years later Europe ruled the world. How was that possible, and how important were viruses and gunpowder, religion and geography?

Um 1450 waren die größten und zivilisiertesten Mächte und Märkte in China und Indien, das osmanische Reich, auch Kulturen wie die Khmer in Kambodscha und die Azteken in Mittelamerika projizierten Macht. Europa bestand aus Kleinreichen, die dauernd im Krieg miteinander lagen und die seit dem römischen Reich einen Rückschritt erlebt hatten. Trotzdem war es das kleine, provinzielle Europa, das 300 Jahre später die Welt regierte. Wie konnte es dazu kommen? Wie wichtig waren dabei Viren und Kanonen, Religion und Geographie?