Danube Institute Podcast

We asked Jacques Sapir, a French economist and expert on Russia at the School of Economic Warfare in Paris and at the Moscow School of Economics, about the state of the Russian war economy.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

Peter Caddle, a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute and former Brussels reporter, discusses the alarming state of Europe's tech landscape. He identifies a lack of coherent strategy in EU tech policy, leading to confusion and missed opportunities. Caddle highlights the negative impacts of the AI Act on small innovators and explains why European startups are flocking to the U.S. for better prospects. He critiques Europe’s regulatory approach compared to China's, emphasizing that without major reforms, Europe risks falling behind in the global tech race.

Just as Boomers like Steve Jobs once remade America in their own liberal image. Just as the Millennials gave us Woke and Hustle Culture: what happens when the Zoomers get into the saddle?This month on View from the Danube, we’re looking at youthquakes.In Britain, a younger set seems to be throwing off the old softly-softly of their political culture, calling out migrant crime and brazenly leading the charge towards mass deportations.Meanwhile, in America, Tucker Carlson has interviewed Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has a massive online audience who call themselves Groypers. But for years, the mainstream right has kept him out of the conversation, because of his bizarre shock jock behaviour, Holocaust denial, and attacks on, quote-unquote, “world Jewry.”The interview, which was notoriously soft, has caused a ruckus inside the MAGA tent. Tucker says he merely wants to hear the arguments.But others ask : is there any future for the American right if it lets the likes of Fuentes in? Even on the other side - the election of 34 year old Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor - a man who wants government-run grocery stores and regularly quotes Karl Marx — suggests that the youth are breaking about as far left as they ever have. Take all this foment and fast forward fifteen years — can the old mode of liberal democracy even hold it together in the face of what’s pushing it from underneath?The groypers, Mamdani and the future: this time on View From The Danube.

We talked to Hall Gardner, Professor Emeritus in the Department of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris, about the analysis of the three major geopolitical conflicts in the world.Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

Professor Jacques Sapir is a leading expert on the Russian economy, and part of the Institute of Economic War in Paris. In this wide-ranging historical discussion with the Danube Institute's resident economist, Philip Pilkington, he talks through the long view on Russia's strengths and vulnerabilities. From Stalin doing the impossible to repel the German invasion, to the possibility that collapse could have been avoided in the late '80s, through the desolate '90s, into the dynamics of the fortress economy that Vladimir Putin has developed, post-2014.

In 1969, Willie Brandt became Chancellor of the German Federal Republic. A hulking man of immense charisma, he broke the stronghold of Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democrats, and with it, set his country on a new path with regards to the Eastern Bloc. Brandt judged the old policy, Adenauer’s staunch anti-Communist Hallstein Doctrine, to have failed. In collaboration with his aide, Egon Bahr, he reset relations, through something called "Wandel durch Annäherung": Change through rapprochement. Eventually, this would come to be known as Ostpolitik. Later still, it would seep into broader Western culture as 1970s Detente, and lead to the signing of the historic Helsinki accords. Brandt’s policy was chiefly political, but it was twinned with a similar one from the Vatican, which also became known as Ostpolitik. In Rome, first Pope John XXIII, then Pope Paul VI decided that they would work with the Warsaw Pact authorities, to preserve what little the Church still had. The Vatican had three goals:  • to reopen seminaries and churches where possible; • to secure recognition for bishops; • and, to allow limited Church activity under official regimes.In return, the Holy See would tone down public condemnation of Communism. But much as with the elections of Thatcher and Reagan, in the late 70s, with the advent of Pope John Paul II, everything changed. The Polish Pope used funds from Reagan to build up the underground church, and with it, the Solidarity movement in his home country. Eleven years later, Solidarity and the Church were to prove decisive in the overthrow of the Polish dictatorship, and the wider fall of the Iron Curtain. You might say both strategies played their part. The first establishing a base. The second, leveraging it.  But which was better? Or indeed, more moral? To gain influence with –  or to resist totalitarianism?It’s the horns of the dilemma the Church still faces, with regards to the world’s surviving Communist monolith – China. Since 2018, a secret agreement between Pope Francis and the CCP has governed the election of Chinese Bishops. Rome can veto - but it cannot propose. In return? Well, not much. The Church must still display pictures of Xi Jinping, pictures of Christ are deprecated, and young Catholics are barred from attending until their 18th birthday. Father Mario Portella has been watching this new Concordat play out. He’s a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. He’s also former Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence and Priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.In a new piece for the Hungarian Conservative magazine, he argues that, when it comes to Xi Jingping, it is better to resist than to play along. This week, he joins Gavin Haynes on Danube Politics, to make his case.

We talked to Márton Ugrósdy, Deputy State Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister's Political Director, about the political significance of Viktor Orbán's White House visit.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

In this engaging discussion, David Campanale, a British social democrat and former journalist, shares his thrilling tales of smuggling aid into Romania before the fall of communism. Jolme Nemet, a Transylvanian Lutheran activist, reveals how churches served as bastions of anti-communist resistance. They delve into the birth of the Balvanyós Summer University, a vibrant blend of culture, faith, and politics that started in 1990. Listeners are treated to insights on the transformative impact of Tusványos on Hungarian national identity and community.

We asked the former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore about everything you always wanted to know about the geopolitics of the Pacific, but were afraid to ask.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

We asked Curtis Yarvin, political philosopher, entrepreneur, computerscientist, and CEO of Urban Tiger about the ideological causes and politicalconsequences of Charlie Kirk's assassination.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers,experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.