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BlomCast

Philipp Blom

66 episodes

1 week ago

Few people have shaped the public perception and debate about with as much eloquence and precision as Philippe Sands, who combines a distinguished career as a human rights lawyer with writing a series of books on themes such as justice, memory, and personal and family history. During the discussion series MQ Gespräche a the Museumsquartier in Vienna I spoke to Philippe about his new book 38 Londes Street, Nazi War Criminals and the Pinochet dictatorship, and about the arch of history that spa...

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Society & Culture

Social Sciences

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Few people have shaped the public perception and debate about with as much eloquence and precision as Philippe Sands, who combines a distinguished career as a human rights lawyer with writing a series of books on themes such as justice, memory, and personal and family history. During the discussion series MQ Gespräche a the Museumsquartier in Vienna I spoke to Philippe about his new book 38 Londes Street, Nazi War Criminals and the Pinochet dictatorship, and about the arch of history that spa...

Show more...

Society & Culture

Social Sciences

Episodes (20/66)

BlomCast

[55] Philippe Sands — Impunity: International Justice in an Age of Lawlessness

Few people have shaped the public perception and debate about with as much eloquence and precision as Philippe Sands, who combines a distinguished career as a human rights lawyer with writing a series of books on themes such as justice, memory, and personal and family history. During the discussion series MQ Gespräche a the Museumsquartier in Vienna I spoke to Philippe about his new book 38 Londes Street, Nazi War Criminals and the Pinochet dictatorship, and about the arch of history that spa...

1 week ago

1 hour 24 minutes

BlomCast

[54] Sarah Newman — Did We Learn Culture from Animals?

Sarah Newman is a zooarcheologist, specialising in animal remains and what they tell about the interaction between humans and animals in the distant past. Her research projects took her to investigate the impact of humans on the landscape and on natural systems among the ancient Mayans and the inhabitants of ancient Jordan. Working on ancient beaver dams and early wooden buildings in which humans had clearly reused tree trunks felled by beavers, she had a fascinating idea: what if early human...

1 month ago

1 hour 2 minutes

BlomCast

[53] Colombe Cahen-Salvador — A New Age of Democracy?

Colombe Cahen-Salvador is driven by the vision to create a turning point in the near future: to reform not only the European Union to make it stronger, more federal, and above all more democratic, but to create a global political movement. Oh, and she is also standing to become secretary general of the United Nations. This is not megalomania, but tactic, she explains. It is not about being elected, but about making a statement about the democratisation of an institution that is no longer fit ...

1 month ago

58 minutes

BlomCast

[52] Karl Schlögel — Der Historiker und die Annexion

Karl Schlögel, Träger des Friedenspreises des deutschen Buchhandels 2025, ist einer der ganz wichtigen historischen Autoren in Europa. Er hat sein Lebenswerk der intellektuellen Geschichte Russlands gewidmet, eine Geschichte, die er immer wieder als eine Topografie beschreibt, die sich in großen Städten lesen lässt. Sein Wendepunkt ist die Annexion der Krim 2014, ein Moment, in dem sich seine eigene, tiefe Beziehung zu Russland radikal änderte. Wir sprechen über die kulturelle Geographie Russ...

1 month ago

1 hour

BlomCast

[51] Ussama Makdisi — Creating the Modern Middle East: The Peace Conference of 1919

Present political structures, powers, and peoples are better understood through their history. Ussama Makdisi, a historian of the Middle East and distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent much of his research on the formation of the modern Middle East out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire. He now writes on the peace conference of 1919 and its effects on the lands of the collapsing Ottoman empire, including the often-ignored fact finding mission that asked...

2 months ago

1 hour

BlomCast

[50] Beatrice de Graaf – 1815 and the Security State

Beatrice de Graaf is fascinated by the tensions between terror and statehood and she asks what it really takes to maintain vibrant democracies in a neo-imperial world. Her turning point lies in the early 19th century. When Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, the allies drew up a new political order in Europe. Its architecture not only shaped the patterns of alliances of Western powers and Russia engaged in a series of more or less difficult dances while leaving the Russian part...

2 months ago

1 hour

BlomCast

[49] Luke Kemp — Elites and the Collapse of Empires

Luke Kemp works at the Center for the study of existential risk at Cambridge University, the kind of place that works out how close humanity is to killing itself and what the strategies might be for avoiding this. In his new book, Goliath’s Curse — Pst and Future of Societal Collapse, he makes a brilliant case for the role of elites in hastening the end of empire. But how did empires and even states come about? Are they a natural state of human development? Not so, says Luke, and points to th...

2 months ago

1 hour 10 minutes

BlomCast

[48] David Bell — Charismatic Leaders and Revolutions

David Bell is Professor for the Era of North American Revolutions at Princeton University. He has written a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, and much of his research is focussed on the French Revolution, the history of the Enlightenment, and on the importance of charisma in political leadership. In our conversation we discuss what makes a charismatic leader and why some historical moments tilt the balance of power towards charismatic leaders, past and present. How much is the Enlightenment le...

3 months ago

1 hour 12 minutes

BlomCast

[47] Tim Mackintosh-Smith: Being Arab Throughout History and Ibn Khaldoun

As a scholar of Arabic language and literature, Tim has made classic Arabic literature his life’s work, and has lived in Yemen until 2019. His special interest at the moment is the great scholar Ibn Khaldoun, who lived in the 14th century and who was one of the great thinkers about power, society, and, yes, being Arab, a concept linked to language more than to territory or ethnicity — or even religion. Ibn Khaldoun created an analytical lens through which societal dynamics and turning points ...

3 months ago

1 hour 10 minutes

BlomCast

[46] Gerd Schwerhoff — Die Bauernkriege, ein Wendepunkt?

Im frühen 16. Jahrhundert erhoben sich im süddeutschen Raum tausende von Bauern, Bergwerksknappen und Bürgern gegen ihre adeligen oder kirchlichen Herren. Sie stürmten Burgen und Klöster und forderten mehr Rechte, weniger Frondienste, weniger Steuern und die freie Ernennung von Priestern. Gerd Schwerhoff hat diese Welle von Rebellionen, durch die innerhalb von wenig mehr als einem Jahr 70.000 Menschen zu Tode kamen, untersucht und nacherzählt. War dies die erste Sozialrevolution Europas oder ...

3 months ago

1 hour 5 minutes

BlomCast

[45] Laura Spinney — The First Human Language and How We Think

Once more a dive into deep history, this time into the question how languages developed, and how it is possible to reconstruct the history and genesis of languages, and with them of abstract thinking and civilisation. Laura Spinney is a distinguished and bestselling science writer. In her new book Proto she looks at the world of languages before the indo-european and sino-tibetan language families that today represent the bulk of the 7000 or so languages still spoken today. But apart from the...

3 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes

BlomCast

[44] Ian Buruma — Where Did the West Begin?

Ian Buruma is a historian, biographer, memorialist and essayist between “East” and “West" whose insights and intellectual precision make him a joy to discuss with. In his recent biography of Spinoza he argues that the great Enlightenment philosopher has a message that is more urgent today than ever. The idea of a West, of a realm of rational rule and individual choice, of emancipation and liberty, began with these early Enlightenment thinkers as well as with Protestantism which eliminated the...

4 months ago

55 minutes

BlomCast

[43] Julian Baggini — What happened to the Enlightenment?

Send us a text Julian Baggini is one of the most insightful writers on philosophy in general and the Enlightenment in particular I know. We talk about the Enlightenment, and in how far it was the radical turning point as which it is often seen, or whether it does not mask great continuities under the guise of dramatic change. Has the Enlightenment released a vast liberating energy or was it just another mask of power? And does Western culture have a god-shaped hole at its heart. And how does ...

4 months ago

1 hour 1 minute

BlomCast

[42] Misha Glenny — Highways and Byways of History

Send us a text A historian and journalist, Misha Glenny has written about the history of the Balkans the wars in Yugoslavia, about cybercrime, and about international organised crime in “McMafia” which also became a TV series. In this free-ranging conversation we not only revisit his fascination with history and with accelerating change, but we also discuss what will be next for an international order at the brink of collapse. Support the show

4 months ago

47 minutes

BlomCast

[41] Luuk van Middelaar — Can Europe do Power?

Send us a text Luuk van Middelaar is head of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, as he points out an ironic name, because until very recently Brussels and geopolitics rarely occurred in the same sentence. But things have changed, and in a new world in which Russia is invading Ukraine and the USA are, as Luuk put it, “the sun leaving the solar system” Europe will have to find a completely new stance. This ist big history, and we’re right in it. But what could a good European future b...

4 months ago

53 minutes

BlomCast

[40] Julia Fischer — Wann wurden Primaten zu Menschen?

Send us a text In dieser Folge gehe ich zurück zum frühesten aller Wendepunkte der menschlichen Geschichte. Die Primatologin Julia Fischer studiert Paviane und besucht seit vielen Jahren dieselbe Gruppe von Tieren, um ihre Kommunikation und ihr Sozialverhalten besser zu verstehen. Obwohl andere Pavian-Arten brutal und hierarchisch sind, sind diese Tiere anders, sanfter, und haben flachere Hierarchien. Wie entstehen die Strukturen einer Primatengesellschaft? Sind die Unterschiede zwischen Ihne...

5 months ago

55 minutes

BlomCast

[39] Ulrich Schmid — von der Oktoberrevolution in die Gegenwart

Send us a text Ulrich Schmid ist Slawist und unterrichtet an der Universität Sankt Gallen. Sein Wendepunkt ist die Revolution 1917 und besonders die Rolle von Lenin dabei. Einmal mehr stellt sich die Frage, ob Revolutionen wirklich radikale Umbrüche sind, oder ob sie nicht auch viele Kontinuitäten kaschieren. Die Art der Machtausübung und das Verständnis davon, wie das Verhältnis zwischen Regierenden und Regierten funktioniert, ist jedenfalls bemerkenswert stabil geblieben, argumentiert Ulric...

5 months ago

1 hour 1 minute

BlomCast

[38] Bas van Bavel — How Markets Captured Societies

Send us a text The “Golden Age” during the seventeenth century was a period of unparalleled power, wealth, and splendour in the Netherlands. It was made possible by the maritime trade with Asia and the economic growth the East India Company brought to the country. But it carried the seed of its downfall. As the rich grew richer they not only speculated with tulips, but they increasingly bought themselves political power and became an oligarchy. Bas van Babel is an economic historian and resea...

5 months ago

54 minutes

BlomCast

[37] Padraic Scanian — What the Irish Potato Famine Tells us About Markets and Merit

Send us a text The 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 th...

5 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes

BlomCast

[36] Jörg Baberowski — Macht und Herrschaft in Russland und Europa

Send us a text Die 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 ei...

6 months ago

58 minutes