Journalists draft history? The public sphere, Habermas and the post-democratic society. Emmanuel Todd on the tasks ahead for advanced societies. History as a moral art that encounters the living past in an infinite conversation.
Omricon, fear and crowd psychology. Jay Bhattacharya and the catastrophic errors of public health. Grieving memories of Stuart Macintyre. Szymborska on what matters. Paul Kingsnorth on fear, tyranny and the vaccine wars. Elena Shvarts on both hopelessness and hope.
Robert Lowell on George Santayana. The silence of the doctors and the rule of public health. Virus gonna virus. Jordan B. Peterson on saying no to tyranny. The exposure of the RussiaGate and Steele dossier hoax. On prophecy. Bhagavad Gita and the sacrifice of the soul in the fire of the Gods.
The escapades of the American Imperial War Faction in the Black Sea. Corruption investigation in Victoria, political patronage, branch stacking, Red Shirts and political decay. Rene Girard on scapegoating. Tennyson’s temper of heroic hearts. Regenerated tradition.
Michael Anton, Machiavelli, and the way. David Starkey, rootedness and Chaucer. Dalai Lama. Jordan B. Peterson and self-transformation. Zbigniew Herbert and dreams.
Wallace Stevens. COVID zero fanatics. The Novel is dead. Saint Galgano. Louise Glück. How democracies die. Solzhenitsyn.
Vaclav Havel was a Czech writer and dissident who later became, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the President of his country. This episode continues the The Burning Archive podcast’s commemoration of his writing, ideas and the model of his way of living in truth remains meaningful to us today. This episode looks at the essays, “The Power of the Powerless” (1978), “Six Asides about Culture” (1984), and “Politics and Conscience” (1984), the memoir, To the Castle and Back, and Havel’s work for a better world after leaving the Czech Presidency in 2003.
This episode of The Burning Archive podcast explores how Havel’s writing, ideas and the model of his way of living in truth remains meaningful to us today. This episode sets out the main events of Havel’s life and the ideas of his political essays. It looks in depth at the “Letter to Gustav Husak” (1975), and its uncanny evocation of aspects of our lives today in a locked down world.
The fall of Kabul has raised questions for Australia about the reliability of its alliance with the United States of America. Will the fall of Kabul and the rise of Eurasia provoke the same questioning of foreign policy by Australia?
Things are very serious here in Australia. There is a mental health crisis. We have endured a state of emergency since March 2020. Normal rules of government decision making have not applied. We have pursued a medical utopia of COVID Zero at stunning cost. It is really something that should never happen again, and hopefully, at the right time in the right way by the right people, will be deeply investigated and reflected on.