BlomCast
The BlomCast looks at turning points in history, which have always fascinated me. My name is Philipp Blom, I am a historian and broadcaster and author of many books about the Enlightenment, the story of modernity and climate history. The climate catastrophe places us at the greatest historical turning point hin human history. What, if anything, can we learn from moments in the past in which a model of life seemed to change, or had to change, in which whole societies were transformed?
If you want to support my work:
https://buymeacoffee.com/blomcast
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2104173/support
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOowcMCQ_oJtdJeZu3oK6og/join
- Update frequency
- every 11 days
- Average duration
- 49 minutes
- Episodes
- 63
- Years Active
- 2022 - 2025
[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 …
[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 Californ…
[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 e…
[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 …
[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 Revolut…
[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 …
[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 forderte…
[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…
[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 …
[43] Julian Baggini — What happened to the Enlightenment?
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 po…
[42] Misha Glenny — Highways and Byways of History
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 …
[41] Luuk van Middelaar — Can Europe do Power?
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 …
[40] Julia Fischer — Wann wurden Primaten zu Menschen?
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,…
[39] Ulrich Schmid — von der Oktoberrevolution in die Gegenwart
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 Revo…
[38] Bas van Bavel — How Markets Captured Societies
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 gro…
[37] Padraic Scanian — What the Irish Potato Famine Tells us About Markets and Merit
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 Ame…
[36] Jörg Baberowski — Macht und Herrschaft in Russland und Europa
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 Ko…
[35] Trevor Jackson — Capitalism and the Impunity of the Elites
Trevor 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 …
[34] Kwame Anthony Appiah — On Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism
In 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 …
[33] Sunil Amrith — The Burning Earth
The 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. T…