The Burning Archive

What is a cradle of civilisation? A simple question, but quality world history gives us a more complex, but satisfying answer. There were many in different environments.

This episode will inform you about the well-known 'cradle' of civilisation in the fertile crescent of Western Asia, but also tell you about less honoured starting points for civilisation in East Asia and the Eurasian Steppe.

Join my free weekly newsletter for more quality writing on history, culture and our changing world at jeffrich.substack.com

Civilizations are back in 2024. There is talk of Western civilizations, the diverse civilizations of the multipolar world, and the upcoming release of the game Civilization 7. It is a great time to explore the real history of the many civilizations that have flourished and fallen in every environment around the world.

This 2nd episode of the Summer of Civilizations series explores new and old ideas of civilization. Is it the biggest and baddest idea in world history?

If you would like to explore world history and civilizations more, then visit ⁠courses.jeffrichwriter.com⁠ and join the upcoming world history explorers membership club.

Civilizations are back in 2024. There is talk of Western civilizations, the diverse civilizations of the multipolar world, and the upcoming release of the game Civilization 7. It is a great time to explore the real history of the many civilizations that have flourished and fallen in every environment around the world.

This introduction to the Summer of Civilizations series explores how the game Civilization 7 is a great way to become curious about world history.

If you would like to explore world history and civilizations more, then visit courses.jeffrichwriter.com and join the upcoming world history explorers membership club.

I review the highlights of the world in history that appeared on the Burning Archive podcast in 2023.

And I make a special announcement of the upcoming series on the podcast, linked to my upcoming online history courses. Yes, I will be releasing a special Summer of Civilisations series.

Weekly newsletter: jeffrich.substack.com

Online courses in history and writing: courses.jeffrichwriter.com

Sign up there for news on upcoming courses

Ridley Scott's movie Napoleon has sparked controversy? Is it great cinema yet terrible history? Jeff Rich gives his assessment of the movie, and points you to other classic movies about Napoleon made over the last 100 years. The podcast also shares some of the best recent history books on the intriguing character, myth and historical impact of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Read more of Jeff Rich's writing on mindful world history and cultures from all around the world at jeffrich.substack.com

My reflections on the death of US diplomat and grand strategist, Henry Kissinger at 100. Does his death toll the bell for US leadership of the world?

Read more at jeffrich.substack.com

Thanks to the Twisted Nixons, the Dead Kennedies, Thomas Fazi, Nina Byzantina, Thomas Fazi, Odd Arne Westad and Richard Nixon for material used in this program.

Marie Favereau shows how the Mongol Horde changed the world and world history in this special interview. It was not only the conquests of Genghis Khan, but his successors in the Horde, especially the Golden Horde. Their culture, skilful diplomacy and embrace of diversity were the real reasons the Mongol Horde changed the world. If you're interested in world history, then this podcast is for you! Marie Favereau shares her insights from her book, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World, the current exhibition at Musée d'Histoire de Nantes (Genghis Khan - how the Mongols changed the world), and her work with colleagues in Mongolia and Oxford on nomadic empires. Thanks to @chateaunantes44 and Musée d'Histoire de Nantes for opening video and music. Check out Marie Favereau's book The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World

It is all about the story. We are all experts in story, aren't we? And every day amidst this current world crisis, we are bombarded with narratives. Some of these "geopolitical" narratives are based on good history. Some on very poor history. But how do you spot the difference? How do you know big historical comparisons like "Pearl Harbour or "Munich 1938" are flawed, when you don't know the details of events? You can with the help of stories. You do not need to be an expert historian. You just need to pay attention to stories.

Find out more at theburningarchive.com

Previous episodes referred to during this episode are:

31. Seven Basic Plots vs 1001 Nights of Stories

114 & 115. Exploring World History with leading Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto

If a modest librarian had not pulled the sole manuscript of the Old English poem, Beowulf from the fire, we might never have had J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. You have probably heard of Beowulf, but never have read the poem. Introduce yourself to this legend saved from a burning archive on the Burning Archive podcast.

More details of all my content and free weekly newsletter are at theburningarchive.com

It covers the history of the Nobel Prize for Literature, some of my favourite winners and losers, and some controversies. I also cover in this episode the 2022 winner, French writer, Annie Ernaux.

This episode begins a mini-series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. There will be episodes in all in the lead-up to the announcement of the prize on 5 October.

• William Butler (W.B) Yeats 1923 100th anniversary (15 September)
• Patrick White 1973 50th anniversary (22 September)
• Olga Tokarczuk 2018 my favourite discovery of the alst decade (15 September)
• 2023 Winner announced on the evening of 5 October my time (6 October)

The Israel-Gaza Crisis, as the United Nations describes the situation, has shocked the world, and confronted us with the difficulties of living in a time of war. How can we respond to these shocking events mindfully, given the torrents of emotion coursing around the world? How can we use history not to nurse grievance, but to nurture empathy, and so to restore peace? I address these questions through many viewpoints in this show - the debates this week at the United Nations Security Council, the reflections of historian Simon Schama, the insights of a new history of World War II, and the grief and wisdom of two great woman poets.

Read more of my writing and join my free weekly newsletter, Fragments of the Burning Archive at jeffrich.substack.com.

Are you looking for a new, readable, intriguing history book to read? I introduce you to a shortlist of 6 top history books from 2023. All 6 books come from the shortlist for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize, Britain and the UK's most prestigious history book prize.

I also invite you to help me shape my idea for an online history reading club, where you can learn and read with me. Would you like to see the world more clearly with some quality world history. Please discuss.

You can follow me at jeffrich.substack.com and theburningarchive.com

The 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature is announced. Relive world literature's night of nights with this edited live reaction to the announcement. It covers all the predictions, the actual announcement, and an emotional introduction to why you might want to read the works of this year's winner. Whether you do not know who won, or do not know anything about who won, this podcast will offer you some insights, and even some inspiration.

Follow my free and exclusive writing at jeffrich.substack.com and check all my work at theburningarchive.com.

Read my latest article on the winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature, Patrick White, Australia’s aborted cultural decolonisation.

Subscribe on Spotify for regular bonus content.

Why read Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature? Find out in this fourth episode of my series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. It discusses the life of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate, the novelist Olga Tokarczuk. I give you 10 reasons to read one of the most celebrated Nobel winners of recent years. I give a guide to her works: The Books of Jacob (the best historical fiction of this century), Flights and Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead. And you will hear Tokarczuk speak in her own voice about the issues of importance to this Polish woman writer.

Read more at www.theburningarchive.com

And become a paid supporter of The Burning Archive by subscribing at Spotify or at patreon.com to get exclusive bonus content.

Become an Angel of History, learn with me about the history and culture of the multipolar world, and receive a bonus episode going into depth on Tokarczuk's great novel of historical fiction, The Books of Jacob.

Why read Patrick White, Winner of 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature? Find out in this third episode of my series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. It discusses the life and works of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate, the novelist Patrick White, the only Australian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. You will hear White react to the news of the prize in his own voice, and learn how this great writer was an uneasy exile at home, in more ways than one.

Read more at www.theburningarchive.com

And become a paid supporter of The Burning Archive by subscribing at Spotify or at patreon.com to get exclusive bonus content.

Become an Angel of History, learn with me about the history and culture of the multipolar world, and receive the first bonus episode on Patrick White and Australian cultural nationalism on 25 September.

Why should you read W.B. Yeats, Winner of 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature? Find out in this second of my series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. It discusses the life and works of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate, William Butler (W.B.) Yeats, including a rare recording of Yeats in his own voice and the surprising story of his poem, The Second Coming. Find out about this intriguing poet, spiritualist and politician whose verse still speaks to us today.

Read more at www.theburningarchive.com

What is the history behind the rise and fall of the professions? How is their story linked to the rise of management especially since the 1970s? And how does it all relate to what happens in the modern university?

Find out answers to all these questions in this in-depth interview with historian Dr Hannah Forsyth, author of Virtue Capitalists: the rise and fall of the professional class in the Anglophone world c.1870-2008  (2023).

For more ways to see the world more clearly with some quality history, subscribe to my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com, and check all my content at theburningarchive.com

The Burning Archive brings you the second in a special two-part interview with the esteemed world historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

Is the world changing in ways not seen for 100 years? How can America's Hispanic past and present inform how it responds to this changing world of more equally distributed power? And what makes explorers like Magellan, Columbus and Captain James Cook such intriguing figures in world history?

In this second episode we discuss 1. Hispanic America in the Multipolar World - How has America's Hispanic History shaped its people and culture, and how can it be a basis to come to terms with a changing balance of power in the world 2. Exploration, Cultural Exchange and the Past - What fascinates people about the history of exploration, and how can it contribute to cross-cultural understanding and a sense of the past?

⁠Felipe Fernández-Armesto⁠'s latest book is Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan (Bloomsbury, 2022). He has written some of the best history books, including these discussed in the podcast:

• Civilizations (Macmillan, 2000) or Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (Free Press, 2001)

• Food: A History (Macmillan, 2001) or Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (Free Press, 2002)
• The Americas: A Hemispheric History (Modern Library, 2003) or The Americas: A History of A Hemisphere (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)
• Ideas That Changed the World (Dorling Kindersley, 2003)
• Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (W. W. Norton, 2006; Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006; Random House, 2007)
• The World: A Brief History (Pearson, 2007)
• 1492. The Year the World Began (HarperOne, 2009; Bloomsbury, 2010)
• Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Co., 2014)
• A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change–and the Limits of Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2015)
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It (Oneworld, 2019)

Keywords: history, world history, best history books, best historians, civilization, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, agricultural revolution, culture, social change, environment, climate change, mental health.

Author and Podcast Website: www.theburningarchive.com

Substack: jeffrich.substack.com X: @ArchiveBurning

YouTube: @theburningarchive

Check out my online course on Mindful History at https://multipolar-mastery.getlearnworlds.com/home Subscribe now and see the world more clearly with some quality world history!

The Burning Archive brings you a special two-part interview with the esteemed world historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

Did you know the first case of animal farming was the humble snail? How does the world's leading historian of the world see the accelerating pace of change today affecting identity and mental health?

In this first episode we discuss 1. World History, Food, Environment and Civilizations - how no civilization is better than another, and all civilizations adapt the environment to human needs - sometimes disastrously 2. Ideas, Culture and Change in World History - how human imagination and ideas drive history, and why do things change so much?

Felipe Fernández-Armesto's latest book is Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan (Bloomsbury, 2022). He has written some of the best history books, including these discussed in the podcast:

• Civilizations (Macmillan, 2000) or Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (Free Press, 2001)

• Food: A History (Macmillan, 2001) or Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (Free Press, 2002)
• The Americas: A Hemispheric History (Modern Library, 2003) or The Americas: A History of A Hemisphere (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)
• Ideas That Changed the World (Dorling Kindersley, 2003)
• Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (W. W. Norton, 2006; Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006; Random House, 2007)
• The World: A Brief History (Pearson, 2007)
• 1492. The Year the World Began (HarperOne, 2009; Bloomsbury, 2010)
• Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Co., 2014)
• A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change–and the Limits of Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2015)
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It (Oneworld, 2019)

Keywords: history, world history, best history books, best historians, civilization, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, agricultural revolution, culture, social change, environment, climate change, mental health.

Author and Podcast Website: www.theburningarchive.com

Substack: jeffrich.substack.com X: @ArchiveBurning

YouTube: @theburningarchive

Subscribe now and see the world more clearly with some quality world history!

Change is part of life and central to history. But has the pace of change accelerated over the last 50 years beyond our capacity to cope? Find out with Jeff Rich on the Burning Archive, who shares insights from historian, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

Why can't we just all get along? Is all history class struggle, or a fight between the people and the elites? Or, as Peter Turchin suggests, do elites fight hardest against other elites? And how can Stockholm show us a better way to live together?

Quote of the show: "Identity is an invitation to dialogue, not a prison." (Vaclav Havel)

We feel that society is changing in dramatic ways. But what are the four big social changes that are driving how we make sense of society. Find out on the Burning Archive Podcast.

www.theburningarchive.com

There are mass protests in France. Tensions everywhere. Peter Turchin has published End Times- his theory of social collapse. Is it that bad? And what are Emmanuel Todd's seven top social changes that define the conflicts of modern advanced societies?

The NATO Summit in Vilnius disappointed Volodomyr Zelenszky and Ukraine. He might be singing, Is that all there is to an alliance? Find out what it means for NATO, for the war in Ukraine, and risks of war with China in the Indo-Pacific. Is it the beginning of the end game? Or is it the old game of the End and the Beginning?

Atlantic Romantics, Part II gives you a rapid fire history of the Altlantic, structured around seven key dates. These dates provide glimpses into the multipolar history of the Atlantic Ocean, and the chameleon-like character of the Atlantic idea, institutions, alliance, cultures and civilizations. This podcast will take you in less than an hour from late Bronze Age Portugal to the July 11-12 NATO Summit in Vilnius.

Three big regional ideas dominate the world: the Indo-Pacific, Eurasia, and the Atlantic. What is the Atlantic? Is it an ocean? An alliance? An idea? Is it Western civilization? Is it a special relationship between the USA and Britain? Could the NATO alliance be about to break up? Find out the answers and some surprising fun facts about the Atlantic on this podcast. Imagine the world differently with a little bit of history.

Find more details on world history reimagined and the Burning Archive at jeffrich.substack.com

Credit: The Models, Atlantic Romantic (1981) via YouTube

There are not two continents of Europe and Asia. There is one physical continent of Eurasia. Ideas of Europe and Asia, and their place in world history have formed two continents from one. And ideas of Eurasia in Russia and in the West threaten war between the Eurasian and Atlantic worlds. But it does not need to be so. Halford Mackinder has a lot to answer for, including Aleksander Dugin.

Join my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com for more details on each show.

There are not two continents of Europe and Asia. There is one physical continent of Eurasia, and the countries of Eurasia are becoming more important, more wealthy and more assertive in world politics. Find out why, and how powerful new international institutions, infrastructure projects and foreign policies are strengthening this region, including its Heartland, Russia, compared to the Atlantic powers.

Time Stamps

0:00-0:40 Introduction

0:40-2:45 What is Eurasia?

2:45-10:10 Eurasian Geography in History

10:10-13:30 Books on Eurasia

13:30-20:00 Eurasian Institutions

20:00-31:00 Russian and Western Foreign Policy Ideas on Eurasia

31:00-34:00 Latest Writing on World Crisis

I wrote recently that the Free and Open Indo Pacific is like the Holy Roman Empire. It is not free, not open, and not even the Indo-Pacific. Find out why on this intriguing podcast that covers

- my article on Australia, India and the Indo-Pacific, "Australia, Little Country Lost"

- some real history you can read to get a better understanding of the history of the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, including 4 history book recommendations?

- some surprising revelations and legacies of the German author of the original Indo-Pacific strategy, Karl Haushofer.

And happy Oceans Day for June 8, everyone.

Details of all the books and texts referred to in the show are available by subscribing to my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com.

You can also listen or watch this podcast at my YouTube channel, (please like, share and subscribe) and follow me on Twitter.

Some leaders say the world is in a crisis it has not seen in 100 years. Adam Tooze (historian) says the world is in a polycrisis, and that we all struggle to cope with the shock of the many. Some cynics might say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Who is right? Or are they all right? How do we make sense of the cascading crises of war, diplomacy, pandemic, politics, economy, society, environment and culture that we have all experienced in recent years?

On this podcast , I cover

- what is true or false about the claims that we are seeing changes we have not seen for 100 years and are in a polycrisis?

- how does today's crisis compare to the world crisis of 1910-1920, when the world slept walk to World War One? and

- in the fragment of the Burning Archive, who is afraid of what Virginia Woolf said about how the world changed in 1910?

You can find more details in my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com.

When Indian Prime Minister. Narendra Modi came to Sydney in 2023 he charmed the crowd so much that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared him to be "The Boss". His charisma came with India's soft power, based in its millenia of cultural traditions of responsible statecraft. And it came with a punch, a strong demand that it's time to reform the United Nations Security Council.

In this episode I discuss,

- what Narendra Modi said in his key speeches in Hiroshima, Port Moresby and Sydney that show India to be the voice of the Global South, demanding changes to the UN Security Council

- what history tells us about why India does not already have permanent membership of the UN Security Council

- a book recommendation and ancient Indian text that help you understand both the American way of governing the world, and the better Indian way of governing the world.

The episode includes clips of talks by Anthony Albanese and Indian External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar.

You can learn more about history, culture and statecraft in the multipolar world by subscribing to my free weekly newsletter, jeffrich.substack.com

Hard truth, bitter lesson: Governments around the world often fail people with mental illness. Many grand plans for reform or noble visions of liberation crash to earth. Why? On this podcast,

• I show the connection of mental illness to problems in democracy and the great world crisis today
• I share my reflections on government failure in mental health during my 33 years as a government official, including the failure of the Victorian Royal Commission on Mental Health, and
• I share fragments of the Burning Archive from Roger Scruton and Vaclav Havel that urge kinder, gentler, more modest aims to "reform" mental health. 

Let me know what you think. Mental health matters for us all, and more grounded, compassionate and understanding policies by governments could lead to better care for many of us.

You can also participate in my listener competition to set the agenda for The Burning Archive.

Tell me by 30 June 2023,

• what is your favourite episode from the backlist of the Burning Archive, and why?
• what fragment of the Burning Archive, what treasure from the heritage of the multipolar world, would you like me to do a podcast on?

Leave your comments on my jeffrich.substack.com, my YouTube channel community page, on Twitter or as a voice message on Spotify.

This special 100th episode of the Burning Archive celebrates the podcast that promises the past is not past, and reassures that 'what thou lovest well will not be reft from thee'. In this podcast:

• I review 25 months of podcasts in 20 minutes and share my proudest moments,
• I explain how my podcast was born and grew amidst overlapping world crises, and
• I invite you, dear listener, to participate in a listener game to set the agenda for The Burning Archive.

Tell me by 30 June 2023,

• what is your favourite episode from the backlist of the Burning Archive, and why?
• what fragment of the Burning Archive, what treasure from the heritage of the multipolar world, would you like me to do a podcast on?

Then, stay tuned for what I do next, and how you can be involved.

Leave your comments on my jeffrich.substack.com, my YouTube channel community page, on Twitter or as a voice message on Spotify.

The last three years of the pandemic have strained the mental health of all and tested the mental health of our democracies, perhaps beyond breaking point. How do we make sense of of the shared emotional experience of the pandemic, and what does it mean for the health of democracy. How can the history of emotions help us understand the experience better than 'collective psychosis', 'totalitarianism' or 'misinformation.' Listen to this rare, sober insight of a historian and former government official, who worked on the pandemic response. I reflect on the meaning of the pandemic for our minds, our hearts and our lives after pandemic democracy.

You can get more details of the material discussed on the show, and other glimpses of the history and culture of the mulitoplar world, by subscribing to my free weekly newsletter at jeffirch.substack.com.

You can buy my book, From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2022 via Amazon, Booktopia, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and other online retailers.

What is the relationship between madness, mental illness and the clash of civilizations today?

The metaphor of a world gone mad is fitting for a world crisis, which affects society, culture, politics and competing civilizations. It is a charge some world leaders make about the West, and some intellectuals use to criticise the West as a decadent culture. But history shows that sometimes big historical turning points can change our ideas of madness or mental illness itself. Big changes in the world impact our inner mental world too.

In this episode I discuss:

- Michel Foucault, History of Madness (1961), abridged as Madness and Civilization (1965), and its profound legacy for politics and history today

- the outline of Foucault's history of madness and how big historical turning points can change our ideas of madness or mental illness itself

- my reflections on whether changes of the last 60 years are leading to another big shift in our ideas about madness or mental illness and its relationship to culture, civilization and political order.

Get more details on this podcast by subscribing to my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com where you can also support by content and writing with an upgraded subscription.

Please also buy my book, From the Burning Archive that includes essays on madness, mental illness, history and Foucault.

Is French President Macron serious about bringing justice to France and independence to Europe? And what is the surprising link between Macron, European philosophy and the Burning Archive?

On this episode I discuss:

- President Emmanuel Macron's major speeches on reconciling social conflict, pension reforms, democracy and European independence or 'sovereign autonomy';

- whether French-US relations since World War II and Macron's track record of speeches on European independence suggest France is serious about taking Europe on an independent path in the multipolar world; and

- the surprising connection between Macron's philosophical master and the Burning Archive.

You can discover more details on these topics, and other glimpses of culture and history in the multipolar world, by subscribing to my free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel @theburningarchive.

And you can my latest book, From the Burning Archive via Amazon and other online retailers.

Thanks for listening. And remember 'What thou lovest well will not be reft from thee.' (Ezra Pound, Cantos LXXXI)

Will mass protests in Paris overthrow President Macron? How did a rule change for pensioners imperil the French Fifth Republic?

Emmanuel Macron raised the minimum retirement age in France from 62 to 64. He wanted to control costs and make the French economy more competitive. But he did not have enough support in the French National Assembly to vote it into law. So he used a special constitutional power to make an emergency decree that by-passed lawmakers. This turned a campaign of opposition by unions and others into wild mass protests, with up to one million on the streets. Fires were lit. Police and protestors clashed violently. Is this a people’s revolt, or even a revolution for democracy? How does it compare to largely peaceful protests in America, Iran, Georgia, Israel, and across the world? Is this a Tricoleur Revolution?

In this episode, you will learn: - an overview of the French revolt on pensions reforms

- why have changes to pension rules led to a political crisis in France

- lessons from history on the revolutionary crowd and people power

- reflections from Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, and Simon Schama, Citizens, on the links between protest, revolution and violence

Full details about the material referred to during this show can be obtained from my free weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to at jeffrich.substack.com. #history #geopolitics #politics #Macron

Countries around the world are ditching the US dollar, and reducing their reliance on $USD in trade and foreign exchange reserves. China, Russia, Brazil, India, ASEAN and African nations have all made major announcements that have shocked American elites. Could these decisions spell doom for the US dollar? Is its status as the world's No. 1 reserve currency under threat? Stay calm in the crisis, and, on this episode, discover :

- how decisions in 2023 by BRICS and other nations to reduce reliance on the US dollar are different to previous crises for the dollar

- some lessons of history (and John Maynard Keynes) related to global reserve currencies and how World Wars 1 and 2 set up US dollar primacy

- a fragment from the Burning Archive, Keynes' rejected proposal for a multipolar currency system, that was rejected by the USA in 1944

Full details about the material referred to during this show can be obtained from my free weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to at jeffrich.substack.com.

Bank collapses in America and Europe may be a sign of financial and political crises to come. Or they may just be the result of a bank run by idiots. Will the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse Bank lead to a replay of the 2008 financial crisis? Will our leaders learn the lessons of history from the series of financial crises since 1998? Will they stay calm in the crisis, or will bad money spread like a contagion into failing democracies?

This episode discusses:

- the significance of the recent bank collapses in Europe and America, and what exactly happened?

- the lessons of history for how governments respond to financial crises and how they spread into political crises

- the best historian to follow if you want to understand financial crises and their links to the crisis of the multipolar world, Adam Tooze

Full details about the material referred to during this show can be obtained from my free weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to at jeffrich.substack.com.

How healthy is Western democracy? And what can the West, especially America, learn from the feedback the world is giving to the West about the democracy it exports to the world and the democracy it runs at home. This week, leaders from China, Mexico, Zambia and Western countries have all raised concerns about the state of democracy in the West. Should we have a conversation about it? This episode discusses:

- a pulse test of Western democracy looking at events in Australia, France and the USA, and a survey of satisfaction with democracy in 17 Western countries

- the Chinese Foreign Ministry paper, "The State of Democracy in America: 2022"

- the Chinese political thinker, Meng Zi (or Mencius), and how his ideas inform both Chinese and Western style democracy

Full details about the material referred to during this show can be obtained from my free weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to at jeffrich.substack.com.

There is controversy about the health of democracy in India. Opposition politician, Rahul Gandhi claimed 'democracy is dead in India. PM Narendra Modi replied, India is the 'Mother of Democracy'. Who is right? What does it tell us about the emerging multipolar world? This episode discusses:

- the controversy about the health of democracy in India today and how it reflects tensions about the rise of India

- the history behind the claim that India is the Mother of Democracy, contrary to most Western myths

- the Arthshastra (or 'Statecraft', c 300 BCE to 300 CE) that expresses the democratic ethos of ancient Indian political thought and is this episode's fragment from the 'Burning Archive', the cultural heritage of the multipolar world.

Full details about the material referred to during this show can be obtained from my free weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to at jeffrich.substack.com.

Has Democracy died? In India? In the West? Did it die when Donald Trump was elected? These questions have tormented many people in liberal democracies over the last ten years. They have also been hotly debated in India  after comments by Rahul Gandhi that 'democracy is dead' in India.

This episode of the Burning Archive was going to discuss that debate in India and the idea that India is historically the 'Mother of Democracy'. But I had technical problems with my recording. So, I have brought you instead an AI reading of my 2016 essay, 'Democracy and its Discontents'. This piece discusses the surprise election of Donald Trump and the discontent with democracy that it exposed.

The episode on India as the Mother of Democracy will appear next week. You can also subscribe to my free newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com. There are some notes on the history of democracy and statecraft in India in this week's newsletter.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://theburningarchive.com/2016/11/15/democracys-discontents/

If the West is fighting a war for democracy versus autocracy in Ukraine, as Jo Biden says, and if, as many experts think, Russia is slowly winning the war in Ukraine, then does that mean democracy is losing the war in Ukraine? Has the USA gambled with Western Democracy by provoking a war in Ukraine?

It has been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the Burning Archive has been covering the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war ever since. In this special episode marking the anniversary, Jeff Rich discusses:

• his personal reaction to the war and the mainstream consensus on the war 
• views of leading expert on democracy, John Keane, on whether this is a war between democracy and autocracy, and 
• why he chose to speak out on the podcast to offer his alternative view on the war, in support of many experts who see this war as provoked by NATO's Eastward Expansion. 

How secure is the future of democracy in the societies of the West? That is the question on today's Burning Archive.

You can read Jeff Rich's recent article, 'The Grand Illusions of the West in Ukraine published on John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations journal.

Please subscribe to Jeff Rich's free weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com. You can also sign up to support the Burning Archive and receive exclusive bonus content there.

Please also subscribe and check out the additional videos at @theburning archive YouTube Channel

You can buy my latest book, From the Burning Archive at this Amazon affiliate link and at other retailers.

What is life as a bureaucrat really like? The stories of bureaucrats in the arts, the media and politics are rarely written by bureaucrats. They are views of outsiders or the views of retired top bureaucrats who do not want to rock the boat. Bureaucrats don't write essays, not if they are minor government officials. They don't make podcasts... except on The Burning Archive. Listen to this insider's account of what life as a thinking and writing bureaucrat is really like.

Join my FREE  WEEKLY NEWSLETTER at jeffrich.substack.com

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel @theburningarchive.

And you can my latest book, From the Burning Archive via Amazon and other online retailers.

Join me on a journey through the creative process of how I wrote and published my poetry book. How I, despite being a very, very minor government official, wrote and published my collected poems, and how these poems reflect on my personal experiences, cherished poets, and the meaning of history. How poetry and history belong together in the imagination.

You will discover how this poet hidden within a government official drew inspiration from poetic traditions from around the world, and weaved together the threads of his own story with the broader stories of history. You will hear firsthand how this artist found his voice and put his words to paper, and you will hear the poet read from five of his poems.

Whether you're a fan of poetry, a student of history, or simply curious about the creative process and the past, this episode of The Burning Archive is a must-listen. So, grab your headphones and join us for an insightful and inspiring journey through one man's journey to write a poetry book that is personal, historical and universal.

You can buy the collected poems discussed on this podcast, Gathering Flowers of the Mind at this Amazon affiliate link.

Please join my FREE weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com, and gather some flowers from my mind.

How did I transform from frustrated, very minor government official to independent author? I tell the story of how my recent book, From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments slowly took shape through notes, poems, a blog, a podcast then finally a polished, published collection of essays. I talk you through all the steps I took to write and to self-publish the book, and give you some insights into the themes and essays contained in the book. Is there any other podcast that mentions Maurice Blanchot, Jordan Peterson, John Berryman and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in the one package?

You can buy From the Burning Archive at Amazon via these affiliate links - e-book or paperback.

Or from other retailers such as the Australian store, Booktopia.

Please subscribe to my FREE weekly newsletter at jeffrich.substack.com, - Just click here - and you will get weekly glimpses into the multipolar world and my multifaceted mind.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks to Ghosthack.de for upgrading my SFX, and to the great Franka Potenta for the briefest snippet from 'Running Three', Run Lola Run soundtrack. I wish I was a hunter...

India is emerging as one of the most important powers in the world, and is demanding change in the world order on behalf of the Global South.  

In 2023 India became the largest country by population in the world, surpassing China. It is now the third largest economy by PPP in the world. It has growing soft power, based on its ancient, rich and diverse cultures. It is the world's largest democracy, and was for many years the leader of the non-aligned movement. All that is missing is a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.  

With America in decline, has India become the world's best hope as the true leader of the free - and fair - world?  

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more geopolitics, history, books and mindful living. I try to teach how history can help us all live well in a time of global crisis.  

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.  

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

Is the Ukraine War the start of World War Three? Has World War 3 already begun. How do we make sense of the war in Ukraine in a big-picture historical perspective? 

There have been many news stories, many podcasts and many channels looking at the unfolding events in Ukraine from day to day. In this series, however, Jeff Rich steps back from the daily news cycle, and sets out common historical narratives about the war in Ukraine.  In this podcast Jeff Rich sets out five alternative histories of the war, that reframing how the conflict is part of a global conflict between great states. 

By telling the story of this war differently to conventional accounts repeated in the mainstream media, we all might find our way back to the path of diplomacy and dialogue, before it is too late.  

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books. 

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.  

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive. 

#Russia #Ukraine #history #geopolitics #war #NATO #narrative #ww3

Is the Ukraine War the start of World War Three? Has World War 3 already begun. 

French historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd made headlines by saying World War Three has already begun. What did he mean and was he right?  

How do we make sense of the war in Ukraine in a big-picture historical perspective? There have been many news stories, many podcasts and many channels looking at the unfolding events in Ukraine from day to day. In this series, however, Jeff Rich steps back from the daily news cycle, and sets out common historical narratives about the war in Ukraine.  By seeing the truth and errors in all these narratives we are more likely to find our way back to the path of diplomacy and dialogue, and to live at peace with all the cultures that enrich this world. 

Emmanuel Todd's interview in Figaro Vox is here https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/emmanuel-todd-la-troisieme-guerre-mondiale-a-commence-20230112 

There is a English language summary of his interview at Unherd - https://unherd.com/thepost/emmanuel-todd-world-war-iii-has-already-begun/ 

My summary of Todd's Lineages of Modernity is here: https://theburningarchive.com/2020/02/16/emmanuel-todds-lineages-of-modernity/ 

My videos on Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech at Valdai in 2022 referred to later in the episode is here https://youtu.be/XEj6MshsmjQ 

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books. You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.  

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive. 

#Russia #Ukraine #history #geopolitics #war #NATO #narrative #ww3

How do we make sense of the war in Ukraine in a big-picture historical perspective? There have been many news stories, many podcasts and many channels looking at the unfolding events in Ukraine from day to day. In this podcast, however, Jeff Rich steps back from the daily news cycle, and sets out six common historical narratives about the war in Ukraine.

By seeing the truth and errors in all these narratives we are more likely to find our way back to the path of diplomacy and dialogue, and to live at peace with all the cultures that enrich this world.

Leave a comment below or vote in the poll - Are there any of these narratives that you have changed your mind on as a result of this video?

The six narratives are:

1. The Struggle for Ukrainian National Independence
2. The Ukrainian Civil War
3. Democracy vs Autocracy (World War Two, again)
4. Cold War Two
5. The Anti-Russia War
6. The Russian Empire Strikes Back

Key histories, videos and texts referred to in the discussion (with links to where you can view or buy) are

Serhi Plokhy, Lost Kingdom A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin (2017) (https://amzn.to/3XlcqE3), The Gates of Europe: a History of Ukraine (2016) (https://amzn.to/3IWgjLf)

Nikolai Petro The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us about Conflict Resolution (2022) https://amzn.to/3HcbSL3

Glenn Diesen (@GDiesen1) @theduran discussion with Nikolai Petro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2IdIbCREuk

Niall Ferguson on Cold War Two https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-23/cold-war-2-with-china-and-russia-is-becoming-ww3-niall-ferguson and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kJrnLln2Ug

Joint Article of Russian and Chinese Ambassadors to United States on Democracy http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/dshd/202111/t20211127_10454275.htm (Also published in National interest, note Qin Gang is now Foreign Minister of China)

President Vladimir Putin (Russia), New Year Address to Nation 2023, is an example of the Anti-Russia War narrative  (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/70315)

Here Putin says, ‘For years, Western elites hypocritically assured us of their peaceful intentions, including to help resolve the serious conflict in Donbass. …The West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression, and today, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it and to cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.’

Dominic Lieven on Putin’s nostalgia for empire and the status of the soliviki Short Interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG8L-BytAlw

Full discussion https://youtu.be/QkXZYqWJX6k

Please subscribe to my podcast and YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books.

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

#Russia #Ukraine #history  #geopolitics #war #NATO #narrative

What will the Russia-Ukraine-NATO War be known as in the history books? How do we make sense of this event, and how do we avoid losing our heads by getting sucked into the contending narratives of the war.

"If there is just one thing I would ask all listeners to do it is to reflect on the stories, the histories of this conflict in Ukraine that you are being told and you are telling yourself, and try to find the truth in at least one alternative history. Only that way can we find our way back to dialogue and diplomacy. Only that way can we face the reality of this war."

This video/podcast places the Ukraine conflict in a broader historical context. Is this the start of World War II, or are there other models and stories from history that provide a better framework to compare with events of today? And how can we as ordinary citizens deal with the contending narratives about the war and its history?

While there are many channels that cover the daily news and updates on the war in Ukraine, this podcast/channel takes a step back and sets out a clear narrative of the war in Ukraine that involves Ukraine, Russia and NATO, principally the USA.

This episode is the third in a three-part playlist reviewing the war in Ukraine in 2022. It is being released in three instalments over the next five days. Parts 2 and 3 will discuss 12 alternative narratives or histories of the war and its links to the emerging multipolar world.

The video is also available as a podcast on Spotify, Apple and other platforms.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books.

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

Leave me a comment below. What narratives about the Russia-Ukraine War have cast a spell on you?

You can also listen to this video as an audio podcast when on the move on Spotify or your preferred podcast player.

#Russia #Ukraine #history #geopolitics #war

This podcast asks who is winning the war in Ukraine - Ruussia, NATO or Ukraine? It assesses four dimensions of the conflict - military war, economic war, information war and diplomatic struggle. How are these conflicts shaping the emerging multipolar world order?

While there are many channels that cover the daily news and updates on the war in Ukraine, this video takes a step back and sets out a clear narrative of the war in Ukraine that involves Ukraine, Russia and NATO, principally the USA.

The podcast is the second in a three-part series reviewing the war in Ukraine in 2022.

The third podcast will place the conflict in a broader historical context. Is this the start of World War II, or are there other models and stories from history that provide a better framework to compare with events of today. This video will be released on 16 January 2022.

Please subscribe to my podcast and YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books.

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

#Russia #Ukraine #history #2022 #geopolitics

How do we make sense of the events leading up to the war in Ukraine, and throughout the year of 2022? There have been many news stories, many podcasts and many channels looking at the unfolding events in Ukraine from day to day, In this podcast, however, Jeff Rich steps back from the daily news cycle, and sets out a clear narrative to the whole war, from its beginnings in the internal conflicts in Ukraine in 2014 to the latest missile attacks on Ukraine in l;ate December 2022.

It is the first in a three-part series reviewing the war in Ukraine in 2022, and linking that review to my series on the Black Legend of Russian History.

The second part will assess who is winning the war against four dimensions of the conflict - military war, economic war, information war and diplomatic struggle. How are these conflicts shaping the emerging multipolar world order? This video will be released on 9 January 2022.

The third part will place the conflict in a broader historical context. Is this the start of World War II, or are there other models and stories from history that provide a better framework to compare with events of today. This video will be released on 16 January 2022.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive for more history, culture and geopolitics, and some reviews of the best history books.

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021 - https://amzn.to/3Bsq2EI.

You can check out all my content here - https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

#Russia #Ukraine #history #2022 #geopolitics

What are the origin stories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus? They all make a claim on the legacy of Kievan Rus, the loose grouping of warring principalities and many ethnic groups that formed in the territory between Novgorod and Kiev between 900 and 1200. This story has often been told for nationalist myths, but its more complex and layered story - still relevant to the Russia-NATO-Ukraine War today - is that all political cultures are plural. Along the way you will also hear a fragment from the 'Lay of Igor's Campaign' - the epic Russian medieval poem whose sole surviving copy was not saved from the burning archive caused by Napoleaon's invasion of Moscow.

This episode is the 11th in my series on the Black Legend of Russian History. The next and final episode in the series, coming after Christmas, will be a wrap up of the most recent episode in Russian history - the war in 2022.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021

For 250 years from the 1220's Russia and Ukraine were both controlled by the Mongol Empire, the successors to Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde. Traditionally, this period has been described by the term coined by nationalist historians, the Mongol or Tatar Yoke. But, in truth, this period did not subject Russia to a benighted warrior empire. It connected Russia to the greatest Eurasian power of the time. And it led to a creative, prosperous, civilised time of successful institution-building. The Mongol Yoke is now seen as the period of the Mongol Exchange - perhaps a precursor to the growing Eurasian cooperation of today.

The story of how the Horde changed the world, and was decisive for the development of a multi-ethnic Russian empire centred on Muscovy (Moscow) is told in Marie Favereau, The Horde: how the Mongols Changed the World (2021). It is well worth a read, and you can buy at the Amazon affiliate link.

This episode is the 10th in my series on the Black Legend of Russian History.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive 

You can buy my new book From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021

Ivan the Terrible is a key figure in Russian history. To understand him you need to separate man and myth. To strip the myths away, you need to see Ivan not as an evil monster, but rather as an erratic Renaissance Eurasian prince. In this 9th episode in the ‘Black Legend of Russian History’ series, and part two of the extended podcast on Ivan IV, the Burning Archive discusses the puzzles of Ivan IV’s power, violence, mind, repentance, death and legacy.

Full details of further reading on Ivan IV are at https://theburningarchive.com.

I am also now releasing video versions on the podcast on my YouTube channel @theburningarchive. You can also see other stories of the multipolar world there.

You can buy my newly released book, From the Burning Archive at Amazon and other online retailers. It includes essays on Ivan IV and many other intriguing topics in history, culture and society.

Ivan the Terrible is a key figure in Russian history. To understand him you need to separate man and myth, and there are many myths because all we know about Ivan is based on very limited evidence. And to strip the myths away you need to see Ivan not as an evil monster, but rather as an erratic Renaissance Eurasian prince. In this 8th episode in the 'Black Legend of Russian History' series, the myths about Ivan are outlined, and then the stranger stories of his life are told.

More details are available at theburningarchive.com

You can buy my newly released book, From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2022 at Amazon here and other retailers.

In the early 1600's Russia suffered a traumatic civil war, political instability and social chaos. This period is known as the Time of Troubles. It left a mark on Russian political institutions and historical culture. But most of all it featured remarkable characters - the self-made Tsar, Boris Godunov; his sister, the first female ruler of Russia, Irina Godunova; and, most enigmatically of all, the claimant to the throne, known to history as False Dmitri. This story can only be fully understood, however, by investigating two murder mysteries, both involving the sons of Ivan the Terrible.

In preparing this episode, I used Chester Dunning, Russia's First Civil War: the Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty, and Mark B. Smith The Russia Anxiety, and how history can resolve it. They are brilliant books, do check them out.

Music - brief excerpts from Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov, Vienna Philharmonic

You can find out more about all my content here. 

Check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive.

Follow me on twitter @ArchiveBurning

Peter the Great and Catherine the Great dominated Russia's 18th century. The remarkable transformations of Russian government, society, empire and culture that they led are symbolised in the astonishing statue of the Bronze Horseman in St Petersburg. The statue was a gift from Catherine II to Peter I, and it represents the power, energy and military prowess with which Peter transformed the Russian state. But it also represents the genius with which Catherine the Great presided over the Russian Enlightenment. As part of the continuing series of telling Russian History backwards and debunking the 'Black Legend of Russian History, Jeff Rich tells the tale of Russia's 18th century when there was one great Emperor and four remarkable Empresses.

The music at the start and end of the show is from The Story of Tsarevich Fevey, was set to music by Vasily Pashkevich (court composer for Peter III, Catherine the Great's husband), courtesy of YouTube. Catherine the Great composed the libretti. 

I read from Pushkin, "The Bronze Horseman" from The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (2015), and Dominic Lieven, In the Shadow of the Gods: the Emperor in World History (2022).

You can explore all of Jeff Rich's work at https://linktr.ee/burningarchive.

Part Two of this extended episode on Russian history in the global 19th century examines the debate between Westerners and Slavophiles, the divide between peasant serfs and urban commerical intelligentsia, and the complex relationship between empire and nations in the Russian empire. And we briefly examine the true history of Russia's defeat of Napoleon and liberation of Europe, that contains lessons for security in Europe today.

Tolstoy's War and Peace is a symbol, a reflection and an expression of a Russian Golden Age in the 19th century. Its story of the events of Russia's defeat of Napoleon's invasion of 1812 is well-known, and this great novel is one of many great cultural artefacts of an extraordinary cultural flowering of the Russian Empire. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, Mendel and so many more. The real history of Russia in the nineteenth century is even more intriguing than Tolstoy's novel, and far richer than the autocratic black legend of Russian history. This two-episode discussion explains the big events from the assassination of Emperor Paul I in 1801 to the ascension of the last Romanov, Nicholas II. And it presents both the myths and the truths of Tolstoy's War and Peace, as empire, nation, conservatism, liberalism, intelligentsia and serfs struggle for the spirit of the Russian people.

This episode of the Burning Archive reports on the results of all the 2022 Nobel Prize, but most of all on the wonderful choice to award the medal for Literature to Annie Ernaux. I read a short section from Annie Ernaux, The Years, and stay tuned to the end when you will hear briefly from Annie Ernaux herself reading from the same text in French.

The Burning Archive looks ahead to Nobel Prize week, and reviews predictions and the odds of who will win the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. I also take a brief look at the controversy behind the Nobel Peace Prize.

Regular listeners, please note the Burning Archive will be taking a one month release break until early November when the podcast will review the 2022 Winners of the Nobel Prize, and will resume the series of podcasts on Russian history.

The experience of the Russian world in the 20th century was extraordinary human drama. Imperial Russia, then the Soviet Union, and then the post-Soviet states of the Russian world defined the writing of history and the world shaking events of the twentieth century. Tragedy, comedy, horror and farce intertwined. Dignity, heroism, treachery, survival and humiliation coexisted. Russia's twentieth century made unforgettable history and exquisite art from five revolutions and four great wars. What did the twentieth century look like from the Russian world? That is the question for this Burning Archive.

Part Two of this extended episode on Mikhail Gorbachev's significance in world history begins with one of Gorbachev's favourite old Soviet songs - Tyomnaya noch'/ Темная ночь/  Dark is the night  (1942). It continues with a discussion of Gorbachev's legacy to the world with each of his key ideas - glasnost, perestroika and peace. The episode includes a section of the fateful press conference in 1991 when the USA recommitted to the Cold War and concludes with Gorbachev himself singing a beautiful old Soviet ballad.

### Dear Listeners - My apologies. THere was a glitch in my audio editing of this episode so there are many words and syllables that were clipped. This had made the sound quality not as good as I would like. I will replace in time but will need to re-record the whole episode. In the meantime, do please listen despite the flaws.

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most important and the most tragic figures of 20th century history. He has largely been presented in media obituaries as helping end the Cold War. In truth, he sued for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, while liberating his society to pursue its own forms of democracy. But he was betrayed abroad by the USA, whose leaders were convinced they had ended history, and who engineered the collapse and looting of the Soviet world. That betrayal remains at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine and the difficult birth of a New Russia and the multipolar world. How does the tragedy of Mikhail Gorbachev - a man of peace - help us understand the world crisis today? 

Listen to the end of the show and hear Gorbachev in his own voice, giving his resignation speech on 25 December 1991 (with English translation voiceover).

We cannot hope to find peace with Russia unless we seek to understand Russian history in all its complexity, its highs and lows, its tragedies and its farces, its inspirations and its horrors. To understand that rich history, we need to confront the Black Legend of Russian History, which tells a story of a benighted people, cursed to poverty, despotism and the dark strivings of the Russian soul. What is the black legend of Russian history? That is the question on the Burning Archive.

Vale Mikhail Gorbachev.

Credits:

- Mark B. Smith The Russia Anixiety (2019) - Do buy this book - it is essential to understanding Russia and the world today.

- Leonid Kharitonov and The Russian Red Army Choir - "Song of the Volga Boatmen" ("Yo, Heave Ho!",  "Ej, Uhnem!") The concert in Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, 1965 via Youtube

History can be an aid to making good decisions - in government, in any walk of life, in your personal life. History is not only useful for leaders of governments and professors. It helps us all make sense of the events around us, and free us from false narratives and misleading comparisons that we all fall prey to from time to time. History can even be an antidote to doom-scrolling. Find out how on this episode of the Burning Archive.

The Burning Archive podcast explores how the past is not dead, the past is not even past. But if that is so, what are the uses and lessons of history? How can history be used for guidance in our lives, and to advise governments on the big decisions that shape our fates. A recent Australian book, Lessons from History: Leading Historians Tackle Australia's Greatest Challenges, eds, Holbrook, Megarrity and Lowe (NewSouth, 2022) explores this question. In this podcast Jeff Rich explores how the authors seek to cross the bridge between policy and history, and reflects upon how he has stood on that bridge in his career as a very minor government official.

As the multipolar world takes shape and tensions over Taiwan rise, it is timely to ask, what should be Australia's role in the emerging multipolar world? Are we, as Hugh White suggests in his recent Quarterly Essay, sleepwalking to war with China? Have we given up on framing our own foreign and defence policy to service the will of that "indispensable nation", America. What will it take to develop a new vision of Australian foreign policy suited to history, geopolitics today, and our real place in the world, not in the Atlantic Alliance but on the coasts of Eurasia?

Credit: Hugh White, Sleepwalk to War: Australia's Unthinking Alliance with America (Black Ink, 2022)

Three spectres are haunting America - the ghosts of the American Mind, the American State, and the American Empire. Faced with intertwined crises of culture, governing and international dominance, the 20th century's Uncle Sam has not aged well, and become the 21st century's Bad Granpa Joe. Will America break? That is the question on this episode of The Burning Archive.

When in early 2022 Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the Western world, especially the Anglo-American World, went kind of mad - with anger, fury, and some justified rage. But it also made a strange attempt not just to restore international peace, but to cancel a whole country, Russia, the great Russian cultures that stretch back 1000+ years. It went too far - and continues to go too far. So today on the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich asked what are the reasons not to cancel Russia. What are the gifts of Russia we can be grateful for? How can we put an end to Russophobia in a multipolar world.

Credits: Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, "The Sacrificial Dance" and Mark B. Smith, The Russia Anxiety and How History Can Resolve It.

The Burning Archive revisits the predictions of Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) about Ukraine. Is it a "fault-line" state on the borders of a clash of civilizations between the West and Russia? Could Huntington's ideas have both caused and prevented the latest war in Ukraine? This episode also gives an update on the four vectors of the conflict between Russia and NATO - military, economic, diplomatic and cultural. It asks, what will happen to the West if Russia wins the war?

In the fourth and final of the series on civilizations, the Burning Archive contrasts the doom of Oswald Spengler's 1918 classic, The Decline of the West to the over-confident American optimism of the 1991 game, Civilization. What is the story of the Rise of the West? Do civilizations have a life cycle, from cradle to grave? Is the West locked in a clash of civilizations with the Rest? Should we replace the story of the West with the story of Tamerlane's shadow? They are the questions for this episode of The Burning Archive.

This episode is part three of an extended four part series Civilization - the game, the concept and the examples from across the globe. In this episode, I look at four environments and five matching civilizations. First, I look at Sumerian civilization (approx 3000-1500 BC) in the alluvial river valleys of Mesopotamia, the original "cradle" of civilization. Then, I travel to the highlands of MesoAmerica and the Andes to look at the Aztecs and the Incas (roughly 1200-1600 AD). Third, I look at seaboard civilizations and the remarkable trading empire of Sri Vijaya that prospered in Sumatra and the Malay archipelago approx 600-1300 AD. Then finally, I turn to oceans, specifically the Atlantic ocean, and look at the WEIRDest civilization of all that of the Atlantic - Western civilization. Many thanks to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, David Abalufia and Barry Cunliffe for their fine books that have contributed to this show. Full details are at www.theburningarchive.com. Opening music - the ancient Indonesian theme music from Civilization VI.

In part two of an extended four part series of eipisodes on the game Civilization, the Burning Archive examines three types of environment adapted by people for civilization - deserts of ice, uncultivable grasslands and tropical lowlands. These three environments were traditionally seen as hostile or incompatible with the kind of Civilization descended from the cradle of civilization, but are shown in Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Civilizations to have housed remarkable culture of the Saami, the Scythians and the City of Benin. For more details see www.theburningarchive.com

Credit: Opening music of Civilization IV

Civilization, the game, is soon to be released in its 7th edition. In this episode of The Burning Archive Jeff Rich responds to a listener question prompted by this game that puts the player in the shoes of all manner of leaders of civilizations. What is meant by the phrase 'cradle of civilization', and how is the concept of civilization relevant to today's multi-polar world facing climate-change?

This is part one of a four-part show exploring Civilization and history, and recreating a Civ marathon on a podcast.

Full details of the show at www.theburningarchive.com

If you play Assassins Creed you might think the Mafia has its origins in similar medieval or early modern brotherhoods, who despite their dastardly deeds were true patriots and rebels at heart. That is also the story that Italian mafia organisations tell their own members. But is it true, or does the history of the mafia have more to do with Italian Risorgimento politics, prisons and the disruptions of the nineteenth century? And what does any of this have to do with a burning archive?

Thanks to Isaac and Ella for the listener question that began this show, and special thanks to John Dickie, Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias (2014) for all the wonderful stories in this episode.  Thanks too to Sigismondo Castromediano, Duke of Morciano and Marquis of Cavallino, Italian Patriot, for enduring his imprisonment in the jails of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and then telling the true tale of the origins of the camorra.

Credits also to Assassin's Creed, 'Sounds of Florence' and Godfather 'Theme Song' - brief excerpts played during the show.

Immerse yourself in Renaissance Florence and with the aid of Assassin's Creed take a virtual historical tour through the remarkable lives and turbulent times of the Medici family.

For full details of references from this episode see www.theburningarchive.com

When we play computer games, especially role play games like World of Warcraft or Skyrim, it is no surprise we don’t do our day job. Noone wants to play a night elf project manager in WOW or a Nord uber contract driver in Skyrim. In games, we see a different pre-modern world of work - of artisans, craft skills and guilds. Was this world ever real, and what does this fantasy world of work tell us of our collective memory of work and collective organisation? Join Jeff Rich on this fascinating tour of the history of work, guilds and unions, and the global transformations of ideas of work in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

More details on references in the show are at www.theburningarchive.com.

War is terrible. War is troubling. War poses difficult questions for us all. This war in Ukraine, which is spreading globally through sanctions, bans, social media and slogans, presents those questions too. This episode of The Burning Archive responds to a listener question that just might help us get closer to peace, and that make us think of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

What do the listeners of The Burning Archive lovest well - history, poetry, culture, surprising twists and turns of the stories behind our everyday lives. This 5oth and first anniversary edition of The Burning Archive takes a closer look at the line from Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI - "what thou lovest well will not be reft from thee" - what does it tell us about how we can treat the past as not even past.

You can contact me on twitter at @ArchiveBurning or leave a voice message at Anchor/Spotify.

Please like and subscribe, rate and review, enjoy and share with your friends. Let more people into the beautiful secret of The Burning Archive podcast.

Read more at www.theburningarchive.com.

The Norse myths - Thor, Odin, Freya, the Valkyries, Loki, Ragnorak and the World Tree, Yggdrassil - are so well known, they are almost hidden. We have made them so familiar in games, movies, children's stories - that their original power and strangeness is lost. This guide to Norse myths and the mental world of the Vikings recovers that strangeness with the help of two changes in perspective. 1. A fine book, Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (2020), and 2. the view form Lake Ilopango in El Salvador. What does El Salvador have to do with the Norse myths? Listen to the show and find out.

Also check out episode 32, This Archive is for the Players, when listener, Isaac Rich, joined the show and asked questions related to the theme of computer games and history, including about the Norse Myths.

In this penultimate special episode on the Ukraine conflict, blooming into a World Crisis, the Burning Archive discusses Joe Biden's references to food shortages and regime change, and then zeroes in on the differing interpretations of history presented by leading figures ranging from Vladimir Putin, Dmitri Medvedev, distinguished historians, Dominic Lieven and Timothy Snyder, and Francis Fukuyama. There will be one more Burning Archive podcast on the Ukraine conflict that will focus on a brilliant listener question received this weekend, and then the discussion of geopolitics will move to a new channel, while the Burning Archive will focus on history and culture.

Is it possible to tell the history of dragons without also speaking of the epics of dragon slayers? In this episode of the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich returns to the questions posed by Isaac Rich in episode 32, This Archive is for the Players, and responds to the question on the history of dragons. Travelling all over the world and, in time, from 1500 BC to the final episode of Game of Thrones, this podcast explores how the magic and the power of dragons has appeared in many cultures - from the Rig Veda to The Song of Ice and Fire, from Beowulf to St George and the Dragon in Vladimir Putin's banner flags, and from World of Warcraft to that great masterpiece of modern culture, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Thanks to Skyrim and World of Warcraft for some sound credits.

The latest Burning Archive podcast on the Ukraine Conflict provides a situation report as of 18 March 2022 when tens of thousands of citizens have been freed from Mariupol; American diplomacy picks fights with China, India and anyone else; cracks appear in the Great Media Wall; and the sanctions from hell backfire. And I ask - who has made the greatest miscalculation of all - could it be America, not Russia? 

This series of podcasts is exploring the unfolding crisis of the conflict in Ukraine, security in Europe, the NATO v Russia war, and the emergence of the multipolar world. This episode (recorded on 12 March) looks at different names and mental models for the conflict - invasion, war of choice, Cold War II, incursion, special military operation and Cold War III. And it makes the case for thinking of this conflict as the first episode in the Wars of the Anglo-American Succession. Plus cameos from biolabs, Kamala Harris, MK Bhadrakhumar, the Saker and much much more.

Full notes and links going up on theburningarchive.com soon.

This series of podcasts is exploring the unfolding crisis of the war in Ukraine, security in Europe, and the NATO vs Russia War. This episode (recorded on 9 March, Melbourne time) explores the revelations that the USA has operated over 30 Biolabs in Ukraine, the American concerns about Russian control of those facilities and what records may reveal about compliance with bans on biological and chemical weapons, and the role of Victoria Nuland in domestic "democratic" Ukrainian politics. Stay sane all.

This series of podcasts is exploring the unfolding crisis of the war in Ukraine, security in Europe, and the NATO vs Russia War. This episode (recorded on 7 March, Melbourne time) explores the current situation with humanitarian corridors around main Ukrainian cities enabling evacuations, and also looks at the diplomatic positions of major players of China, India and the Gulf States. Is the world really unified against Russia? Geopolitics Upside Down will continue exploring the military, economic, information and diplomatic vectors of the emrging war for the multipolar world.

Links to articles referred to in the show :

• International Crisis Group - Gulf States positions - https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/ukraine-war-global-crisis
• Global Times. Wang Yi phone call with Secretary of State Blinken (5 March 2022) https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254024.shtml
• Read-out of Quad eaders summit meeting (India) http://mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/34927
• MK Bhadrakumar, "Foreign policy at T-junction" Tribune Indiahttps://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/foreign-policy-at-t-junction-375687

When COVID hit, the numbers of people who played computer games exploded - not just among adolescents but across many age groups. People found out something about gaming - that, as Forbes magazine wrote, gaming has the “potential to unlock bonds of community, educate and inspire.” This episode responds to questions posed by Isaac Rich in episode 32 (This Archive is for the Players), and explores how games are windows to history, how they are a form of art, and an aspect of a fundamental experience, play. And just possibly, they preserve the hope that not even Sylvanas can kill.

Credits: 

• Voice clips and "Lament of the HighBorne from World of Warcraft
• https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2020/01/the-history-of-video-games/

This new series of podcasts will explore the unfolding crisis of security in Europe, precipitated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and America/NATO's expansion eastward over 30 years. This first episode reports on the military situation on 3 March 2022, the economic war against Russia by waged by America and the European Union, and the exploding information and cultural war. This new twice-weekly podcast will explore the unfolding crisis of the emergence of a new multipolar world order.

This special episode on the crisis in Ukraine was recorded on 26 and 27 February. I discuss the background to the conflict in the failure to negotiate a fair peace to end the cold war, and the response to Russian proposals for a new security architecture in Europe. Events are unfolding quickly and a major information war is under way. Take care all and remember what thou lovest well will not be reft from thee.

Before Britain ruled with waves, it was the empire of Spain that was known as the empire on which the sun never sets. For a century or so it even joined with Portugal to be the first and only empire of land and sea across multiple oceans that was built with pre-industrial resources. But it declined. When? How? Why? And should we remember these empires not by images of conquistadores and the Spanish Inquisition, but by walking through the Botanic Gardens of Madrid? In Part II of Flowers of Empire the Burning Archive takes a closer look at Portugal's empire and the extraordinary legacy of the expeditions of the Hispanic Enlightenment including the botanical collections of Jose Celestino Mutis.

Full details of materials referred to in the show will be available on www.theburningarchive.com.

Before Britain ruled with waves, it was the empire of Spain that was known as the empire on which the sun never sets. For a century or so it even joined with Portugal to be the first and only empire of land and sea across multiple oceans that was built with pre-industrial resources. But it declined. When? How? Why? And should we remember these empires not by images of conquistadores and the Spanish Inquisition, but by walking through the Botanic Gardens of Madrid? 

In the first episode recorded in 2022 Jeff Rich explores the big signs of cultural decay and renewal in 2021, and makes for predictions for the year ahead. And in a postscript comments on the major geo-political events of the summer, including the information war on Ukraine and the Xi-Putin Summit in Beijing that does not augur well for the declining American Empire.

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the events of 2021 against the theme of social fragmentation. For so many people around the world, 2020 and 2021 have been the years of the Great Seclusion. How has the response to the pandemic fired social fragmentation and been fuelled by social isolation and loss of community? Can we chart a course to a more forgiving and tolerant Society of Islands in 2022?

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the major events of 2021 against the theme of political decay. But should the The Burning Archive replace the idea of political decay with political disorder? 2021 has tested the limits of the (liberal) democratic political orders of many countries around the world. Experts and populists have clashed... we are still waiting on a verdict. It has been a bad year for two pillars of democratic political orders -  science and the mass media. What trouble lies ahead for 2022? Is there a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem?

In this Summer Edition of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich reviews the events of the year in geopolitics against the theme of imperial rivalry. With the retreat from Afghanistan and dramatic diplomatic clashes, 2021 has been a pivotal year in relationships between the Great States of United States of America, China, Russia, the European Union and India. What does 2022 hold? Wars in Ukraine, Taiwan or Iran? Or the emergence of a new Concert of the globe, premised on a multipolar world?

In this first Summer Edition of The Burning Archive Jeff Rich reflects on 12 surprises, discoveries or gifts that mattered most in 2021. Be prepared to be surprised as well-known and obscure stories from the year are retold. Ranging across empire, politics, society, culture, history and the writer/podcaster's life, this episode will entertain you, and show how the past is not dead - the past is not even past.

Full references are at www.theburningarchive.com.

Could computer games be the last best hope of culture vultures and history buffs? Should we turn to the dragon-slayers of Skyrim to save the treasures of the past from the dragon fire of the Burning Archive? Can we find solace in literature by reading the magical tomes of the floating city of Dalaran as it is imagined in that great total art work (Gesamtkunstwerk) of our times, World of Warcraft? In this playful episode of the Burning Archive, special guest and recent Monash University graduate, Isaac Rich poses six questions about history drawn from his scholarship of gaming. The question is - will the Burning Archive be prepared?

With thanks to all the game developers, artists and crafts who made these worlds, this Burning Archive is for all the players. Full credits for the material used in the show are at www.theburningarchive.com

Can all the stories of the world be summarised as just seven basic plots, or even just the four narrative forms first defined by Aristotle? There is a long history of trying to make sense of the common patterns of stories, myths and legends. This episode of The Burning Archive examines tragedy and comedy, the story of the story of stories, the seven basic plots, and how even historians write their histories with these plots. But can the inventiveness of great storytellers really be limited to seven basic plots. Will Scheherazade outwit, outlast and outplay the critics?

More details at www.theburningarchive.com

Simon Sebag Montefiore writes: “Jerusalem, so loveable in many ways, so hate-filled in others, always bristling with the hallowed and the brash, the preposterously vulgar and the aesthetically exquisite, seems to live more intensely than anywhere else; everything stays the same yet nothing stays still. At dawn each day, the three shrines of the three faiths come to life in their own way.” But why - one Burning Archive listener, Josh, asks - do these three faiths all lay claim to the one Holy Land and the State of Israel?

Full references and credits at www.theburningarchive.com

The Crusades featured a star-studded cast of characters - Holy Roman & Byzantine Emperors, Kings and Queens of France, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, Peter the Hermit and Melisende of Jerusalem. But who was the most influential Crusader of them all?

Full references and credits are at www.theburningarchive.com.

In 1095 Pope Urban II - whose real name was Odo of Chatillon - gave a rousing speech at Clermont in France. He promised forgiveness and pardon for all of the past sins of those who would fight to reclaim the holy land from Muslims and free the eastern churches. So began the crusades - the wars between Christendom and Islam for the Holy Lands in the Levant and by Western Christians against pagan and Orthodox communities in  North and Eastern Europe for several centuries from 1096. What were the crusades and how did they give brith to modern European nations? What made the crusaders and their opponents believe faith justified violence, that they fought a just war, a holy war, a jihad?

Details of all references used in the show are at www.theburningarchive.com

Credits: The Crusader song, Palästinalied

How did the Byzantine Empire acquire the secrets of silk production from China, and what does it tell us about the history of silk, the diffusion of silk trade across the world, and the Silk Roads of Eurasia?

Full details of material referred to in the episode are at www.theburningarchive.com.

In October 1731 there was a fire in the Ashburnham House residence of the Keeper of the King’s libraries in Westminster, London. The fire threatened the one and only manuscript of the Old English poem, Beowulf. It was rescued by the librarian and others leaping from the window, clasping manuscripts. Singed but intact, Beowulf was literally saved from a Burning Archive. 200 years later in 1936 an English scholar of Beowulf sought to recover the poem and artistry of Beowulf from the dead hand of arid historical scholarship. That scholar was JRR Tolkien. One year later he began to write Lord of the Rings. Would we have had the Lord of the Rings if we did not first have Beowulf?

Full credits and reference at www.theburningarchive.com.

Did the fall of Rome give birth to Europe, Christendom and Western civilisation? In episode 24 of The Burning Archive Jeff Rich discussed - What was the Roman Empire? What was it like before it fell? Why was it significant and still matters to us today. In this second part of the discussion of the Fall of Rome (episode 25) Jeff Rich discusses explanations of the fall of Rome, how historians cast the story of the fall of Rome, and the enduring legacy of Rome, including in the discipline of history, even in the image of the Burning Archive itself.

Full references to the material in the show are provided at www.theburningarchive.com.

Did the fall of Rome lead to the birth of Europe, Christendom and Western civilisation? This episode of The Burning Archive answers - What was the Roman Empire? What was it like before it fell? Why was it significant and still matters to us today. In Part I Jeff Rich sets out the story arc of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and sets the scene for a more detailed discussion of why it fell and its legacy in Part II.

Full references to the material in the show are provided at www.theburningarchive.com.

How did the eight hour working day come into being, and is it still relevant to us today? In this episode the Burning Archive begins responding to the questions posed by Freya Rich in episode 22 A Canon of One's Own. In a mini-series of seven episodes Jeff Rich will talk about the topics Freya identified about history that she would like to know more about or feel we ought to know more about. This episode covers

• The working day before the industrial revolution
• The century when the eight hour day emerged in response to the industrial revolution and other global transformations of the 19th century 
• The meaning of the eight hour day to these workers - a “sacred boon” - as it was celebrated in Victoria
• The working day in the stressed out contemporary world after the “fourth industrial revolution”

Credit: Nina Simone, "Work Song"

This episode of The Burning Archive podcast features a special guest - young lawyer, Freya Rich, who speaks to the Burning Archive about the questions and topics from history and culture that her generation would like to know more about; what from the past is not past for her; and what might become A Canon of One's Own. Listen in for the seven fascinating and surprising topics identified by Freya and friends. Thanks to listener, Josh, for his listener audio question. Send your questions about history, culture and the Burning Archive to [email protected] or ask me a question via Anchor or Spotify or twitter at @ArchiveBurning.

Join the The Burning Archive Podcast for a special feature on the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, and learn not only about the hushed excitement of the winner (sshh no spoilers), but the history of the prize, favourite winners, best losers, and most contentious scandals. Congratulations to Abdulrazak Gurnah, and thanks to nobelprize.org.

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.

Please share, subscribe and leave a positive review if you liked it.

More details on material referred to and used in the episode is available at www.theburningarchive.com - where you can read more of my writing on all things history and culture.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech writer and dissident who later became, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the President of his country. This episode of The Burning Archive podcast explores how his 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 essay. 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.

More details on the material referred to during the show will be available at www.theburningarchive.com.

The fall of Kabul has raised questions for Australia about the reliability of its alliance with the United States of America. For Australians this capitulation evokes comparisons with another decisive imperial humiliation, the fall of Singapore in 1942. The conquest by Japan of the fortress of the British Empire in South East Asia in the weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbour, led the then Australian Prime Minister to turn decisively from the declining British Empire that could not longer secure Australia's defence to the rising American Empire. Will the fall of Kabul and the rise of Eurasia provoke the same questioning of foreign policy by Australia?

Full credits and references to materials quoted in this episode will be posted to www.theburningarchive.com shortly.

Please share and subscribe and read more of my writing at The Burning archive blog - www.theburningarchive.com.

Credits, very brief excerpt from Midnight Oil, US Forces.

America’s defeat in Afghanistan has provoked an imperial crisis. This imperial crisis is not just a geostrategic or diplomatic game. It is a crisis of the ideas driving the empire - American culture, society and politics - its core belief that it is the exceptional nation. In Kabul America unwittingly surrendered not only as occupier of Afghanistan, but its claim to be leader of the so-called free world. Will Afghanistan teach America to be humble again or at last? That is the question for today’s Burning Archive, when Jeff Rich discusses the American response to its humiliation in Afghanistan.

Jeff Rich is a writer, historian, podcaster, poet, and presents The Burning Archive podcast about all things history and culture - where the past is never dead - the past is not even past, and where by thinking about the past we try to live better in the present.

Full details on material referenced in this week's show (there is a lot) will be posted at www.theburningarchive.com

America's capitulation in Afghanistan has provoked an humanitarian disaster, an imperial crisis, and a change in the balance of power between great states in Eurasia. The crisis is still unfolding but has revealed the growing connections and interests of the Eurasian states in a new world order, separate from Atlantic domination. This episode of The Burning Archive Podcast examines how Afghanistan's neighbours and the great states of Eurasia are responding to the situation, and how it shows the Silk Roads are rising again.

Credits and material referred to during the show:

• International Crisis Group, With the Taliban Back in Kabul, Regional Powers Watch and Wait, Commentary 26 August 2021, 
• https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/taliban-back-kabul-regional-powers-watch-and-wait
• Ibrahim Bahiss, analyst at International Crisis Group, https://twitter.com/Afghan_Policy/status/1431812887832514564
• Putin, Xi Make Thinly Veiled Criticisms of US Over Afghanistan and COVID-19 Origin Tracing, Statecraft Bulletin, https://www.statecraft.co.in/article/putin-xi-make-thinly-veiled-criticisms-of-us-over-afghanistan-and-covid-19
• Wang Yi Blinken 29 AQUgust 2021 https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1902967.shtml
• Afghan 'tragedy' shows EU needs geopolitical muscle: Borrell, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210822-afghan-tragedy-shows-eu-needs-geopolitical-muscle-borrell
• Lavrov comments, 27 August 2021, https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4847771
• Russia, China should communicate with new Afghan authorities independently from US: Russian scholar, Global Times, 31 August 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1233008.shtml
• Peter Frankopan, Silk Roads: a new history of the world (2017)
• The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/  
• Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com including my posts related to Afghanistan - The fall of the American Empire’s Potemkin Province, and The World Island vs the Atlantic.

Buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

America's capitulation in Afghanistan has provoked an humanitarian disaster, an imperial crisis, and a change in the balance of power between great states in Eurasia. The crisis threatens not only American prestige in the world but some of the basic historical and strategic ideas undergirding American geostrategy for the last fifty years. The Burning Archive explains the persistence in America's disastrous Afghanistan adventure of the ideas of Halford Mackinder about the "World Island" of Eurasia and and of former USA National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski about the imperatives for America to control Central and West Asia.

Credits:

• Halford Mackinder "The Geographical Pivot of History" (1904)
• Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997)
• William Dalrymple, Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan 1838-42 (2013)
• The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/ 
• Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com including my posts related to Afghanistan - The fall of the American Empire’s Potemkin Province, and The World Island vs the Atlantic.

Buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this special episode, The Burning Archive makes some fast history, and reflects on the meaning of the capitulation of the American Empire in Afghanistan. There are eight quick takes - what do you think - let me know at @ArchiveBurning on twitter:

• the humanitarian crisis - is this Saigon 1974 or  Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947?
• the end not of a 20 year war but a 43 year American-Afghan Wars
• the unwinding of America's geopolitical strategy and Zbigniew Brzezinski's shame
• Military and strategic failure of the American Empire
• The weakness of the leadership class in America
• How will the Taliban and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan act?
• The shift to regional security - without America - in Eurasia
• Will America's ultimate humiliation be that Afghanistan develops more successfully under this Eurasian wing?

Credits:

• News story from 1979 with the voice of Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking to the Mujahideen: "Your cause is right and God is on your side!"
• William Dalrymple, Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan 1838-42 and at https://twitter.com/DalrympleWill
• Bruno Macaes on twitter at @MacaesBruno
• The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/
• Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers. The poem read in this episode, Nouriel's Shoes, appears in this book.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this episode of the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich completes his 12 part thematic history of our times. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto writes about the impact of accelerating change on society over the last 50 years: “Under the surface of political and economic change lurks fear of instability in the most precious sources of identity.” He puts his finger on the change the Burning Archive has been describing as social fragmentation: Social Change + Identity Impacts + Technological Amplification + Cultural Viruses = profound uncertainty about who we are. In this episode, the Burning Archive asks: What happens to a society when we change everything, even change itself? Can we cope with the accelerating pace of change?

Credits:

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, A Foot in the River: Why our Lives Change and the Limits of Evolution (2015) 

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, 2017 Bryn Lecture "Change How History Happens,”

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Human Beings: Dedicated to Interrupting Evolution", Oxford Illustrated History of the World

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this episode of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich continues his history of our times, and the theme of increasing social fragmentation. If there is more distance between the elites and ordinary people - the 1 % vs the 99 % - then that can lead to conflict, social breakdown, even revolution. But social fragmentation can also be destructive when it occurs among the top 10 % who really, really want to be in the top 1 percent of positions of high social status. What happens to a society when the elites turn on themselves? Conflict, though is not our only choice. We can reach across the fissures of our fragmented society, and build bridges between the separated islands of our society. Along the way, this episode explores the Yellow Vest movement in France, the Occupy movement in Wall St, Jo Scarborough's rant on American exceptionalism, Peter Turchin, Simon Schama, the French and Russian Revolutions, the atrocities of the Vendée, and even protests in London against lockdowns.

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this episode of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich explores the fourth large theme of the history of our times, that is social fragmentation. Life is better in so many dramatic ways. We are richer, older, healthier, better educated. But something is not quite right.... We enjoy better societies, but worry that we have lost a sense of community.  We seem beset by bitter polarization. Could it be that social progress is slowing, and its old rival, social fragmentation is going to overtake it in the marathon of history?

Credits:

* readings from Emmanuel Todd, Lineages of Modernity: a history of humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus (2017 Fr; 2019)

* Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960), a short excerpt from the famous shower scene

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

You can read my essay on Emmanuel Todd at The Burning Archive blog, Emmanuel Todd's Lineages of Modernity (16 February 2020)

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

When faced with cultural decay and ruined institutions, what is a podcaster to do? In this episode, Jeff Rich turns for hope to the traditions of the Eastern European dissidents of 1960-90 Eastern Europe. Two great Czech dissidents - Vaclav Benda and Vaclav Havel - spoke of the Parallel Polis (Benda), as an alternative culture to build in the face of grey uniformity, and living in truth as the Power of the Powerless (Havel). In these very diverse traditions of samizdat and living authentically - that celebrate everything from Tolkien to the Plastic People of the Universe - the Burning Archive finds hope of a cultural renewal amidst our own time of troubles.

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81

* the Plastic People of the Universe from Slavná Nemesis

* readings from Vaclav Havel, "Six Asides about Culture" and "A Sense of the Transcendent"

You can read my essay on Havel - "Six Asides about Vaclav Havel" at the Burning Archive blog (originally posted September 2016).

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

Cultural decay can breakdown and lead to cultural revolution. Some might celebrate cultural revolution, but in this episode Jeff Rich speaks of his own forebodings while watching the cultural ferment of today that we may be reliving a prequel to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This episode tells the story of that ferment, chaos and frenzy of cultural destruction and loss. With stories of the Summer Palace in Beijing and the great film, Farewell My Concubine, this episode asks: are the Red Guards coming for us again?

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* brief audio clip from Chain Kaige (Dir), Farewell my Concubine (1993)

* BBC news clips of the Cultural Revolution (1967)

* Stephen Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the epic story of the Taiping Civil War (2012)

* Frank Dikotter, Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 (2017)

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

Cultural decay has been a theme of cultural pessimists for centuries, and in this episode Jeff Rich surveys prophets of cultural doom from Matthew Arnold, Max Weber, Stefan Zweig, and the more witty and balanced Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Poetry makes an appearance too - with Arnold's "Dover Beach", Yeats' "Second Coming", Jeff Rich's own reading of "The Burning Archive", and lastly a special guest appearance of Ezra Pound reading from his Cantos. Trust me - it all makes sense in the end.

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound, reading from Canto 81 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0wc28wK7S0

* Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

* W.B. Yeats, Second Coming

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In episode 7 of The Burning Archive podcast, Jeff Rich discusses a possible antidote to political decay; building a strong culture rooted in the ordinary virtues of governing well. Based on traditions of virtue ethics scattered from Confucius (孔夫子;Kǒng Fūzǐ) and Aristotle, to Alasdair McIntyre and Michael Ignatieff these virtues can help us all curb political decay. And we ask, is culture - and simple virtues like humility, talking to strangers and the life of the mind - the best defence against republics in distress?

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S.Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Vladimir Putin, remarks at St Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 2021 from Russia Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAP9Ccg2-0&list=WL&index=3

* Michael Ignatieff, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7dm2ER7TpU&list=WL&index=1

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

In episode 6 of The Burning Archive Podcast, we discuss the history of the bureaucracy in the UK, USA and Germany, and its relationship to political decay. And we ask, is the bureaucracy to blame for our republics in distress?

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S.Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Francis Fukuyama Political Order and Political Decay - Volume 2 From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

Read more of my writing at theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

In episode 5 of The Burning Archive Podcast, Jeff Rich goes full-on pessimist to discuss Doom, disaster and decay. We take a quick tour of Niall Ferguson's Doom: the Politics of Catastrophe and Francis Fukuyama's ideas on political decay, and what they tell us about the responses of governments around the world to the pandemic. And the podcast asks what can we do to hold back the decline of governing institutions?

Quick note - I uploaded a recording with amplified audio on 26/5/21. Sorry!

In episode 4 of the Burning Archive Podcast, Jeff Rich asks if America is an empire in decline, then is China the empire or Great State on the rise? And if so, does that mean we are condemned to war between China and America or is a peaceful multipolar world possible after the American empire crumbles?

Read more at www.theburningarchive.com

If America is an empire in denial, could it also be an empire in decline? In this episode of The Burning Archive podcast, Jeff Rich discusses the stories we tell about the rise and fall of empires, how America is in decline, and what that means for the rest of the world. Could a new multipolar and culturally vibrant world emerge in the outer provinces of the American empire in ruins?

Credits for this show go to John Keane (http://www.johnkeane.net/) Dominic Lieven and the Valdai Club (https://youtu.be/f5itYeF9GpI), and, as ever, to the wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka for her playing of J.S. Bach's Goldberg variations (https://opengoldbergvariations.org/).

Please check out more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com

In this second episode of the Burning Archive podcast, Dr Jeff Rich talks about how the United States of America is an empire in denial, and how we can respond in our daily lives to the emperor high in heaven - at least those of us in the faraway provinces.

Credits: 

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S.Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: a short history of the Greater United States (2019) - quotation

* Hoover Institution Goodfellows podcast - Question Time! (14 April 2021) short clip featuring Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster and Bill Whalen, quoted in support of scholarship.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com

The Burning Archive is about all things history and culture, and shows how the past is not dead - the past is not even past (Credit: William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun). 

In this first episode of The Burning Archive podcast, historian, writer and failed bureaucrat, Dr Jeff Rich, talks about why it is important to have a sense of history to live well in the present, and some of the big history trends shaping our lives today.

You can read more from The Burning Archive at www.theburningarchive.com where Jeff Rich writes on history, culture and governing.

The Burning Archive is also on twitter (regrettably) at @ArchiveBurning.