The Burning Archive

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...

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 d...

In this episode of the Burning Archiv e, 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 b...

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...

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 b...

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 Pow...

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 Summ...

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 histo...