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Anger Management: The Eternal Experiment

Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
04.04.17
60 min
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60hertz

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is probably the most inspiring person you could think of, his mind is like a beautifully shaped stone which shines in all directions. He is clear about what he wants: A world where people see and live their full potential, not burdened or inhibited by the weight of the old or the ordinary. He is an inspiring political thinker in Harvard and a very hands on politician in his native Brazil. He masterfully spans both areas and lets his thinking be informed by the experiences he made in office. We met him at his house in Cambridge, MA, where he lives among books and music and serves a very nice Cognac in the late afternoon.

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Anger Management: The Filter Democracy

Cass Sunstein
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
27.03.17
60 min
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Cass Sunstein is much much more than the bestselling author of the seminal book “Nudge” which changed the way that policy makers thought about policy – and one could argue if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Because, and this goes back to this conversation about the question of filter bubbles and echo chambers and the “#republic”, Sunstein’s new book: Who is the agent for change, politically, socially, economically? The election of Donald Trump upended a lot of things that were taken for granted about the way politics is done, about the way the public discourse is constructed. We have to rethink what this really means, says Sunstein. It is a democratic call to action.

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Anger Management: The Ruins of Democracy

Peter Galison
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
13.03.17
60 min
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What is your place in society – this is the central question of politics today, it is at the heart of so many fights and struggles, about identity, about equality, about representation, symbolic and real. Dislocation, in other words, is the fundamental experience of our time, both dislocation in physical and spiritual terms. Do you belong? And what is your stake in society, very concretely, materially? This is the theme that drove the conversation with Peter Galison forward, historian of science at Harvard University.

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Anger Management: What Is Wrong With Human Rights?

Sam Moyn
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
07.03.17
60 min
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Sam Moyn is one of the most original thinkers when it comes to some of the most profound contradictions about common perceptions about politics: Human rights, for example, is a good thing, right? Or, isn’t it rather a proxy, something invented to fill the void that concrete policy left open? A weak claim without any real substance? And thus more harmful than helpful when it comes to rethinking and reshaping tomorrow’s world?

Anger Management: The Trump Challenge

Theda Skocpol
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
06.02.17
60 min
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Theda Skocpol is one of the great political scientists of the USA, and if she is torn about where this country is heading, this means there is real confusion. She talked to us, Karin Pettersson and me, about how the country got to this point, the massive failure on parts of the media, but also on the parts of the people refusing to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate. She believes it is time for the American civil society to rise up to the challenge. She is a patriot, after all, she said. Which means today to withstand nationalism. Just one of the contradictions of our times.

Anger Management: Democracy For the 21st Century

Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
02.02.17
60 min
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This is exciting, we will start a new podcast, and this podcast will be shaped around the discussion which will be going on on 60pages and via the initiative Disrupt Democracy on Medium: Karin and I will be talking to thinkers and scientist from Harvard and MIT for the next few months to come up with clues and ideas about how we got here and what we might do to get out of this dilemma. Karin and I are in the USA at the moment, she is from Sweden where she used to work for Aftonbladet as the editor of the opinion page, I am on a leave of absence from my job as a columnist for Der Spiegel, we are both fellows of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. This conversation here is the beginning, we set out what we want to do, cover questions of populism, the relationship between capital and labor, the progressive dilemma, the progressive alternative. She says she is the pragmatist and I am the utopian. I am not sure about that. And I would not even see this two opposing sides. I think both are relevant and necessary. But, please, judge for yourself.

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Trump is the Revenge of the Nineties

Josh Simon
Georg Diez
07.12.16
60 min
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Josh has brought some beers. It is Sunday evening, he has some papers due soon, he has a cold, he has one hour to talk about the lessons from Trump. We sit in the deserted building of the Department of Government. I have been really looking forward to this conversation. Josh is one of those people you rarely meet even at a place like Harvard. He is young, he has a sharp intellect and a keen understanding of how to use it. He is all about politics, but not in the way that would make you feel that you know what he is going to say. He has a clear set of things he believes, I think, but he is also formulating his views as he goes along. He is a truly exciting voice in the desolate landscape of political thinking. Because this is what it is all about: How to revive the practise of left and liberal thinking. In the face of Trump. But also in the tradition of what the politics of rights and respect could be like for the 21st century.

The Triumph of Arab Porn

15.11.16
60 min
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Masturbation is as central to the Arab Spring as it is to Arab Porn, states Youssef Rakha, inventive, intriguing novelist from Cairo, in his essay “Arab Porn”. He wrote the text for 60pages after a workshop in Cairo in the fall of 2015 – the implications of what he has to say about the nature of political protests, their narcissistic way of turning a common cause into a vanity project, the irresponsibility of a lot of the people involved, but mainly the understanding that this is what politics should look like, a mass of people on the street or on Tahrir Square, presumably with very little plan of what to do with the notion of power: This all has a strange resonance today, after the failure of a liberal approach to politics which led to a US president Trump. You can learn from the future of democracy by studying the authoritarian past, sadly. Listen to what Youssef has to say.

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The Trump Puzzle

Georg Diez
Karin Pettersson
01.11.16
60 min
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One week to go, and still, the question is: What does this mean? Apart from the fact that Donald Trump is a racist, a sexist, a liar and a very dangerous person who would possibly or not destroy democracy in the US and thus with further consequences in other parts of the world as well. Is he part of a larger trend, away from a democratic consensus even in so called democratic countries? Is he a force of a larger authoritarian trend? Illiberal democracies and undemocratic liberalism, as Yascha Mounk calls it? And where does that leave Europe, where we are from, Karin and me, Sweden and Germany? We are in this privileged spot for a specific time, Harvard for one year. But we will return. Time will move on. What will be then? What will we be? Who will we be? Karin and I sat down at the Coop bookstore at Harvard Yard on a particularily crisp and clear sunny morning. Karin is a journalist like me, in charge of the opinion page of the Aftonbladet in Stockholm and a former politician for the Swedish Social Democrats. She is no longer a member.

On Refugees

27.10.16
60 min
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When the Indian writer Aman Sethi first talked to me about the refugees, he had a very different perspective: He said, think of the people who come to Europe not as weak, don’t fall into the trap of making them dependent upon your help, your jugdement, your jurisdiction for that matter – think of them as strong and self-reliant, as humans who chose to leave the place they called home and come to this country, a brave and uniquely individual decision. One year later, the discourse is different. It is, in Germany and in other countries, a profoundly anti-human-rights discourse, it is the preperation for a post-democratic regime which relies on keeping the people called refugees outside. Aman called them musafir, the wanderer. He has been here forever.

Anger Management: The Eternal Experiment

Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
04.04.17
60 min
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Anger Management: The Filter Democracy

Cass Sunstein
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
27.03.17
60 min
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Anger Management: The Ruins of Democracy

Peter Galison
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
13.03.17
60 min
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Anger Management: What Is Wrong With Human Rights?

Sam Moyn
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
07.03.17
60 min
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Anger Management: The Trump Challenge

Theda Skocpol
Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
06.02.17
60 min
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Anger Management: Democracy For the 21st Century

Karin Pettersson
Georg Diez
02.02.17
60 min
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Trump is the Revenge of the Nineties

Josh Simon
Georg Diez
07.12.16
60 min
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The Triumph of Arab Porn

15.11.16
60 min
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The Trump Puzzle

Georg Diez
Karin Pettersson
01.11.16
60 min
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On Refugees

27.10.16
60 min
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