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29.08.2025
33 Minuten
As Vicky Richardson argues in this talk, cultural institutions
today stand at a crossroads. Once dedicated to excellence,
artistic achievement, and the preservation of tradition, they are
now paralysed by fear. Leadership teams are more concerned with
ideological positioning than curatorial expertise, and in their
attempts to reframe institutions as platforms for political
debate, they risk alienating both their audiences and their own
staff. This talk explores the roots of the crisis facing our
museums and galleries. Institutions must be held to higher
standards—before they destroy themselves.
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15.08.2025
23 Minuten
The Industrial Revolution was supposed to set humanity free. It
promised progress—mastery over nature, freedom from suffering,
and a future shaped by human reason. It gave us the means to
solve problems that once seemed like fate, to subject the world
to human ingenuity and build a civilisation of liberty, equality,
and fraternity.
But something went wrong. Instead of controlling the world, we
turned inward, seeking to control ourselves. Today, we no longer
dream of engineering great structures—we seek to engineer the
human mind. The great optimism of the Enlightenment has given way
to a deep post-liberal pessimism, a belief that the real problem
isn't the world but us.
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08.08.2025
43 Minuten
In this talk, Ann Furedi argues that Human civilization is built
on the distinctiveness of our species—the awareness that we exist
in time, with a past, present, and future, and that we are unique
in our capacity for rationality, morality, and creativity. But
this foundational understanding is being dismantled.
Posthumanism & Post-Anthropocentrism – The dominant academic
and cultural narratives now deny human exceptionalism. They argue
that human rationality is no more significant than a hare’s
ability to run fast.
The Reversal of Human Privilege – We are no longer elevating
animals to human standards (as in the Great Ape Project);
instead, we are lowering ourselves to the level of animals. Books
now teach us to embrace our animality, and even bestiality is
being reframed as just another form of queering boundaries.
The End of the Human Narrative – Civilization has always depended
on human consciousness, the ability to reflect, plan, and build
for future generations. If we reject the idea that humans are
special, we lose the foundation of civilization itself.
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01.08.2025
16 Minuten
The Industrial Revolution was the single greatest leap forward in
human history. As Nikos Sotirakopoulos argues in this talk, it
didn’t just give us more—more wealth, more technology, more life
expectancy—it gave us a different kind of life altogether. It
unleashed human ingenuity, freed individuals from drudgery, and
created a society where innovation and creativity could flourish.
But today, the very foundations of industrial civilisation are
under attack. Environmentalists, neo-Luddites, and cultural
elites see human progress as a sin. They tell us that reshaping
the world is destructive, that human impact on nature is evil,
and that industry is something to apologise for rather than
celebrate. Worse, even the defenders of industrial society fail
to grasp its full significance, reducing it to GDP charts rather
than recognising it as the ultimate triumph of human reason,
freedom, and ambition.
The intellectual foundations that made it possible—free speech,
free markets, and a belief in human mastery over nature—are
eroding. If we do not fight for these values, the industrial
world we take for granted will disappear.
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25.07.2025
43 Minuten
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 was supposed to be a
triumphant moment for the West. But, as Tim Black argues in this
lecture, instead of securing a lasting victory for liberal
democracy, it created an existential crisis. For decades, the
Cold War had given the West a clear sense of purpose—defeating
communism, leading the "Free World," and shaping global history.
But with the USSR gone, Western elites were left disoriented,
scrambling for a new narrative. Enter Samuel Huntington.
In The Clash of Civilisations, he rejected the naïve optimism of
thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, who proclaimed "the end of
history." Instead, Huntington argued that the world was not
moving toward a universal liberal order, but toward an era of
civilizational conflict. Cultural and religious identities, not
ideology or economics, would define the post-Cold War
world.
Huntington’s great mistake? He saw the West as under siege from
external forces—Islam, China, and non-Western civilizations—but
failed to grasp the deeper rot. The true threat to Western
civilisation is not coming from Beijing or Tehran but from
within—from Western elites who have spent decades dismantling
their own culture, disavowing their own history, and undermining
the very values that once made the West dominant.
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Über diesen Podcast
Ideas Matter Podcast is home to talks from leading contemporary
thinkers on the most important political and cultural issues and
intellectual trends of our times. Many were recorded at or reflect
the topics discussed at Ideas Matter events, including Living
Freedom summer school, The Academy residential weekend and Debating
Matters schools debating competition.
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