I was fortunate to have the opportunity to chat with Andrew Keen as part of his ‘Keen on’ podcast series. The prompt for our discussion was my recent note:
Things are breaking. Not unimportant things. Basic infrastructures and core services. States. And not in one or two places. Call it polycrisis, call it history, this is all happening now.
From that, we have a wide ranging conversation about a growing array of examples of institutional failure and state fragility. In it, I tried to express my thoughts about the distinctly weird and uneven world we now find ourselves in, conditions in which it is perhaps easier to distinguish what is fading and failing than it is to ascertain what is coming into being. ‘No longer and not yet’, to adopt an expression from Hermann Broch.
You can find the podcast episode on Apple, Spotify and through most other major platforms. The video recording of the livestream is available here and via Twitter. There are plenty of other worthwhile episodes in the series, one conversation I particularly liked was with Roger Cohen, in which he reflects on ‘Life, Politics, and How to Rebuild Our Age of Undoing’.
I really enjoyed this exchange with Andrew, it was a good chance to think aloud about where we find ourselves and might be going. I hope you might find it of interest.
And if anyone wants to get in touch, feel free to contact me: info.hobson@gmail.com