BlomCast

Send us a textIn dieser Folge gehe ich zurück zum frühesten aller Wendepunkte der menschlichen Geschichte. Die Primatologin Julia Fischer studiert Paviane und besucht seit vielen Jahren dieselbe Gruppe von Tieren, um ihre Kommunikation und ihr Sozialverhalten besser zu verstehen. Obwohl andere Pavian-Arten brutal und hierarchisch sind, sind diese Tiere anders, sanfter, und haben flachere Hierarchien. Wie entstehen die Strukturen einer Primatengesellschaft? Sind die Unterschiede zwischen Ihnen durch Umweltfaktoren bedingt, und was können uns Paviane und andere Primaten über Menschen und ihre Gesellschaften sagen?Support the show

Send us a textUlrich Schmid ist Slawist und unterrichtet an der Universität Sankt Gallen. Sein Wendepunkt ist die Revolution 1917 und besonders die Rolle von Lenin dabei. Einmal mehr stellt sich die Frage, ob Revolutionen wirklich radikale Umbrüche sind, oder ob sie nicht auch viele Kontinuitäten kaschieren. Die Art der Machtausübung und das Verständnis davon, wie das Verhältnis zwischen Regierenden und Regierten funktioniert, ist jedenfalls bemerkenswert stabil geblieben, argumentiert Ulrich Schmid, und auch Putins historische Vorbilder zeigen, wie er die russische Geschichte sieht. Wir sprechen darüber, was Wladimir Putin von Lenin gelernt hat, welche Rolle Alexander Dugin im neuen Russland spielt, wie sich nicht nur in Russland längst ein postmoderner Wahrheitsbegriff durchgesetzt hat und welche russischen Autorinnen und Autoren mein Gast heute liest.Support the show

Send us a textThe “Golden Age” during the seventeenth century was a period of unparalleled power, wealth, and splendour in the Netherlands. It was made possible by the maritime trade with Asia and the economic growth the East India Company brought to the country. But it carried the seed of its downfall. As the rich grew richer they not only speculated with tulips, but they increasingly bought themselves political power and became an oligarchy. Bas van Babel is an economic historian and researcher who looks at the fascinating relationship between markets and societies. We speak about how the Black Death shaped Europe, how important Church Law was for the development of a middle class, the different development of eastern and western Europe, and about the beginnings of capitalism. In fact, we have so much to talk about that we will have to speak about Bas's present work in a part two!Support the show

Send us a textThe so-called Irish Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852 killed up to one million people and led to the emigration of hundreds of thousands of others. It left a deep imprint on Irish, European and American history and memory. But this was not a natural catastrophe, argues economic historian Padraic Scanian. He sees the famine as a result of globalisation, and of a very Victorian determination to let the market do its work and discipline the undeserving poor. The stereotype of the lazy Irishman was born out of the quasi colonial perspective of large landowners and London bureaucrats. The famine may be in the past, Padraic observes, but the mechanisms that led to it may still be more present than we think.Support the show

Send us a textDie russische Geschichte ist voller dramatischer Wendepunkte — von Peter dem Großen und Katharina II. bis zur Revolution und dem Fall der Sowjetunion — aber hinter den Ereignissen steht eine große Kontinuität von Macht, davon, wie sie funktioniert und worauf sie sich gründet. Macht in Russland hat schon seit Jahrhunderten anders funktioniert als im Westen, erzählt Jörg Baberowski, einer der profiliertesten Russland-Historiker. Das liegt nicht an einer “russischen Seele” oder einer besonderen historischen Mission der russischen Kultur, sondern daran, wer in Russland wen kontrolliert und beherrscht hat. Diese historischen Beharrungskräfte setzen sich bis ins heutige Russland fort. Kann eine Analyse der russischen Macht auch helfen, den Zusammenbruch des liberalen Westens besser zu verstehen?Support the show

Trevor Jackson is an economic historian teaching at Berkeley. I talk to him about the current political situation of the universities and the science, and about his own research area, the history of capitalism, which has always been prone to crashes and other crises. The development of a capitalist economy is also the story of the elites learning to evade responsibility for the failures, while reaping the rewards of markets. What role does elite impunity play in the current crisis of political legitimacy? Could this be changed, and, if so, how? 

In a life lived between Ghana, Britain and the USA, Kwame Anthony Appiah has had ample opportunity to reflect on identities and difference, as well as what binds us together. Our conversation starts with the struggles of decolonisation and moves towards trying to understand the role and importance a liberal education for functioning democracies. Are people in charge of their own lives or do they need to be empowered to take charge of them, and of their societies? And have Western democracies been failed by their elites, which abolished the guardrails that kept democracies functioning? The liberal project may have failed. Can it be rescued by a groundswell of democratic determination? And what place could ideas like cosmopolitanism, identity and honour have in his process?

The current crisis of democracy and governance goes back a long way, and has a lot in common with the development of capitalism, says my guest Sunil Amrith, professor of history at Yale University. The logic of profit and exploitation not only damaged natural systems, it profoundly changed societies and their ways of organising themselves and understanding themselves. From its very beginnings, from the stock exchange Amsterdam to the foundation of Singapore, from the sugar plantations of Madeira to the palm oil plantings today, there are patterns that repeat themselves in different historical contexts. The crisis of the so-called West is one consequence of this development, but it is seen in a very different light within the global south with its historical experience of colonialism and globalised exploitations. Sunil and I also talk about what comes after the logic of humans exploiting nature and setting themselves apart from it. Is a different narrative possible, or is homo sapiens irretrievably caught up in the acceleration of history?

The first episode in this new series of the BlomCast looks at a truly historic event: the end of the “West”. With the new US administration, the transatlantic alliance has practically collapsed leaving Europe exposed to a dictator on its eastern flank whose war has already cost some one million lives. Whither Europe? Will it become a collection of colonies and puppet states steered by hostile powers in a neo-imperial world? Or can European find the determination and energy to create a new alliance centred on a new kind of Europe? Nathalie Tocci is at the heart of the European project. She has advised on and written EU strategy, is director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome and has researched and written extensively, among others for the Guardian, the New York Times and Le Monde. In my conversation with Nathalie we try to understand whether the collapse of the West is analogous to that of the Soviet Union, how the global picture has shifted, and whether the values at the heart of the European project can be enough to motivate a real transformation.

Societal collapse is a topic hotly debated not only among climate scientists and activists. But why do formerly prosperous and powerful societies break down? And what makes them resilient? Are the reasons the same for ancient Rome and the empire of the Incas, for the Chinese Tang dynasty and the culture of Rapanui (Easter Islands)? Danilo Brozovic has made a study of literature dealing with societal collapse throughout history. Talking to him was really, really fascinating, and we discussed past, present and future.

Alle Kulturen sehen dieselben Sterne (wenn auch auf beiden Hemisphären unterschiedlich), erzählen sich aber ganz unterschiedliche Geschichten darüber. Tatsächlich gibt es überraschende Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Sternbildern der Australischen Ureinwohner und der Mesopotamier, der Buschleute und der Maya, die nur schwer zu erklären sind, sagt Raoul Schrott, Dichter und Universalgelehrter. Ich habe aus diesem Gespräch immens viel gelernt und habe jetzt mehr fragen als davor. Was können uns Sternbilder und Mythen über die Geschichte der ältesten Kulturen erzählen? Und was sagen sie über den ersten Wendepunkt der Menschheitsgeschichte, als die ersten Homo sapiens Afrika verließen?

Modernity is a Viennese phenomenon, says historian Richard Cockett, who is currently working as senior editor at The Economist. The cauldron of Vienna ca. 1900 with its dynamism, its migrants and its cultural new beginnings and especially the political and intellectual energies after the First World War created panoply of new approaches which revolutionised life far beyond Vienna, and indeed Europe. As creative minds and experienced city planners, film directors, engineers, philosophers, economists, artists, and designers fled from the Nazis, the world would never be quite the same again, from fitted kitchens to neo-classical economics, from Hollywood to shopping malls, from nuclear physics to right-wing populism, all had their debut what had been an imperial capital and was now an experiment in living.

"We Have Never Been Woke" is the title of Musa Al-Gharbi's brilliantly polemic analysis of an educational and social elite that believes it has all the answers. He calls this professional class symbolic capitalists — people who make their living from manipulating the symbols of our societies, i.e. journalists, academics, creative professions, the media, NGOs, etc. The turning point here is the arrival of wokeness as the ultimate arbiter of truth, coupled with great moral rigidity and intolerance of other opinions. The reason for this, Musa suggests, may be elite overproduction, which means that too many qualified people are competing for two few jobs, and therefore have to develop not only professional, but also ideological points of distinction and advantage. Has symbolic capitalism taken over the public sphere?

Die Artenvielfalt bricht weltweit so rasend schnell zusammen, dass die Naturwissenschaft schon von einem Sechsten Artensterben sprechen. In Europa sind beispielsweise die Insekten um bis zu 80% zurückgegangen, die der Singvögel um etwa 50%. Franz Essl ist Biodiversitätsforscher an der Universität Wien. Seine Wahl zum Wissenschaftler des Jahres 2023 verdankt er auch seiner Arbeit in der Wissenschaftsvermittlung und als politischer und wissenschaftlicher Berater verschiedener NGOs. Der Einsatz für die Erhaltung der Artenvielfalt in der eigenen Landschaft war ihm schon immer so wichtig, wie ihre Erforschung. Ein Gespräch über Naturwissenschaft und eine Kindheit am Land, über Wissenschaft und Macht. Ist es möglich, eine ökologische Transformation voranzutreiben ohne die Bürger:innen dabei zu verlieren? Wie kann eine wirklich breite demokratische Diskussion über eine gemeinsame Zukunft entstehen?

In this fascinating conversation we explore the history of liberal ideas from Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mills until today. Samuel Moyn is particularly interested in liberalism during the Cold War and the changes these ideas were subjected to during the battle of the ideologies. But we also explore how important theological traditions are for liberal thinking and how the philosophical principles underlying this broad current of ideas — freedom from oppression, emancipation, and human rights — can be revived in our current world.

Warum sind so viele Menschen der Meinung, dass ihre Gesellschaften zerrissen sind, dass die Demokratie am Ende ist, dass sie überwältigt werden durch Fremdheit, durch Migration, dass sie in einer Welt leben, die sie nicht mehr verstehen? Das hat mehrere Gründe, glaube ich, aber zwei scheinen mir besonders wichtig: Demographie und Technologie. In alternden Gesellschaften ändert sich vieles, besonders, wenn sie gleichzeitig von neuen Technologien von innen heraus völlig umgekrempelt werden. Ich versuche dieses Phänomen einmal zu umreißen und mir auch Gedanken darüber zu machen, was diese Zerrissenheit verringern und vielleicht sogar beenden könnte.

It is an age-old question: can we learn from history? Yes! says distinguished political scientist Roman Krznaric in his new book, which looks at the past for inspiration for building a better future. From striking low-caste women in Kerala to Suffragettes in Great Britain, from the first explosion of capitalism in 17-century Amsterdam to the rise of AI and from Ibn Khaldun to an ancient water authority in Spain, he shows that we are often stuck in a constructed version of history and that the true diversity of different pasts and experiments in living throughout the ages and the continents hold lessons we will need for our survival. A fascinating account.

Celebrated science writer Gaia Vince takes us into a future that is strangely familiar and yet quite different. The future will be determined by managing the immense and irresistible forces of climate change and global migration, and that can only become possible by embracing radical change and making courageous choices. There is no way forward without transformation, says Gaia, but ultimately this transformation will improve the lives even of those who are too trapped in their model of success to see the possibility of hope.

Richard Whatmore reads the late eighteenth century very much as a warning to the present. Some of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers were despairing of the fact that their fight against prejudice and fanaticism, against the power or princes and priests, had led to a mercantile state living in a perpetual state of war, and a society whose fanaticism had turned into a blind worship of freedom, individuality, and rights. Richard is a fascinating sparring partner for ideas ranging from a critical moment in intellectual history featuring thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, or Mary Wollstonecraft to Friedrich Hayek and the very present and political resonances of these thoughts. Faced the cruelty of the French revolution and the reality of mercantilism, colonialism and a political sphere dominated by the interests of private entrepreneurs and shareholders, a generation of intellectuals had to construct new strategies in the face of disaster. 

In this episode I talk about the amazing history of women artists, and of who is written into history, and who isn't. Katy Hessel writes not only about female artists, but also about ways of seeing, of telling stories, and of telling the story of humanity. Why were women, even if they had been hugely successful artists in their own time, written out of history? And why is it still necessary to make this point? Katy Hessel is a passionate advocate — not only for women artists, but also for a better, more inclusive and richer way of approaching art, and life.

Four great forces have changed human cultures, says Olivier Roy distinguished political scientist and expert on radical Islam: a change in sexual mores since 1968, the internet, the liberalisation of global finance, and the free movement of people. the result is a flattened world, in which old hierarchies count for little and implicit culture is being replaced by explicit norms, a world without a way forward, and therefore a profoundly conservative one. Floor us in this fascinating exploration of cultures in crisis and what might replace them.

Maja Göpel ist nicht nur die wohl bekannteste Zukunftsforscherin Deutschlands, sie ist auch eine anregende Gesprächspartnerin und Analystin. Die Energiewende und die Stärkung der Demokratie sind Themen, die sie besonders umtreiben. Wir sprechen über Klima, Superreiche, wie Demokratien ticken und was nötig ist, um für eine sinnvolle, lebenswerte Zukunft zu arbeiten.

Kenan Malik is simply one of the most nuanced and profound thinkers about race and cultural identity I know. You may have seen his columns in the Observer or his books The Quest for a Moral Compass or Not So Black And White. Here we talk about when and why the idea of different races was invented to justify slavery and turn people against one another and how this arbitrary distinction between people became a bedrock of populism, and how cultural essentialism and the cult of purity have affected not only the political right, but also the left.

Is the polycrisis a side effect of progress and victorious liberalism? The victory of the liberal world has dramatically transformed life on this planet in a very short space of time. In the process, many of the basic liberal ideas have been distorted beyond recognition. Is the liberal project a victim of its own success and, if so, is it doomed to failure?

Ist die Polykrise eine Nebenwirkung des Fortschritts und eines siegreichen Liberalismus? Der Sieg der liberalen Welt transformierte das Leben auf diesem Planeten innerhalb kürzester Zeit auf dramatische Weise. Dabei sind viele der liberalen Grundideen zur Unkenntlichkeit verzerrt worden. Ist das liberale Projekt also Opfer seines eigenen Erfolgs und, wenn ja, ist es damit zum Scheitern verdammt?

Almost exactly a generation ago, the triumphant West proclaimed the victory of the liberal world, of the liberal project. From now on, there would be only one model for societies: liberal democracies in a global market. Things have turned out quite differently. The world is in a polycrisis and today the core ideas of the liberal project - individual freedoms, tolerance, progressive ideals - are fighting for their political survival. How did it come to this?

Vor ziemlich genau einer Generation verkündete der triumphierende Westen den Sieg der liberalen Welt des liberalen Projekts. Von nun an würde es nur noch ein Modell für Gesellschaften geben: liberale Demokratien in einem globalen Markt. Es ist ganz anders gekommen. Die Welt steckt in einer Polykrise und heute kämpfen die Kernideen des liberalen Projekts — individuelle Freiheiten, Toleranz, progressive Ideale — um ihr politisches Überleben. Wie ist es so weit gekommen?

Philipp Ther erforscht Transformationen in der Geschichte. Der Wittgenstein Preis-Träger und Autor historischer mehrerer Bestseller beschäftigt sich besonders mit Phasen, in denen die Welt sich radikal verändert. Ich frage ihn, ob wir in der Gegenwart in so einer Phase sind, welche transformativen Momente in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten besonders zu unserer gegenwärtigen Situation beigetragen haben und ob das liberale Projekt sich totgelaufen hat.

For this episode, I am delighted to welcome the distinguished philosopher Michael Sandel, whose Harvard course on moral philosophy has been followed by millions of people online. Michael's book The Tyranny of Merit trenchantly analyses the perversion of meritocracy  and what the rule of the credentialed and of technocrats is doing to our democracies. While the social and political elite claims for itself to rule through merit alone, the idea of merit itself has not only been corrupted by mechanisms of exclusion, it is also a fraught concept in itself. In our conversation, we explore the politics of humiliation, the theological dimension of thinking that we get what we deserve, the populist backlash against a sense of entitlement, and how to address these fault lines which threaten to split our societies in two.Michael Sandel will appear at the Vienna Humanities Festival 2023: https://www.humanitiesfestival.at/sandel

The idea that humans can dominate nature and rule over it has popped up quite recently in human history and has come to sweep the planet, and to change and degrade its natural systems. But where does this idea come from, how has it influenced human history and what will come after its collapse amid the climate crisis?

What part do our collective stories play in historical turning points? Can new narratives change a culture, a society, a political structure, or do narratives react to changes to explain them afterwards? What do narratives inspire, and how are they disseminated? Martin Puchner, professor for comparative literature at Harvard University and author of, among others, The Story of Culture, is the person to ask. We speak about the importance of technologies such as writing and print, but also of creative misunderstanding and appropriation, a political minefield, as well as a main mechanism of cultural transmission. What can we learn from this convoluted history, and is it possible to initiate a narrative turn today, away from destruction and domination towards a more symbiotic understanding of culture?

a conversation with Andrea WulfSometimes the world is reinvented and turned upside down not in a glittering metropolis, but in the provinces. This was the case in Jena, a tiny German town, at the end of the eighteenth century, as a gaggle of young and unconventional poets, scientists and philosophers descended on the university there. The result was the kernel of German Romanticism, Andrea Wulf tells me. She has written a stunning group biography on the German romantics, their ideas and their personal lives. In this episode, we discuss the importance of German Romanticism, its idea of the self and its new ways of relating to nature, a historical turning point that is still colouring our current debates and our thinking about ourselves, and the climate crisis.

Do we need a New Enlightenment to cut through a new obscurantism? Or is the Enlightenment part of a bad past of racism, slavery, and exploitation? In many ways, the ideas of the Enlightenment are tarnished by their historical association with historical injustices, dictatorships and utopian experiments that left a bloody trace throughout history, an inhuman rationalism more akin to capitalist excess than to liberté-égalité-fraternité. But this is only one face of Enlightenment thinking, an invention of later historians. Behind this sanitised facade lies a landscape of hair-raising debates, doubts and discussions that have lost nothing of their power to astonish and to question the status quo and the lies societies like to tell themselves.

Since Icarus flew too close to the sun, the common story of humans and their machines tells of hopes, fears and ambitions. From Leonardo to industrialisation, the First World War and the nuclear threat, this relationship has had many chapters. People have built machines to imitate their faculties and have recognised themselves in them and developed in parallel with them. With the rise of artificial intelligence — machines that can learn by themselves — the traditional balance could be upset. Are human beings merely carbon-based prototypes of a more complex machine intelligence?

Seit Ikarus zu nahe an der Sonne flog, spricht die gemeinsame Geschichte von Menschen und Maschinen von Ängsten und Hoffnungen, von menschlichem Ehrgeiz. Von Leonardos Entwürfen über die Industrialisierung, den Ersten Weltkrieg und die Atombombe hat diese Beziehung viele Kapitel gehabt. Menschen haben sich in Maschinen wiedererkannt, haben ihre Fähigkeiten und ihre Intelligenz imitiert, haben vor ihnen Angst gehabt und sich parallel zu ihnen entwickelt. Mit dem Aufstieg der künstlichen Intelligenz — einer Maschine, die selbst lernt — könnte dieses Gleichgewicht kippen. Sind Menschen nur Prototypen einer komplexeren Maschinen-Intelligenz?

When the Roman empire was at its zenith it was the largest empire ever seen, an unchallengeable power with mighty legions, an efficient administration, unparalleled economic power and a glittering metropolis at its centre. The fact that it took just a few generations to unravel was intimately connected not only to corruption and decadence, but also to climate change and imported epidemics sweeping the empire, argues Kyle Harper, author of the bestselling: The Fall of Rome. I am excited to speak to Kyle about the many reasons of the Fall of Rome, and the lessons its epic collapse might hold for our future.

Around 1450, the greatest empires and the greatest markets of the world were China, India and the Ottoman empire, while also cultures like the Khmer in Cambodia and the Aztecs in Mesoamerica projected great power and achievements. Europe was a collection of small countries in a constant state of war, a great step back from the civilisation of the Roman empire. 300 years later Europe ruled the world. How was that possible, and how important were viruses and gunpowder, religion and geography?

Um 1450 waren die größten und zivilisiertesten Mächte und Märkte in China und Indien, das osmanische Reich, auch Kulturen wie die Khmer in Kambodscha und die Azteken in Mittelamerika projizierten Macht. Europa bestand aus Kleinreichen, die dauernd im Krieg miteinander lagen und die seit dem römischen Reich einen Rückschritt erlebt hatten. Trotzdem war es das kleine, provinzielle Europa, das 300 Jahre später die Welt regierte. Wie konnte es dazu kommen? Wie wichtig waren dabei Viren und Kanonen, Religion und Geographie?

Long before the bible, humans imagined that they could subjugate nature, and even death itself. With Christianity, this interesting illusion was spread throughout the globe. But where did it come from, and what does it mean combined with the 21st-century technologies?

Lange vor der Bibel entstand die Idee, Menschen könnten die Natur unterwerfen. Mit dem Christentum wurde sie über den ganzen Globus verbreitet. Aber wo kam sie her und was bedeutet sie verbunden mit den Technologien des 21. Jahrhunderts?

History has always been the story of the human past. With the advent of climate science and historical research into climate patterns, a new kind of history has become possible looking at societies as part of a dymanic natural environment. This opens new perspectives on the rise and fall of cultures, from the first cities and the Fall or Rome to the climate catastrophe of today.

Geschichte war immer die Untersuchung der Vergangenheit von Menschen. Mit neuen Forschungsmethoden der Klimawissenschaften sind aber ganz neue Zugänge möglich geworden: Die Geschichte menschlicher Gesellschaften in einer dynamischen natürlichen Umgebung. Das öffnet ganz neue Perspektiven auf Aufstieg und Fall ganzer Kulturen, von den ersten Stadtkulturen und dem Fall von Rom bis hin zur Klimakatastrophe der Gegenwart.

Antwort: Grünes Wachstum — die Lösung der Klimakatastrophe?

Enlightened utopias tried to create turning points in history, but the republics of virtue they imagined never materialized. What is it with Enlightened utopias that condemns them to fail?

Aufgeklärte Utopien wollten Wendepunkte schaffen, um die Geschichte zum Guten zu wenden und zu überwinden. Aber die Tugendrepubliken, die sie wollten, wurden nie Wirklichkeit? Warum müssen aufgeklärte Utopien scheitern?

As nature changed during the Little Ice Age, so did the societies depending on it. Trial and error created successful adaptations as societies learned to cope with colder climates, leading to societies that resemble our own: urbanised, relying on international markets, and increasingly on science and professionals. This is the rise of the middle class, of the Enlightenment, of liberalism, and of imperialism. It also raises the question: can our response to the climate crisis learn from what happened 400 years ago?

Als die Natur sich während der Kleinen Eiszeit veränderte, mussten die Gesellschaften, die von ihr abhingen, sich anpassen. Dies schuf Gesellschaften, die unseren ähneln: urbanisiert, angewiesen auf internationale Märkte und immer stärker dominiert durch Wissenschaft und eine erstarkende Mittelschicht. Dies ist der Aufstieg des Bürgertums, der Aufklärung, des Liberalismus und des Imperialismus. So entsteht eine Frage: Was, wenn überhaupt, kann die Gegenwart im Hinblick auf die Klimakrise davon lernen, was vor 400 Jahren passierte?

With its long, bitter winters, rainy summers and ruined harvests, the Little Ice Age put European societies under severe pressure during the 16th and 17th centuries. Successful strategies of coping with climate change emerged slowly, but with great effects. Two different responses, from rigidity to transformation, are exemplified by the historical fates of Madrid and Amsterdam.

Mit langen, klirrenden Wintern, verregneten Sommern und verdorbenen Ernten setzte die kleine Eiszeit Europas Gesellschaften während des 15. und 17. Jahrhunderts stark unter Druck. Erst langsam entwickelten sich erfolgreiche Strategien der Anpassung an die neuen Bedingungen. Die Schicksale von Madrid und Amsterdam zeigen unterschiedliche Schicksale, von Zusammenbruch bis Transformation. 

Between ca. 1570 and 1680, temperatures plummeted by two degrees Celsius on average, creating a vast agricultural crisis, famine, and social unrest.Why was the world plunged into winter, what happened in nature and how did societies react — and what do witch trials have to do with it all?

Zwischen ca. 1570 und 1680 fielen die Temperaturen weltweit um etwa zwei Grad Celsius. Das verursachte Hungersnöte und Unruhen. Warum wurde es kälter, was passierte und wie reagierten Gesellschaften auf diese Krise, und was hat das alles mit Hexenverbrennungen zu tun?