Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast

Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast

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is a series of conversations with authors and editors from throughout Europe and beyond. Our 90+ partners are journals, magazines and associates from Belgium to Belarus, from Norway to Bulgaria, publishing literature and analyzing politics, reflecting on culture and bringing diverse voices to a joint conversation.

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Articles

Cover for: Living dead democracy

Overlapping crises, enforced political passivity, a new political normal: all things that gradually dismantle a democracy. Ferenc Laczó talks the death of democracy in a new episode of Gagarin.

Cover for: No more turning a blind eye

Russian aggression, climate disaster and technological singularity – it takes a professional optimist to seek the humanist potential in these threats. An interview with André Wilkens, director of the European Cultural Foundation.

Cover for: The myth of sudden death

Although it makes for a great dramatic effect, the theories of the sudden death of democracy disregard the gradual erosion and capture of institutions, and the role of the populace – argues political scientist John Keane.

Cover for: The fight to be white

The centuries-old debate over whether certain countries belong to the East or the centre of Europe has fairly little to do with geography. In this Gagarin podcast episode, anthropologist Iván Kalmár discusses privilege, race and cultural hegemony.

Cover for: Refusing victimhood and commanding attention

Well-intentioned appeals from the collective West to encourage cultural dialogue between victim and aggressor reflect existing power structures. Reconciliation, Kateryna Botanova explains, cannot be imposed from outside.

Cover for: Why it united in the first place

Ukraine seems to be more dedicated to European unity than the EU itself. And despite the Kremlin’s best attempts to isolate Russians, a tipping point is inevitable. Until then, we must support cultural workers – their presence is crucial for meaningful change, argues André Wilkens on the podcast.

Cover for: Putin’s big lie and the allies that didn’t last

Anton Shekhovtsov tells about Russian imperialist mythology and how the insane propaganda of Ukraine’s denazification came about; the new status of Belarus as a mere vassal state; desertion as a political option; and how western elites have abandoned their alliances with Vladimir Putin – with a few notable exceptions.

Cover for: Learning to live with the madness

Distrust in authority is the fundamental reason for low vaccination rates across eastern Europe. But we shouldn’t think of anti-science as the expression of mere ignorance, nor primarily as a grass-roots movement.

Cover for: Refusing refugees: on forced migration

Europe is facing a demographic crisis, resulting in suffocating labour shortages, and yet incoming migration is more and more rejected in mainstream politics. Can the EU come to terms with this great contradiction without an implosion?

Cover for: Let’s make cabbage great again

Let’s make cabbage great again

Podcast: Vaccines in West Africa and whiteness in the East of Europe

How is whiteness constructed and why is it so fragile? What’s at stake in discussing colonial memory for eastern Europeans? Do they actually eat a lot of cabbage?

Cover for: The trillion euro question

The EU needs to prove itself the champion it has long been projected to be, argues André Wilkens in our interview about recovery funds, cultural transformation, budget lines and bank holidays. The director of the European Cultural Foundation also addresses his own pandemic experience as a migratory cultural agent.

Cover for: To each their own censorship

When does political pressure reach its breaking point? As censorship methods get subtler, eastern European journalists rely on the popular support for independent journalism to stand their ground against rampant Orbánization.

Cover for: Imitation games

Imitation games

The legacy of 1989 on contemporary politics

The events of 1989 unleashed a world of discovery. Economic determinism was replaced by imitation of the West. Was that process authentically spontaneous or were eastern Europeans staging a script they did not write? Either way, imitation created a crisis of identity, the consequences of which are still unfolding.

Cover for: Podcast: Glänta’s editorial scope

Podcast: Glänta’s editorial scope

A conversation with Göran Dahlberg

Translation collaborations, philosophy parties, short videos, journals within journals – just some of the innovative means Glänta uses to reach beyond its base in Gothenburg, Sweden. Join Sarah Waring in peering around the cultural journal’s door with editor Göran Dahlberg in this episode of Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast.

Cover for: Podcast: Spectres of fascism

Podcast: Spectres of fascism

A conversation with James Miller

A defining debate of the political moment? Or liberal hairsplitting? Eurozine talks to James Miller, editor of Public Seminar, about what we mean when we talk of fascism – and whether it makes any difference anyway.

Cover for: Wasn’t the East-West divide supposed to go away?

Wasn’t the East-West divide supposed to go away?

Discussing ‘The Legacy of division: Europe after 1989’ with the curators

Was it foolish to expect Europe to unite after the Iron Curtain fell? What kept the wounds from healing? Talking the post-Communist heritage in Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast.

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