#445 - A New History of the Renaissance: A Dialogue with Bernd Roeck

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Bernd Roeck about the Renaissance. They discuss what the Renaissance gave to the modern world, the Renaissance and the West, seven pillars of modernity, and the impact of other civilizations on the Renaissance. They discuss the level of impact that Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome deserve on the Renaissance, Christianity and the West, Islamic impact on the Renaissance, Western European marriage pattern, feudalism, origins of the University and the importance of art during the Renaissance. They also discuss the Gutenberg Press, New World discoveries, the high Renaissance, Socratic dialogue in the Renaissance, the Ottoman Empire, Martin Luther and the Reformation, the Habsburgs, post-Renaissance, the Renaissance’s impact on the future, and many more topics. Bernd Roeck was appointed to the Chair of General and Swiss History of Modern Times at the University of Zurich/ Switzerland in 1999. He served his University from 2009 to 2011 as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. He has been made emeritus since 2019. He was director of the German Study Centre in Venice, Italy and has taught at the University of Augsburg and the University of Bonn. In addition, he received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian republic in 1996 and was awarded the Merit Medal of the city of Augsburg (Bavaria/Germany). He is the author of numerous books, including the most recent, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Jon Lee Anderson about the Taliban in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. They provide an overview of Afghanistan, how the Taliban came to power, makeup of the Taliban, their intentions for an Islamic state, Hamid Karzai, Taliban resurgence in 2012, US withdrawal, Taliban reign at present, the future of Afghanistan, and many more topics. Jon Lee Anderson is an author and a staff writer for The New Yorker. As a longtime observer of political violence and revolutionary movements, he has reported from many war zones over the years, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Angola, Somalia, Mali, and Liberia. He has reported frequently from Latin America and profiled political leaders such as Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Nicolás Maduro. Anderson also wrote a celebrated biography of the late Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. He is the author of the latest book, To Lose A War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with John Tolan about the history of Islam. The give an overview of Islam, discuss the Prophet Muhammad, succession and split after his death, Umayyad caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, and 3 caliphates of 1000 AD. They talk about the Turks and Ottoman empire, Wahhabism, Arab nationalism, Islam in the 21st century, and many more topics. John Tolan is Professor of History at Université de Nantes and works on the history of religious and cultural relations between the Arab and Latin worlds in the Middle Ages and on the history of religious interaction and conflict between Jews, Christians and Muslims. He studied at Yale (BA classics), University of Chicago (MA & PhD history) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (HDR). He has taught in various universities in North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East; he is currently professor of History at the University of Nantes and member of the Academia Europæa and the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona. he is the author of numerous books, including the most recent book, Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with John Cochrane about the Euro. They talk about the Euro, European Central Bank (ECB), inflation and price stability, and the differences between the US Federal Reserve and the ECB. They talked about the creation of the Euro, joining the EU, debates about “end the Fed,” Greek crisis, covid-19 pandemic and inflation, future of the Euro, and many more topics. John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at MIT, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago before joining the Booth School in 1994, and visited UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2000-2001. Before coming to Hoover, Cochrane was the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he taught the MBA class “Advanced Investments” and a variety of PhD classes in Asset Pricing and Monetary Economics.He is also a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor of Finance and Economics (by Courtesy) at Stanford GSB, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Adjunct Scholar of the CATO Institute. He is a past President and Fellow of the American Finance Association, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has been an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and associate editor of several journals including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Business, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. He was a director of the NBER asset pricing program. Awards include the Bradley Prize, the APEE Adam Smith award, the TIAA-CREF Institute Paul A. Samuelson Award for Asset Pricing, the Chookaszian Endowed Risk Management Prize, the Faculty Excellence Award for MBA teaching and the McKinsey Award for Outstanding Teaching. He is the author of numerous books, including the most recent book (with co-authors Luis Garicano & Klaus Masuch), Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Walter Scheidel about ancient history. They ask what is ancient history, why Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are heavily emphasized, globalism, and classicism. They discuss some of the evolutionary history of humans, nomadic to stationary, human writing, The West, future of the classics, and many more topics. Walter Scheidel is a historian and author and is the Dickason Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Stanford University. He has his MPhil and PhD in Ancient History from the University of Vienna. He is one of the most cited Roman historians in an active faculty position. He has written over 270 articles, chapters, and reviews and is the author of over 22 books, including the most recent, What Is Ancient History? Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Moudhy Al-Rashid about ancient Mesopotamia. They discuss the uniqueness of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, importance of cuneiform, Sumerian to Akkadian writing, importance of clay for writing, ancient astronomy, and many more topics. Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Assyriologist and Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. She has a Bachelors in Philosophy from Columbia University’s Columbia College, an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies, and a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College), where she now researches the use of metaphor in descriptions of mental distress in cuneiform medical texts. She teaches Akkadian text classes and modules in the history of science in Mesopotamia at the Oriental Institute.Research interests include the history of science, medicine, and technology; science and medicine in the ancient Middle East; Iraq; cuneiform; Akkadian language; ancient North Arabian languages and scripts; archaeology; Assyriology; and historiography of Assyriology.She is the author of the latest book, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Laurence Hurst about the imperfection of evolution. They discuss mutation, selection, and adaptation, DNA and waste, larger and smaller populations, sickle cell anemia, embryology, gene editing and CRISPR, and many more topics. Laurence Hurst is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in The Milner Centre for Evolution, at the University of Bath, UK. He has his DPhil in Zoology from Oxford University. His research interests cover a broad span of evolution, genetics and genomics, predominantly using computational and mathematical techniques to understand the way genes and genomes evolve. He is the author of the latest book, The Imperfection of Evolution: The science of why we aren’t and can’t be perfect. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Michael P. Lynch about truth and politics. They discuss local and national politics, defining truth, “Twitbookians,” liberal pluralism, role of institutions, Rawls and morals, truth in politics, and many more topics. Michael P. Lynch is Provost Professor of the Humanities and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He has his PhD in philosophy from Syracuse University. His work mostly centers around truth, ethics, democracy, and epistemology of technology. He is the author of numerous books, including the most recent, On Truth In Politics: Why Democracy Demands It. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Georgios Varouxakis about “the West.” They define the west, discuss different meanings and ideas about the west, and how western ideas came from the east. They also talk about “L’Occident,” impact of Christendom, separating Russia from the West, and Comte. They talk about whether Western values can exist without Christianity, WWI and WWII, the cold war, decline of the West, future of the West, and many other topics. Georgios Varouxakis is Professor of the History of Political Thought and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at Queen Mary-University of London. He has a Masters in Legal and Political Theory at University College London (UCL) and a PhD in History at UCL. His work has concentrated on the nineteenth and twentieth-century history of political thought and intellectual history with a particular emphasis on international political thought, political thought on nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism, empire, and the intellectual history of ideas of “Europe” and “the West”, as well as of attitudes towards the EEC/EU. He is the author of numerous books including the most recent, The West: The History of An Idea. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli on inflation. They define inflation, provide positive and negative of inflation, and how prices are measured. They talk about housing interest rates, Federal Reserve, inflation in the 70s, Biden stimulus, Hyperinflation in Turkey and Argentina, Trump’s tariffs, and many more topics. Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics and the Director of the Rhodes Centre for International Economics and Finance at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He holds a joint appointment in the department of political science. He studies the politics of growth, distribution and decarbonization and why people continue to believe dubious economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. He is the author of many award-winning books including his most recent (co-authored with Nicolò Fraccaroli), Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. Nicolò Fraccaroli is an Economist at the World Bank and Visiting Scholar at Brown University. He has an MSc in Political Economy of Europe from the London School of Economics and PhD in Economics from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Adjunct Professor at Brown University. He has also worked at the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Inter-American Development Bank. His work focuses on political economy with data-driven applications to the topics of central banking, populism, and finance. His work has featured on the Financial Times, the Guardian, and other outlets, and in the speeches of various policymakers including Mario Draghi and Christine Lagarde. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe