Some histories are too long to be told in a single breath, and this one, stretching across two and a half centuries, asks to be heard slowly. A live conversation hosted by Resilience brought together the storyteller Alex Leff, the historian Dan Hoyer, and the host Asher Miller to consider the long contest between monarchy and revolution, hierarchy and equality, that has shaped the world now inherited. Their aim was less to settle old quarrels than to notice how the same tensions between progressive and reactionary impulses keep returning, and to ask whether a way of reading them might lie beyo
The King Is Dead, Now What? Revisiting 250 Years of the Struggle Between Monarchy, Revolution and Democracy
From the Bastille to neoliberal collapse, a 250-year struggle retold
Mark
Why hold a live conversation about a podcast series at all?
Mimi
Because the series is a map of 250 years, and the organizers wanted people to ask what it means now. Resilience says the conversation was about moving forward, not just the past.
Mark
Who was actually in the room?
Mimi
Asher Miller of the Post Carbon Institute hosted. Alex Leff, who created the series, and historian Dan Hoyer joined him. Hoyer studies social complexity and collapse.
Luke
Worth being clear about what we know. The announcement describes the topics. It doesn't report what any of the three actually said.
Mimi
That's right. We know the themes: how past societies handled upheaval, and the recurring pull between progressive and reactionary forces.
Mark
And the left/right spectrum?
Mimi
They aimed to understand it and ultimately move past it. That's the stated goal.
Luke
Stated goal, not result. Whether they got there, we can't say from this text.
Mark
What's the range of the series?
Mimi
The Bastille to fascism, communist revolutions to neoliberal collapse.
Luke
And calling this era a great unraveling is Resilience's framing, not an established finding.
Il Polso
- A century-spanning tangle of revolutions, fascisms and collapses is being pulled into a single conversation about how societies survive upheaval.
- The familiar left-right map is being questioned, as speakers search for language that fits a period the publication calls a great unraveling.
- Three speakers, one three-part audio series, and a live room are working to trace recurring cycles of progress and reaction back to their roots.
- The conversation is still open: its conclusions live in the recording, leaving listeners to finish the reckoning for themselves.
Some histories are too long to be told in a single breath, and this one, stretching across two and a half centuries, asks to be heard slowly. A live conversation hosted by Resilience brought together the storyteller Alex Leff, the historian Dan Hoyer, and the host Asher Miller to consider the long contest between monarchy and revolution, hierarchy and equality, that has shaped the world now inherited. Their aim was less to settle old quarrels than to notice how the same tensions between progressive and reactionary impulses keep returning, and to ask whether a way of reading them might lie beyond the familiar left and right.
Resilience gathered three people in a virtual room to talk about a very long stretch of political history. The occasion was a three-part audio series, The King Is Dead, Now What? The 250-Year Struggle for Democracy, produced by the Human Nature Odyssey podcast. Its subject is the global contest between monarchy and revolution, authoritarianism and democracy, hierarchy and equality.
Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute, hosted the discussion. His guests were Alex Leff, who created the series, and Dan Hoyer, a historian who studies social complexity and societal collapse. Resilience framed the event plainly: the present is a time of deep transformation, and making sense of it means reckoning with the political forces that built the world people have inherited.
The speakers examined how past societies responded to upheaval and returned to a recurring tension between progressive and reactionary forces, a pattern they treated as something that comes back across eras. They also sought to understand the left/right spectrum and, ultimately, to move beyond it, pitching the talk as a search for better ways to read what Resilience calls a period of great unraveling.
The series runs from the storming of the Bastille to the rise of fascism, from communist revolutions to neoliberal collapse. Resilience advises anyone planning to watch the recording to first listen to all three parts, since the conversation builds on them. The source does not report what the speakers concluded; those answers are in the recording on the Resilience site.
Resilience+ recently put three people in a virtual room to talk about a very long stretch of political history. The occasion was a three-part audio series called The King Is Dead, Now What? The 250-Year Struggle for Democracy, produced by the Human Nature Odyssey podcast. Its subject is the global contest between monarchy and revolution, authoritarianism and democracy, hierarchy and equality.
The host of the live conversation was Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute. His guests were Alex Leff, the storyteller who created the series, and Dan Hoyer, a historian whose expertise is social complexity and societal collapse.
The framing Resilience offered for the event was direct: the present is a moment of profound transformation, and understanding it, along with charting a way forward, requires reckoning with the political forces that built the world people have inherited. The series is meant as one way of doing that.
The three speakers looked at how past societies responded to upheaval. They also took up what the publication describes as the recurring tension between progressive and reactionary forces, a pattern they treat as something that returns across eras rather than belonging to any single one.
A further aim was to understand the left/right political spectrum and, ultimately, to move beyond it. Resilience describes the current period as one of great unraveling, and the conversation was pitched as a search for better ways to read it. In the organizers' words, the discussion was not only about the past but about how to move forward.
The series itself covers wide ground. It runs from the storming of the Bastille to the rise of fascism, and from communist revolutions to neoliberal collapse. Along the way it examines the ideologies, events and power struggles that shaped today's political landscape. The image attached to the piece fits that starting point: Pierre-Antoine Demachy's "Exécution capitale, place de la Révolution," a public-domain work by the painter who lived from 1723 to 1807.
Resilience suggests that anyone planning to watch the event recording should first listen to all three parts of the series, since the conversation builds on it. The recording is posted on the Resilience site. The source gives no detail on what the speakers concluded, so the recording is where those answers would be found.
Citazioni salienti
The conversation was not just about the past; it was about how we move forward.— Resilience, event announcement
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