Did Vienna Invent the Modern World, Richard Cockett?

At the turn of the 20th century, Vienna was the capital of an empire in decline. Yet the city was a hotbed of intellectual cross-pollination, spawning new ideas and scientific innovations across fields ranging from physics and economics to psychoanalysis and the arts.

In this episode of Future Discontinuous, hosts Misha Glenny and Eva Konzett invite author Richard Cockett to retrace Vienna’s ideational footprint around the globe. Together with their guest, they discuss the famed „Red Vienna“ and its anti-progressive „Black“ (as Cockett calls it) counterpart, touch on the origins of the term sexual revolution, and shine a light on the Viennese émigrés—women especially—whose legacy remains widely influential today.

Richard Cockett is a journalist, historian, and academic. He is currently a senior editor at The Economist newspaper and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was previously a lecturer in history and politics at the University of London, and has written several books about British and world history. His most recent book, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2024), has earned numerous critical accolades.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.