In the second episode of Future Discontinuous, hosts Misha Glenny and Eva Konzett are joined by historian Nils Gilman, COO of the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. Together with their guest, they take a deep dive into the national, the global, and the planetary, and discuss how the outbreak of the Black Death in the 1300s differed from COVID-19, whether a world state could work, and what kind of institutions we need to tackle humanity’s many predicaments in the 21st century.

Nils Gilman is a historian and currently the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute, an LA-based think tank developing ideas to shape future institutions. He is the author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (2004), Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (2011), and, most recently, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (2024).

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