How G. W. Leibniz Helped Transform Russia into a Superpower

Sitting here in the Hotel Moldova, 50 miles or so from the Ukrainian border, I decided to record my first proper “Hinternet Symposion” podcast on a topic of some regional interest. This is also the topic of one of my current book projects, the working title of which is The Philosopher and the Tsar: Leibniz, Russia, and the Making of a Modern Scientific Empire. As is my intention for these Symposion podcasts for the next months at least, it is a resolutely serious presentation, and a glimpse of the sort of work I have been doing in recent years as a scholar, but still, I hope, of interest to non-scholars.

That said, the truth is that for now I am still mostly just test-driving podcast platforms and possibilities, and at this early moment I am well aware that what I have managed to do here lacks the polish I will be learning to apply as I work on the next installments. By polish I mean both high production value, but also wide accessibility with respect to the content — I’m particularly sorry, for example, for the original-language quotations in some of the slides. I’ll do better, I promise.

For now and for the next few months, I will be making all Symposion podcasts available to paid Hinternet subscribers, but if you enjoy them I strongly encourage you to upgrade, now, to a “Hinternet Symposion” subscription, as soon they will be exclusive paywalled content reserved for Symposion subscribers alone.

If you find you enjoy this podcast or those to come, I would be so grateful if you were to let others know about them. I’m trying to start something new and different and a bit risky here, drawing on the competencies I’ve developed over the past quarter century as a university professor, but also hoping to use these competencies in a new way. In order for this to work, I need a public. I’ll certainly try to earn it in the coming months, and will be forever grateful to those who helped to give it a push at the very beginning.

There will be a lot more to come, including “deep dives” consisting in several episodes focused on a single topic; there will be guests, there will be interactive live-streaming, there will be all sorts of stuff. We’re starting small, but aiming, as one must, ad astra.