YouSaid · the spoken record

Jacob Mikanowski

lines on the record: 71
first: 2023-10-18
most recent: 2023-10-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When they read about this guy who defected and is like said, did that really happen or did it not? So maybe I'll do something with that. But I've got to actually. Got all the signatures ready. I've got to do some bibliography, and it's done.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's on Ketman. This idea from the captive mind, Bach Muzz, of ideological masquerade or disguise that he took from it's a concept in Shiite Islamic practice that he read about where Shiites under duress under Sunni rule would pretend to be Sunni and had an obligation religiously to do that under the Abbasids and then he's like that's what life is like under Stalinism that's what my peers were all doing they're practicing Ketman they're splitting themselves into an inner self that believes in some older pre-war ideal of Catholicism or art or regular science and there's an outward face that is doctrinarily Marxist or doctrinarily soviet or something and how that was how he came up with that how it the dialogues he had with some of his peers especially one very interesting philosopher and then how that was received in Poland what people actually thought about it”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am going to file my dissertation after an ungodly amount of time in between writing the book, I went back to it. Most of it, rewrote it, and took it on a different topic, and it's done. And I can file it probably this month.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's go around Transylvania, which is beautiful and has plenty of great places CI is great, but Actually, outside inclusion is interesting, but viscery, Biertan, these places that used to be German, they have these fortified churches, and usually there's the cool Hungarian nobleman's house that you can stay in. Prince Charles loves this area and has these like refurbished castles that he owns that you can, or manor houses that you can stay in. And it's really neat. And Transylvania is also one of the most culturally diverse places in Eastern Europe. And you have like real Roma life that allow the formerly German towns are now mostly inhabited by Gabor Roma, Seventh-day Adventist Roma. It's pretty neat. And then you can go down to Bucharest. No, you know what? I'm recalling Audible. If you can, if we can get across the border, let's go to Belgrade and go to one of those houseboats and have a great, have some great risotto I have a place, some great Burek, meet Burek, and party on a house boat on a raft on the Danube. We can finish there.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Houses and that and the land of hay and wood maramurish is my favorite area. Maramurish is kind of proverbially poor. Northernmost hat of Romanian go to, which is the village I love called Breb, but the whole valley of Yud is one of the most traditional, lastingly traditional parts of Eastern Europe. And you can get a taste of what things might have been like. 30 years ago, 100 years ago. I think too late then maybe down to Bucharest.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down to the mountains, we can skip crack on the same basis as overtourists did, although it's wonderful as Prague and Budapest go down to Chemisch near the Ukrainian border and get a sense of that old Habsburg infrastructure and get a whiff of that, that you're running the border of Ukraine. You're running on the border of Ukrainian influence and that you're in that old Eastern Orthodox part of Poland, which used to be. You can go to Sanok too, and the wonderful. Museums there Through Slovakia Eastern Slovakia, the kind of Ruthenian Slovakia. So the parts these Catholic countries that are Eastern Orthodox and into northern Romania. Northern Romania is the best place to see traditional Eastern Europe, to see the world of Haymaking and hand built.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Budapest is off the table. So I selfishly will start you in Warsaw because I love Warsaw and I'm a Warsawian. And Warsaw is derided, but actually one of Eastern Europe's most interesting cities. And you get that history. Architecture is not great, but the history is right there under the surface if you know what you're looking for. Go to airport too. And then I would send you south.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They haven't started yet. The Balkan male ethic is alive and well, at least to this observer. And they're also just gigantic people down in former Yugoslavia. You know, maybe Greece would be the place to track. I don't think Greek men have followed some kind of postmodern Wilbeckian course. I think we're a long way off from losing the Balkan male as is a natural species. I think we can improve the economy a lot and that male culture, that ethos is going to be around for a while. I don't think they have anything to worry about.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, Kamilnitsky and who he is to Ukrainians and Poles, that these are entangled stories. But do I actually understand the course of the war better? And do I have a prediction for it? And did I understand it better when it started? Probably not. I feel like I understand some of the roots. And the roots don't predict that well. So maybe I don't have that much insight looking forward.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where it was actually kind of historically very tense between Poland and Ukraine. And the Polish government was just always looking for something in the past, like an old wound to come back and celebrate and show off about. They were really showing off about they're celebrating, but commemorating the Polish-Ukrainian violence in World War II was a major thing kind of platform of remember what the Ukrainians did to us. And in a flash, it's come switched to Poles and Ukrainians brothers because of the big enemy. And there's more to that. Like growing up”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hmm. Do I understand about the war in Ukraine? I'll tell you what, that Ukraine. What Ukraine is has shifted over time. And is continuing to shift. I think people who look at this war and start being aware of it in 2022, Ukraine is just a natural fact and they weren't necessarily sure what it is where it comes from. I think there is such a complicated story of Ukraine between Poland. And especially Russia, of being entangled with both of those and creating itself in relation and against both of those, it's kind of a tangled family tree. And seeing how the pendulum has shifted even in a couple years in the relationship between those three countries.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you were to ask them beforehand, how would you act in this situation? What would you do? I don't think they'd have any idea what they would do. I don't think they could predict themselves how they would act. And that's where you get at the human mystery. I think You don't know Some people have that moral instinct, some people will do it. An innate feeling, but most won't. And to me, that means human nature is in some ways completely plastic. Has no bottom, has no Backstop most people. The right situation, in the wrong situation, the worst situation will act in any way, behave in any way. I think there's almost no bottom to human behavior. And the flip side of that is in the worst situation, some people will act in the most remarkable way, in the best way. And there's kind of no way to know. So it's really, I mean, to me,”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because every village is a hundred eyes watching everybody else. So you make one move, you make one change, you buy a tin roof. Everyone knows what you're doing. Everyone knows you're hiding at you. But the people who were the best at saving the people they saved tended to be people who never made a bargain, who never asked for money Who just did it. Out of moral instinct. Because if you buy a life, you can sell it. And the people who didn't enter into that transaction, they Hell fast the strongest. So, but how would you know that Because just as possible, those people come on the margins will also denounce someone for a tinier reward for Balavodka for a hilo of sugar. Those are some of the rewards that people give us.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is where the human nature comes in, what's so interesting, is the kind of, so how do you know who to trust? And the people who end up protecting the people they protect the longest hold out the longest, hold out to the end. Are usually people who live on the absolute margins. People Widows outcasts, people with no money, people in terrible shape, people whose lives would be transformed by having an iron stove or a pair of pants. But if you were to take that, when you're hiding juice and you were to take their money and buy something like that, immediately all your neighbors would know what you're doing.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I find in the short run, a lot of people make that bargain be like, I'll take your money and I'll put you up. I'll put you in my cellar. I'll hide you in a room for a few months, for a year, for two years. But the longer that goes, the riskier it becomes. And the harder it becomes. And the more there's the temptation to say, actually, I'm going to give you up. My neighbors can see this. I can't go on with this. I need the money. I'm too scared. I just doesn't seem like a point. Everyone's dead. If war had been shorter, a lot more people would have been saved. And the longer the war runs, the more people are either denounced by their neighbors or their own protectors denounce them. But the ones who are saved in the long run.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to know exactly how many, but a lot of people do that in 42. And then the war goes on and on, much longer than people expected. 42, 43, 44, winter after winter, things getting harder and harder. And the longer that runs, the more this becomes a real kind of experiment in human nature Survives and who doesn't, who is denounced and who doesn't. I had family members who actually survive this way miraculously, but some didn't.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have no legal standing, are non persons can be hunted by anyone, can be killed by anyone, and have to find a way to survive. And this truly Hobbesian, a true Hobbesian world, and where food is becoming scarcer and scarcer, money is scarcer, everything is scarce, in a real world of poverty because they're surviving usually in some people have false papers and can survive anywhere, hopefully, as long as they're not denounced. Some people have a lot of money and can use that for themselves. But the ones who escape from the ghetto or were surviving or ran away from transports are otherwise just out at sea in Poland. Have to usually make a bargain of somebody. Have to find someone that can trade whatever they have, whatever money they have, whatever they can promise for shelter. And they do, and a lot of people did that.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After 19th, there are kind of three phases to the Holocaust in Poland. There's an early phase where people are being rounded up and put into ghettos. And then after, in 1941, Germans invade the Soviet Union. And a few months later, Operation Barbarossa and a few months later, they start clearing the ghettos out. They start the real process of eliminating Poland's Jews and shooting people outright, shooting people as they're invading, and rounding people up, taking them from ghettos to concentration camps where they're gas and killed. And then there's this period. And so that's where most of the actual murder and death happens. But then from late 1941 to early 1945, A small group of survivors. In Poland, Polish Jews. Are in peril from all sides.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You a little longer answer. It has shaped a view of humanity. And the part that has the most isn't the kind of petty, I think, a little bit petty national aspirations. It's not Lithuanian dreams of getting a little bit of Poland back or Hungarian dreams of getting the Bachka back. The part that's really... Struck me deeply is the Holocaust. Is some of my family, a lot of them went through the Holocaust in Poland, and studying. The German occupation of especially Poland, where the Jews were so much. The process, what happened there. After the ghetto clearances after 41 Think there's a real message about human nature there. And sometimes it's people who talk about that will talk about, well, this is a Polish Jewish thing. This is about anti-Semitism. I think there's actually something deeper.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sense of being robbed, no way they were, since that their historical destiny was denied. And Orban will play with that a little bit. He will, you know, suggest that maybe if Ukraine were to fall apart and it's about to fall apart, maybe that there's a little corner of Ukraine that was once Hungarian. On the other side of the Carpathians, maybe they should get that back. But that's more in the realm of dreams and symbols, not actual foreign policy aspirations. I don't think there's. Something is a little bit like. Way Texans are about Texas. Hungarians are about Hungary. But I'm not sure it's totally, we should read that totally literally.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think they care literally. Think it's a little bit remember the Alamo. You know, it is by this point has moved into the realm of national symbols and symbology. You see, like you will see the Trianon belt buckles for sale and people wearing them where you have free Trian and like big hungry. You can have a big silver one as a kind of like Texas style belt buckle. I don't think that literally means people wear those. Does that literally mean they want botchka back from Serbia, that they want southern Slovakia back from Slovakia? Not exactly. They're one of those Eastern European countries that's small but dreams of being big. They still have that.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know how the EU would really, or why the EU would decisively step in. And the things that have gotten people really out in the streets in Hungary, one of the big ones was when internet prices were going to go up and they backed down. He tends to back down when there's a big protest. He does respond to that signal. But they keep the temperature pretty low in Hungary.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's amazing it's gotten to this point, and the EU has abetted him effectively. EU funds, which are hugely transformational in Hungary, if you drive around the Hungarian countryside, every kind of annoying because every 500 meters, it feels like you come to a roundabout under construction. Pointlessly, and that's all EU money, and it's all under the control of companies that construction firms essentially act as extensions of Fidesz and Orban's power. They control as a party this tap of money, and that helps solidify their power. So the EU effectively helps fund their dominance as a political movement, as a political party. And to me, it's strange that it's gotten to the point that it's gotten. Unless there's a big movement in Hungarian society, which has tended to be pretty quiescent.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of transformational things across Hungary. So he controls more and more of the media, more and more of the economy. He's harder and harder to unseat. And yet it's not a hard dictatorship. I don't think he would ever fire on Krabs. I don't think faced with mass protest, he would resort to Tillik. Excessive violence. I don't think he has the support in the police or any of this security services to be that kind of ruler, even if he wanted to be. So it's a strange hybrid.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the thing they all say is that he's incredibly smart, incredibly attuned to incredibly professional politician. He's obsessed with the details of politics. He's obsessed with the details of policy. He's obsessed with the details of self-presentation. He has no particular This idea of him as a Christian nationalist Is something he came up with too strategically. Everything with him is a strategic calculation on how to build and maintain power, his own power and his party's power. And he's extremely good at it. And he uses. Countless Small measures that add up to small electoral victories and then takes those small electoral victories and parlays them into huge constitutional and”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hungary is pretty fascinating. It's like if an American red state were completely captured. One party, one party leader, like maybe a year, it doesn't have to be a red state, it could be like a Huey Long type figure. And who then was powerful enough to start really changing the rules and to always Always color within the lines technically while changing what those lines are to be able to change the constitution and a kind of legal authoritarianism. I've talked to people who know Orban, knew him as a student, knew him as an activist, as a kind of libertarian-ish student leader.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The years of official atheism also cooled the temperature on religion a lot. The religion is All three Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam are kind of muted culturally and Albanian. National unity is more prominent psychologically”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there is a kind of very moderate Sufi strain to Islam there. Although there are some proselytizing by Salafis, there's some, it's not just that anymore. And it's also two kinds of Christian, the Orthodox South and actually the Catholic North was where all the tribal violence. Those are the great Catholic hill tribes were the really like violent. Main poets said that the religion of Albanians is Albanianism That they're all Albanian. They're all Albanian speaking. And it kind of dilutes those differences. There's a lot of intermarriage. The Islam is very mild. And the conflicts run in all different directions. They're most historically clan-based. Clan on clan, not religion on religion. And the temperature Beyond just being this very mild Sufi Islam.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Museums and Heritage. I was running a car from somebody, a little like Albanian car rental, and the guy told me, you know, he spends six months in Albania. The other six months, he goes to Great Britain. He works outside London as a programmer, and you had programmed, he had designed all his car rental agencies programming. I think there's an openness. I think you have return migration from Italy and Switzerland and the UK that's doing well. There's enormous untapped tourism potential because it's the last piece of European, like really prime Mediterranean coastline that hasn't been developed deeply, extensively. In a small country, I think that really matters. And what else? I'm not sure. It's pretty, you know, it's under $3 million people. So small effects can have big consequences.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Striking to go, I was in Albania. I really did a deep tour of Albania in the kind of Albana phone regions next to it last year. And you do feel that boom. You can feel there's a lot of golf investment and Saudi investment. There's a ton of road building. There's a ton of... Should really good cultural infrastructure being built. They're doing a great job with.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think so. I mean, I think the more, maybe this is naive, but the more European integration happens, the more that does lift some of those. Regional and enclave problems, as you can devolve some things to the EU, if the EU were to expand there, I think it would help a lot of those problems. Is there a specific income level? They have a long way to go in Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo. I mean, these are the poor, aside from Moldova, the poorest countries in Europe. So the amount of catching up before you can be Switzerland and all live happily together is pretty big. If they did get there, and maybe they will. I'm sure I think the temperature would go down. I don't think it's... Red in the bone in some way. I think the temperature has been going down.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Allies, and there is a lot of intermovement. I mean, Kosovars go back and forth from Albania all the time. Albanians go to Kosovo. That's an open border. It's very easy to cross. The tons of people are constantly pouring across. And those relationships are very close. I mean, does Albania have the power, have the ability to project a lot of power into its neighbors? Maybe I am not sure. But politically, they do have to stand up for their co-ethnics.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are a lot of Albanians outside Albania. And it matters to them. I was in Montenegro and I was in the Albanian. There's an Albanian part of Montenegro that people don't know about in Ulchin. Used to be the great Venetian city there, is dominant Albanian. Macedonia, North Macedonia has a Albanian majority region is almost a quarter Albanian, just about a quarter. And then Kosovo is majority Albanian. I know that Albania has. Expansionist ideas, but they have to the extent they have a foreign policy aims. They do have to Support their ethnic, you know, their linguistic.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go to Kosovo, everywhere you see big silver monuments to the heroes of the 1999 Kosovar War and AAL members, that's going to be a If Serbia were to take over Kosovo, it would be a nightmare insurgency. I mean, maybe Serbia does it. I definitely don't think it's worth it except on a satisfying psychological craving. But there's a little Serbian Majority strip, not a clear majority, but most of the Serbs live close to Serbia, maybe some kind of Partial partitioning in the future, but an actual Serbian takeover of Kosovo. I hope that doesn't happen because I think it would be ugly for both sides.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Less prominent than they used to be. Hungry dreams of being big, of returning to being big. And those dreams are still around. And Serbia dreams of being big. It had that oversized role in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was in a way, at least for some Serbs, a Not a Serbian empire, but a big sphere of influence where they were the top dog. They were the big player. The Yugoslav kingdom is very much like that, formed around Serbia. And Kosovo is the last piece of that, is the last piece of that. Once they lose that and Montenegro, they're really a small country. There really is no more dream. So that's how I read it.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The battle of the field of blackbirds 1389. It is pivotal in Serbian memory and Serbian myth making that moment, although they really mythologized it, of the great defeat of Serbia at the hands of the Ottomans and then wresting a kind of victory by assassinating the Ottoman Sultan. After the battle's been lost, I think A real pull of history. There's a real pull of a defeat. But in terms of a larger value, it's the dream of Serbia as a great country. There are Eastern European countries kind of have fallen two categories. There are countries that are small and they're happy being small, which is a minority. And countries that are small to medium and dream of being big. Pollen dreams of being big, but those dreams have.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All their regional conflicts, then yes, that city's in a perfect position. That's why I was so strategic for the Ottomans and the Hungarians and the Yugoslavs. But yeah, it's a political issue. And I think it's one that's not going to be resolved very quickly. Between the Bosnian problems, between Kosovo, Not happening in the short time. However, Serbian solution is to be close to Russia and China. So they have increasingly closed links to especially China. So maybe they're an island of Chinese influence in the Balkans. Their fut”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the best Balkan cities to party in, it's one of the funnest Balkan cities. It has reinvented itself as a Balkan Party center. It really has this incredible culture of discos. Boats, kind of house boats on the Danube where people party on to become a genuine transit hub. I guess they would have to make nights with everybody around them and rebuild. I mean, it is hard to travel around the Balkans now because there's no rails. hardly any long distance railways. I mean, I had a terrible time going from Belgrade to Sarajevo because you don't get sent to Sarajevo. You get sent to Sarajevo that belongs to Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia. If they could resolve”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That has been a big political movement and that I think they. They could do it, I think a lot of people would do it. They just renamed their language Romanian, the complicated history of Moldavian as a separate language has maybe come to an end. I think they vote in Parliament after my book went to press because I talk a little bit about Moldavian language and the Moldavian National Anthem. And after it was impressed, they had this vote. And Moldavian is now, I think, officially Romanian. And there is a move to I mean, if they could make it work with Romania, I think a lot of people would do it. I mean, then it's the problem of Transnistria, which would not want to do it, which is much more ethnically Russian and essentially a separatist enclave. And so there'd be a real problem in how to incorporate it. But what Moldavian politics is not split right, left. It's split pro EU, pro-Russia, and pro-EU is the dominant force right now.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Overland from Asia, they tend not to stop in the Balkans. That's the three ways forward. And even in Hungary, they are trying to get to Germany, France, Great Britain. Very rarely do the migrants from maybe a little bit, but that's not a major influx. Because they're also the living standard gap, I don't think, is big enough.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bus from Seville to Lisbon, which for whatever reason is really hard. It's not good connection. But I was at the bus station and there were tons of buses to places like Kampalung Moldovanesh, Suchava, Botostani, rural Moldavian cities, the part of Moldova in Romania. So 17 25 hour bus rides because there's so many Romanians in Spain. And you can see the same thing in Italy. Same thing in Portugal. And sometimes people are going to come back. A lot of them are coming back. And you're going to get an influx from over the border. I mean, right now, Ukraine's going to lose people because of that economy is going to be in, I think, crisis for a long time. The migrants that are coming.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, right now there's a huge influx of Ukrainian and probably Moldovans all left. I mean, a quarter of Moldova left Moldova. And Romanians will also return. I remember a great way to find out what's kind of going under the surface in European labor and migration is go to bus stations, long-haul bus stations. I remember trying to catch up.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Romania's birth rate is pretty high. I think it's along the top of. Maybe I'm a little out of date, but along the top of European birth rates, and partly because it's quite rural country, they change.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's coming out of communism, a much more rural, much more backward economy than Slovenia. But I think it's growing really fast. I think things are actually pretty okay there politically. I think that idea of a kind of orthodox disease is maybe a figment of geography more than a deeply cultural matrix that we think. I think we could be optimistic about Croatia and Romania simultaneously. Bulgaria, maybe two. I'm not sure that I believe in a kind of orthodox curse. I think it has more to do with how things shook up internally in former Yugoslavia and where those countries are in relationship to that industrial core of Germany, Austria, Switzerland.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we should be optimistic about Croatia. I think the EU is the driver of a lot of that. I don't think we should be that pessimistic about Romania and Bulgaria. I think actually Romania is showing”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Old, you know, I've actually gone to a lot of provincial museums on the old Limas, on the old frontier. You can go and see the kind of love. I like going to the last Roman fort. You can go to Budapest and see the frontier of the frontier. You can go in Slovakia and see the last Roman camp. I don't think it matters in a major way. I think the traces come later. It's where the kind of the imprint of Byzantium is still around. The imprint of the East Roman Empire where that Extensions and extensions of its church that really matters. The world of orthodoxy versus the world of Catholicism. But those lines, there was such an obliteration of the Roman Empire and its legacy, at least in Eastern Europe, between the 5th century and the 10th century. Those old lines got obscured and new ones got put in and the 900s and the 1000s.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people should go back to them. I think, you know, I was just thinking Solaris, which I always thought about as a story about contacting a truly alien. Now it's like, well, this is a little bit what we're doing with virtual reality and AI. It's like, what would happen if you could actually talk to your dreams, if you could revive people? But you could have the mimicry of consciousness. Appearance of consciousness without anything behind it, without a consciousness. And there's something seductive about it, and there's something monstrous about it. And I think he was there. Ahead of anyone else, and people should be going back to them, and maybe they will.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard to digest and also a kind of odd sense of humor with the short stories, also a childlike sense of humor that maybe makes them hard to take. I think there is, there's been a little bit of a lemma revival though. I know technologists, some people like them, futurologists like him. I love them.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting. I grew up on Staniswap Lem. Like some people grow up on the Grimms fairy tales. My dad's a computer scientist, his father started set up one of Poland's first computers. The world of Polish science and science fiction. So he used to read the Tales of Perks the Pilot and the Eon Tia stories, the robot, the short, fun ones, like they were fairy tales. So I grew up with them. I think Have trouble going back to those. I go back to Solaris, and I think Solaris is a real masterpiece, and I think it's had lasting influence, but they are Something pessimistic about them. They don't have that thing that Asimov does. I know we're even Dune of world building and Forecasting the human future far in advance. They are kind of Kafka in space. And that's Absurd situations, strange turns of events, I think a pretty And maybe that makes them”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a little out, I think Lewis Alvarez edited the little Chesoff Mi was translated Mios, a modern poet. You could start with Hermes Piesk Piazde. That's Hermes Dog and Star. I think Apollo and Marcius, the poem, is maybe my favorite. So you could just start with that poem specifically.”
2023-10-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source