Podcast
Viewpoints – Placecloud (English)
Hosted by Placecloud (English) · EN
Leading cultural researchers tell stories of places around the world. For the full spatial multimedia experience and more episodes visit placecloud.io.
12episodes
Episodes
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Thames Barrier – Holding Back the Sea
4w ago00:05:46Tap to summarizeDiocese of London United Kingdom Holding the North Sea at bay to protect London from flooding, the Thames Barrier is an extraordinary feat of engineering. It is also constantly under threat, in a world where time and tide are slowly, inexorably, winning. How long can it hold? Nobody knows.
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A Line Through Time: The Prime Meridian, Greenwich
Mar 1900:05:38Tap to summarizeDiocese of London United Kingdom Standing at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, this short audio viewpoint explores the line from which global time and longitude are measured. It explains how and why this point was fixed here, and considers how Britain’s drive to measure the world continues to shape how we locate ourselves within it.
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It looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys
Jan 900:06:49Tap to summarizeThe Hague The Netherlands The Gevangenenpoort, Prisoner’s Gate, here in The Hague, from 1420 until 1828, was used for housing people who had committed serious crimes while they awaited sentencing. It has since then been home to a literary club, a museum, and an art gallery. It’s also the location where, the only time in world history, a prime minister was eaten by his people.
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Will the real Amazon please stand up?
Jan 800:11:50Tap to summarizeTerme T rkiye We find ourselves a few kilometers outside of the small town of Terme, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, in Turkey. Just ahead, we can see a statue of an Amazonian warrior, raising a bow and arrow.
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The contested origins of Fortaleza
Jun 1800:06:07Tap to summarizeFortaleza Brazil The Brazilian state of Ceará is one of the poorer regions of Brazil. The GDP per capita is just a third of that of the people in the state of Sao Paulo, and not even a fifth of those in the district around the capital of Brasilia.
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Echoes of empire: On Itaparica, where Dutch ambition met Machiavellian brutality
Jun 1700:06:24Tap to summarizeVera Cruz Brazil Standing on Itaparica Island today, with the sea breeze brushing past the ramparts of the old fort of São Lourenço, it’s easy to be lulled by the slow rhythms of Bahia. But beneath these waters and stones lies a deeper, darker current; one that stretches back to a fleeting empire built on commerce, ambition, and blood.
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A secretary’s plea for a colonial vision
May 2400:05:25Tap to summarizeThe Hague The Netherlands You are standing in the Binnenhof, the heart of the Dutch Republic. Imagine this is the winter of 1642; narrow windows filter the pale northern light into the vaulted chambers. Stone floors echo with quiet footsteps. The thick oak doors are shut, but beyond them, the States-General is in session, a body of burghers, regents, and envoys who hold the fate of an empire in their hands.
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How a dinnerless palace ended a colonial reign
May 2400:04:32Tap to summarizeAmsterdam The Netherlands It was the spring of 1642, and the corridors of the Dutch West India Company headquarters were quiet, dimly lit by daylight slanting through small windows, the air heavy with the scent of parchment and pipe smoke. Behind closed doors, a handful of directors, merchants, not monarchs, reviewed ledgers and letters from the tropics. Among them, one decision had begun to crystallize. It would not be announced with trumpets. There would be no open confrontation. But it would collapse a court across the ocean.
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Tension at the top: From Fort Maurits to the heart of a colonial power struggle
May 2400:05:15Tap to summarizeTeot nio Vilela Brazil Stand on the windswept grounds of Fort Maurits today, near the banks of the São Francisco River in northeastern Brazil, and it’s hard to imagine the colonial drama that once unfolded here, where cannon fire echoed across the mangroves and Dutch banners flew over newly conquered land. This was not only a frontier of empire, but also the outer edge of a conflict that would shake the very foundations of colonial governance in Dutch Brazil.
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What if the Dutch had stayed?
May 7, 202500:15:48Tap to summarizeJaboat o dos Guararapes Brazil We are at Praça do Córrego da Batalha, in the municipality of Jaboatão dos Guararapes. A córrego is a brook, or stream. The square marks the beginning of an avenue also called Córrego da Batalha, as well as the ascent to the Guararapes Hills. Everything in the surrounding area seems to reference the Dutch period in Pernambuco, lasting from 1630 to 1654, more specifically, to the two conflicts between the Dutch and the Portuguese known as the Battles of Guararapes, fought in April 1648 and February 1649.
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