How do you capture the spirit of a time?
By getting the most diverse people who characterise our public life to speak. By listening to them closely and getting to the heart of their secrets. Few people do this better than ZEIT editor-in-chief Giovanni di Lorenzo in his conversations with prominent contemporaries like Angela Merkel, Pope Francis, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Robert Habeck, Reinhold Messner, Umberto Eco, Viktor Orban and more.
The intensity of the encounters creates fascinating portraits that also reflect the major political and social issues of the past decade - the refugee crisis, the pandemic, war, xenophobia and the debate about cancelling culture. Reading them, we immerse ourselves in the convictions and biographies of people who have shaped the present in different ways. Giovanni di Lorenzo creates an atmosphere of closeness and openness, but never shies away from confrontation. And in doing so, he also elicits things from savvy media professionals that they have never said in public before.
