Friedman in Conversation: Indifference

In this episode, Michel Friedman speaks with Steffen Mau and Karin Prien about Germany: What remains of a democracy when voters no longer care about it? Where does this indifference toward one’s own future come from? From the feeling of not being affected—that the misery of others, the injustices, the crises, the hatred will never reach you? From an inability to imagine what it’s like to be someone else? From fatalism? Or from complacency?

Steffen Mau is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and Politics in Göttingen and Professor of Macrosociology at Humboldt University in Berlin. His research focuses on topics such as inequality, transformation, and Europe. His most recent books include "Trigger Points: Consensus and Conflict in Contemporary Society" (2023, co-authored with Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser), "Unequally United: Why the East Remains Different” (2024), and “The Great Upheaval: A Conversation on Crises, Conflicts, and Compromises” (2025, co-authored with Ricarda Lang).

For his work, he has been awarded the Leibniz Prize, the DFG Communicator Prize, and the Bavarian Book Prize, among others.

Karin Prien (b. 1965) is a politician in the CDU and has served as Federal Minister of Education, Family, Seniors, Women, and Youth in the Merz cabinet since 2025. Prior to that, she served as Minister of Education, Science, and Culture for the state of Schleswig-Holstein from 2017 to 2025. In 2022, she also served as President of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs. She studied law and political science in Bonn and Amsterdam and worked as an independent attorney from 1994 to 2017. Prien, whose grandfathers were Jewish, also sees herself as a “Jewish minister,” even though she herself is not religious.

IN GERMAN