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PODCAST

Past Present Future

Past Present Future is a bi-weekly History of Ideas podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas come from, what they mean, and why they matter. Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future. New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday.

history politics

All Episodes

52:59

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Mother...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/26

Our ninth Great Political Fiction is Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play, written in 1939 at the start of one terrible European war but set in the time of another: the Thirty Years’ War of the 17thcentury.How did Brecht think a three-hundred-year gap could help us to understand our own capacity for violence and cruelty?Why did he make Mother Courage such an unlovable character?Why do we feel for her plight anyway?And what can we do about it?Tomorrow: Ayn Rand’s Atlas ShruggedFind out more about

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55:03

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: The Time Machine

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/25

Our eighth Great Political Fiction is H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) which isn’t just a book about time travel.It’s also full of late-19thcentury fear and paranoia about what evolution and progress might do to human beings in the long run.Why will the class struggle turn into savagery and human sacrifice?Who will end up on top?And how will the world ultimately end?Tomorrow: Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage & Her ChildrenFind out more about Past Present Future on our new website

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50:11

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Dr Jekyll &...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/24

Today’s Great Political Fiction is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) - a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all.Davidexplores all the ways that Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale confounds our expectations about good and evil.What does Dr Jekyll really want?What are all the men in the book trying to hide?And what has any of this got to do with Q-Anon and Hillary Clinton?Tomorrow: H. G. Wells’ The Time MachineFind out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com

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53:10

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Phineas Redux

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/23

The sixth Great Political Fiction in our summer re-release is Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1874), his lightly and luridly fictionalised account of parliamentary polarisation in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli.A tale of political and personal melodrama, it explores what happens when political parties steal each other’s clothes and politicians find themselves hung out to dry by their colleagues.A story of integrity and hypocrisy and how hard it is to tell them apart.Tomorrow: Robert Louis

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49:47

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Middlemarch...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/22

This second episode about George Eliot’s masterpiece explores questions of politics and religion, reputation and deception, truth and public opinion.What is the relationship between personal power and faith in a higher power?Is it ever possible to escape from the gossip of your friends once it turns against you?Who can rescue the ambitious when their ambitions are their undoing?Tomorrow: Anthony Trollope’s Phineas ReduxFind out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where

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48:46

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Middlemarch...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/22

Today’s Great Political Fiction is George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), which has so much going on that it needs two episodes to unpack it.In this episode David discusses the significance of the book being set in 1829-32 and the reasons why Nietzsche was so wrong to characterise it as a moralistic tale.Plus he explains why a book about personal relationships is also a deeply political novel.Also today: Middlemarch Part 2Tomorrow: Anthony Trollope’s Phineas ReduxFind out more about Past Present Future

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52:58

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Fathers and Sons

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/21

Our fourth Great Political Fiction is Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), the definitive novel about the politics – and emotions – of intergenerational conflict. How did Turgenev manage to write a wistful novel about nihilism? What made Russian politics in the early 1860s so chock-full of frustration? Why did Turgenev’s book infuriate his contemporaries – including Dostoyevsky?Tomorrow: George Eliot’s Middlemarch Parts 1 & 2Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website

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53:50

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Mary Stuart

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/20

Our third Great Political Fiction is Friedrich Schiller’s monumental play Mary Stuart (1800), which lays bare the impossible choices faced by two queens – Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots – in a world of men.Schiller imagines a meeting between them that never took place and unpicks its fearsome consequences.Why does it do such damage to them both?How does the powerless Mary maintain her hold over the imperious Elizabeth?Who suffers most in the end and what is that suffering really

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54:04

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Gulliver’s...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/19

Today’s episode on the Great Political Fictions is about Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travels(1726) – part adventure story, part satire of early-eighteenth-century party politics, but above all a coruscating reflection on the failures of human perspective and self-knowledge.Why do we find it so hard to see ourselves for who we really are?What makes us so vulnerable to mindless feuds and wild conspiracy theories?And what could we learn from the talking horses?Tomorrow: Friedrich Schiller’s Mary

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55:45

Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Coriolanus

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/18

In the first episode of the summer daily re-release of our series on the Great Political Fictions, David talks about Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1608-9), the last of his tragedies and perhaps his most politically contentious play.Why has Coriolanus been subject to so many wildly different political interpretations?Is pride really the tragic flaw of the military monster at its heart?What does it say about the struggle between elite power and popular resistance and about the limits of political

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56:35

What If… The Vietnam War Had Ended in 1964?

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/18

What If… The Vietnam War Had Ended in 1964?For our latest counterfactual David talks to historian Thant Myint-U about his grandfather U Thant, UN Secretary General for most of the 1960s and the man who might have ended the Vietnam War before it really got started.How close did U Thant get to bringing LBJ and the Vietcong to the negotiating table in 1964?What ultimately scuppered his chances?And how differently might the Cold War have turned out if he had succeeded?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free

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59:18

What If… Wallace not Truman Had Become US President...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/15

Today’s episode explores one of the big counterfactuals of twentieth-century American politics: David talks to historian Benn Steil about how close the ultraliberal Henry Wallace came to being FDR’s running mate in 1944 and successor as president in 1945. How near did Wallace get to making it onto the ticket at the 1944 Democratic National Convention?Who or what stopped him?What would his presidency have meant for the Cold War and the nuclear arms race?Was getting President Truman instead a missed

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53:03

What If… The French Revolution Had Happened in China?

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/11

What If… The French Revolution Had Happened in China?For our second episode on big historical counterfactuals, David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about how the East might well have risen to global dominance before the West.What if the key revolutions of the modern world – political and industrial – had happened in Asia first?What if there had been an Iranian Napoleon?And how much of our understanding of modern history is based on the biases of hindsight?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free

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57:15

What If… Science Counterfactuals w/ Adam Rutherford

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/08

To kick off our new series on counterfactual histories David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about whether ‘What Ifs’ make sense in science.If one person doesn’t make the big discovery, will someone else do it?Are scientific breakthroughs the product of genius or of wealth and power? And how might the world have been a completely different place if the Haber-Bosch process had not been developed in Germany in 1913?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our

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49:25

The Great Political Fictions: Tim Rice on Evita

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/04

Something different for our lastepisodeon the Great Political Fictions as this time David talks to the person who wrote it: Tim Rice, the lyricist of the epic musical about the life of Eva Peron,Evita(co-written with Andrew Lloyd-Webber). Where did the idea for such an unlikely subject come from?Why has it struck a chord with politicians from Thatcher to Trump?What does it say about the relationship between celebrity, populism and power?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our

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59:34

The Great Political Fictions: Helen Lewis on To Kill...

Past Present Future ·

2024/08/01

David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about Harper Lee’sTo Kill A Mockingbird(1960), one of the most widely read and best-loved novels of the twentieth century, and in the twenty-first century increasingly one of the most controversial.Is the book an attack on or an apology for Southern racism?How does its view of race relate to the picture it paints of class and caste in 1930s Alabama?And what on earth are we to make of the recently published prequel/sequelGo Set A Watchman?Plus we

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59:10

The Great Political Fictions: Lea Ypi on The Wild Duck

Past Present Future ·

2024/07/28

The writer and political philosopher Lea Ypi talks about the impact on her of Henrik Ibsen’sTheWildDuck(1884), which she first read when she was eight – thinking it was a children’s book (it isn’t!) – and has been returning to ever since.A play about family and betrayal, idealism and disappointment, temptation and self-destruction, is it also a parable about the illusions of politics?And how might it shake a person’s faith?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our bonus episodes –

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54:23

The Great Political Poems

Past Present Future ·

2024/07/25

David talks to Mark Ford and Seamus Perry, hosts of the LRB’sClose Readingspoetry podcast, about what makes a great political poem.Can great poetry be ideological?How much does context matter?And is it possible to tell political truths in verse?From Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’ to Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ to Auden’s ‘Spain 1937’: a conversation about political conviction and poetic ambiguity.To find out more aboutClose Readingsand how to subscribe, just visit the LRB’s

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59:36

American Elections: The Republican Convention

Past Present Future ·

2024/07/21

This week we check back in with Gary Gerstle to discuss what’s been happening in American politics after a tumultuous week.What does it say about Trump’s electoral strategy that he picked J.D. Vance as his running mate?How would the Republican party have coped if the assassin’s bullet hadn’t missed?Who might replace Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket and how?Plus, what fate lies in store for Bidenomics if Trump plasters his name all over it?Our free fortnightly newsletter is out now,

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54:42

The Great Political Fictions: Hamilton

Past Present Future ·

2024/07/18

Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversialHamilton(2015).What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers?How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history?And why does a product of the Obama era still resonate so powerfully in the age of Trump and Biden?The latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter - which accompanies the last three episodes in this Fictions series

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