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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

53:24

The Great Political Fictions: The Handmaid’s Tale

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/20

For the final episode in the current series, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s TheHandmaid’sTale(1985), her unforgettable dystopian vision of a future American patriarchy.Where is Gilead?When is Gilead?How did it happen?How can it be stopped?From puritanism and slavery to Iran and Romania, from demography and racism to Playboy and Scrabble, this novel takes the familiar and the known and makes them hauntingly and terrifyingly new.Coming next: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections, starting with the

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54:05

The Great Political Fictions: Midnight’s Children

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/16

In the penultimate episode of the current part of our Fictions series, David explores Salman Rushdie’s 1981 masterpiece Midnight’s Children, the great novel about the life and death of Indian democracy.How can one boy stand in for the whole of India?How can a nation as diverse as India ever have a single politics?And how is a jar of pickle the answer to these questions?Plus, how does Rushdie’s story read today, in the age of Modi?Next time: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s TaleComing next week on

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58:45

The Great Political Fictions: Atlas Shrugged

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/13

In this episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influentialAtlasShrugged(1957), the bible of free-market entrepreneurialism and source book to this day for vicious anti-socialist polemics.Why is this novel so adored by Silicon Valley tech titans?How can something so bad have so much lasting power?And what did Rand have against her arch-villain Robert Oppenheimer?Next time: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s ChildrenComing soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General ElectionsSign up now

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53:55

The Great Political Fictions: Mother Courage and Her...

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/09

Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play was 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?Next time: Ayn Rand’s Atlas ShruggedComing next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General

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55:55

The Great Political Fictions: The Time Machine

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/06

H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) 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?Next time: Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her ChildrenComing soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General ElectionsTo receive our fortnightly newsletter just follow the link

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51:28

The Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Past Present Future ·

2024/06/02

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all.This week’sepisodeexplores 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?Next time: H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine.Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General ElectionsSign up now to PPF+ to get 2

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53:53

The Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/30

This week's great political novel 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.Next time: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr

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50:32

The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 2)

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/26

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?To get two bonus episodes from our recent Bad Ideas series – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+ and enjoy ad-free

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52:03

The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 1)

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/23

Our series on the great political novels and plays resumes with 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.To get two bonus episodes from our recent Bad Ideas series – on Email and VAR –

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53:22

The History of Bad Ideas: Mesmerism

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/19

For our lastepisodein this series David is joined by Helen Lewis to discuss Mesmerism – aka animal magnetism – an eighteenth-century method of hypnosis for which great medical benefits were claimed.Was its originator, Franz Mesmer, a charlatan or a healer?Was his movement science or religion or something in between?And what can it tell us about twenty-first century phenomena from online social contagion to hypnotherapy?To get two bonus Bad Ideasepisodes– on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+, where

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48:38

The History of Bad Ideas: The Death of the Author

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/16

For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes’s idea of the Death of the Author (1967).Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife.As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots, Kathleen discusses her personal experience of how it can go wrong.Two bonus Bad Ideas episodes for PPF+ subscribers – on Email and VAR – will be available

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54:11

The History of Bad Ideas: Anti-Suffragettes

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/12

In this episode of our series on the lingering hold of bad ideas David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about the arguments made at the turn of the last century against giving the vote to women.Why were so many women against female enfranchisement?What did attitudes to women in politics reveal about the failings of men?And where can the echoes of these arguments still be heard today?Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights is available wherever you get your

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46:50

The History of Bad Ideas: Taxonomy

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/09

For the latest episode in our series about the hold of bad ideas, we welcome back the geneticist Adam Rutherford to talk about Linnaean taxonomy, a seemingly innocuous scheme of classification that has had deeply pernicious consequences.From scientific racism to social stratification to search engine optimisation, taxonomy gets everywhere.Can we escape its grip?Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany every series. Coming soon: two bonus bad ideas just for PPF+

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49:49

The History of Bad Ideas: Antisemitism

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/05

Today’s bad idea is one with a very long history: David talks to the historian Christopher Clark aboutantisemitismand the reasons for its endless recurrence.What has made discrimination against the Jews different from other kinds of violent prejudice over the course of European history?How did the ‘JewishQuestion’ become the battleground of German politics?Why do so many Christians have a love-hate relationship with Judaism?And where does the state of Israel fit into this story?For ad-free listening

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50:04

The History of Bad Ideas: Facebook Friends

Past Present Future ·

2024/05/02

In today’s episode about seemingly good ideas gone badly wrong David talks to the philosopher and journalist Kathleen Stock about Facebook Friends, something that was meant to make us happier and better connected but really didn’t.How did online friendship become so performative?Does its failings say more about Facebook and its business models or does it say more about us?And why are academics so susceptible to the madness of social media?For ad-free listening and bonus episodes – including more bad

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44:42

The History of Bad Ideas: The Gold Standard

Past Present Future ·

2024/04/28

In the secondepisodein our series on bad ideas David talks to the political economist Helen Thompson about the gold standard, which was meant to anchor the world economy until it all fell apart a hundred years ago.Why does gold so often appear like a stable basis for money in an unstable world – and why not silver?What made the gold standard a source of instability instead?How can money work if it has no material basis?And is quantitative easing a bad idea as well?For ad-free listening and

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55:24

The History of Bad Ideas: Eugenics

Past Present Future ·

2024/04/25

For the first episode in our new series about the hold of bad ideas David talks to the geneticist and science broadcaster Adam Rutherford about eugenics: from its origins in the 19thcentury through its heyday in the 20thcentury to its continuing legacy today.Is eugenics bad science, bad morality, bad politics – or all three?What are the fears that keep drawing people back to trying to control the consequences of human reproduction?And is a new age of consumerist eugenics upon us?For ad-free

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56:04

The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Liberation Movements

Past Present Future ·

2024/04/21

In our final episode David and Lea discuss liberation movements, from post-colonial liberation to women’s liberation, gay liberation and animal liberation.What, if anything, do these movements have in common?Is liberation about equality or is it about difference?And who needs liberating next – children?You can hear our bonus episodes for this series by signing up to PPF+www.ppfideas.comIn the first bonus episode – available now – David and Lea answer listeners’ questions about AI, technology, online

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51:23

The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Existentialism and...

Past Present Future ·

2024/04/18

In the penultimate episode in this series David and Lea discuss two twentieth-century philosophies of freedom and the human psyche.What can existentialism teach us about the nature of free choice under conditions of despair?Is there any escape from bad faith?And what can individuals – or even entire societies – learn about their freedom from being put on the couch?Sign up to PPF+ to get two bonus episodes to accompany this and all future series along with ad-free listening:www.ppfideas.comComing

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51:23

The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Existentialism and...

Past Present Future ·

2024/04/18

In the penultimate episode in this series David and Lea discuss two twentieth-century philosophies of freedom and the human psyche.What canexistentialismteach us about the nature of free choice under conditions of despair?Is there any escape from bad faith?And what can individuals – or even entire societies – learn about their freedom from being put on the couch?Sign up to PPF+ to get two bonus episodes to accompany this and all future series along with ad-free listening:www.ppfideas.comComing next

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272 results

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