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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

57:48

The End of Enlightenment

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/25

This week David talks to Richard Whatmore and Lea Ypi about what caused the loss of faith in the idea of Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century and the parallels with our loss of faith today.Why did hopes for a better, more rational world start to seem like wishful thinking?How was Britain implicated in the demise of Enlightenment ideals?And what might have happened if there had been no French Revolution?Richard Whatmore’s The End of Enlightenment is available now Hosted on Acast. See

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47:45

Rory Stewart: What Does it Mean to be a 21st-Century...

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/18

This week David talks to Rory Stewart about his life in politics and the history of the ideas behind his political philosophy.What does it mean to be a Tory in the twenty-first century?When and how did the Conservative party get taken over by Whigs?Where – if anywhere – can independents find a home in contemporary British democracy?A conversation about the many different forces that shape our politics, from Gulliver’s Travels to Liz Truss.Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart is published by Penguin

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58:35

The End of the UK?

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/11

This week David talks to the political scientist Mike Kenny about the possible fate of the United Kingdom.What makes the UK such an unusual political arrangement?How has it managed to hold together through war, economic decline, Brexit, Covid?What still threatens to break it apart?Mike Kenny’s new book is Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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51:51

History of Ideas 12: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/05

Episode 12 in our series on the great essays is about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Case for Reparations’, published in the Atlantic in 2014.Black American life has been marked by injustice from the beginning: this essay explores what can – and what can’t – be done to remedy it, from slavery to the housing market, from Mississippi to Chicago.Plus, what has this story got to do with the origins of the state of Israel?Read the original essay here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more

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47:05

History of Ideas 11: Umberto Eco

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/04

Episode 11 in our series on the great essays explores Umberto Eco’s ‘Thoughts on Wikileaks’ (2010).Eco writes about what makes a true scandal, what are real secrets, and what it would mean to expose the hidden workings of power.It is an essay that connects digital technology, medieval mystery and Dan Brown.Plus David talks about the hidden meaning of Julian Assange.More from the LRB:Andrew O’Hagan on Julian Assange‘I’d never been with a person who had such a good cause and such a poor ear.’Frank

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52:15

History of Ideas 10: David Foster Wallace

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/03

Episode 10 in our series on the great essays is about David Foster Wallace’s ‘Up, Simba!’, which describes his experiences following the doomed campaign of John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.Wallace believed that McCain’s distinctive political style revealed some hard truths about American democracy.Was he right?What did he miss?And how do those truths look now in the age of Trump?More on David Foster Wallace from the LRB:Jenny Turner on Wallace and his moment‘The risk

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50:16

History of Ideas 9: Joan Didion

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/02

Episode 9 in our series on the great essays is about Joan Didion's 'The White Album' (1979), her haunting, impressionistic account of the fracturing of America in the late 1960s. From Jim Morrison to the Manson murders, Didion offers a series of snapshots of a society coming apart in ways no one seemed to understand. But what was true, what was imagined, and where did the real sickness lie?More on Joan Didion from the LRB archive:Thomas Powers on Didion and California:'The thing that California

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53:07

History of Ideas 8: Susan Sontag

Past Present Future ·

2024/01/01

Episode 8 in our history of the great essays is about Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’ (1963).What was interpretation and why was Sontag so against it?David explores how an argument about art, criticism and the avant-garde can be applied to contemporary politics and can even explain the monstrous appeal of Donald Trump.Sontag in the LRB:Terry Castle on Sontag and friendship‘At its best, our relationship was rather like the one between Dame Edna and her feeble sidekick Madge – or possibly

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48:49

History of Ideas 7: James Baldwin

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/31

Episode 7 in our series on the great essays is about James Baldwin’s ‘Notes of a Native Son’ (1955), an essay that combines autobiography with a searing indictment of America’s racial politics.At its heart it tells the story of Baldwin’s relationship with his father, but it is also about fear, cruelty, violence and the terrible compromises of a country at war.What happens when North and South collide?More on Baldwin from the LRB:Michael Wood on Baldwin and power‘James Baldwin’s thinking recalls

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50:51

History of Ideas 6: Simone Weil

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/30

Episode 6 in our series on the great essays is about Simone Weil’s ‘Human Personality’ (1943).Written shortly before her death aged just 34, it is an uncompromising repudiation of the building blocks of modern life: democracy, rights, personal identity, scientific progress – all these are rejected.What does Weil have to put in their place?The answer is radical and surprising.Read ‘Human Personality’ hereFor more on Weil from the LRB archive:Toril Moi on living like Weil‘If we take Weil as seriously

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50:37

History of Ideas 5: George Orwell

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/29

Episode 5 in our series on the great essays is about George Orwell. His wartime essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ (1941) is about what it does – and doesn’t – mean to be English.How did the English manage to resist fascism?How are the English going to defeat fascism?These were two different questions with two very different answers: hypocrisy and socialism.David takes the story from there to Brexit and back again.For more on Orwell from the LRB:Samuel Hynes on Orwell and politics‘He was not, in fact,

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49:34

History of Ideas 4: Virginia Woolf

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/28

Episode 4 in our series on the great essays is about Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929).David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence.And how, despite all that, it still manages to be as fresh and funny as anything written since.Read more on Virginia Woolf in the LRB:Jacqueline Rose on Woolf and madness‘It is, one might say, a central paradox of

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54:08

History of Ideas 3: Thoreau

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/27

Episode three in our series about the great political essays is about Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), a ringing call to resistance against democratic idiocy.Thoreau wanted to resist slavery and unjust wars.How can one citizen turn the tide against majority opinion?Was Thoreau a visionary or a hypocrite?And what do his arguments say about environmental civil disobedience today?Read Thoreau’s essay hereFrom the LRB:Paul Laity on Thoreau and self-sufficiencyJeremy Harding on XR and civil

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57:58

History of Ideas 2: Hume

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/26

Episode two in our series on the great essays is about David Hume. How can eighteenth-century arguments about the national debt help make sense of American politics today?When does public borrowing become a recipe for national disaster?Who is really in charge of the public finances: the government or the bankers, Washington, D.C. or Wall Street?And what has all this got to do with Hume’s arguments for the morality of suicide?Read Hume’s original essay ‘Of Public Credit’ here.For more on Hume from

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50:26

History of Ideas 1: Montaigne

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/25

Episode one in our series on the great essays is about Montaigne, the man who invented a whole new way of writing and being read.From the fear of death to the joys of life, from the perils of atheism to the pitfalls of faith, from sex to religion and back again, Montaigne wrote the book of himself, which was also a guide to what it means to be human.Elephants, civil war, gout, cosmology, torture, tennis balls, disease, diets, and politics too: all life is here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

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50:30

History of Ideas Q&A

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/21

For our last episode before Christmas David answers some of your questions about the History of Ideas series – What would Dickens have made of Trump?How would reparations work?Which essays are missing from the list?Coming up: the whole series on the great essays, one a day, every day, starting on Christmas Day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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51:25

The Art of the Essay

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/14

As we wrap up our History of Ideas series David discusses what makes a great essay and whether the best contemporary writing is as good as what went before.The answer is yes, as shown by Jiayang Fan’s brilliant 2020 essay ‘How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda’.David explores why this is such a remarkable example of what can be done with the form and why the art of the essay is alive and well.Read Jiayang Fan’s essayhere Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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55:48

Something’s Got to Give

Past Present Future ·

2023/12/07

This week David talks to the economists Dieter Helm and Diane Coyle about the challenges of building sustainability into the way we live now.Why is GDP such a poor guide to long-term economic well-being?How can we stop squandering future resources?What should the next Labour government do to create a sustainable economy – and what will happen if they don’t?Dieter Helm’s new book is available to download for free hereRead the Bennett Institute report on Universal Basic Infrastructure here Hosted on

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56:40

Democracy Q&A w/ Lea Ypi

Past Present Future ·

2023/11/30

This week David and Lea answer your questions about democracy. When does democratic freedom shade over into anarchy? What’s the connection between democracy and human rights? Do the voters choose the government or does the government choose the voters? Plus: what makes Lea an optimist about socialism? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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52:35

History of Ideas: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Past Present Future ·

2023/11/23

In the penultimate episode in our series on the great essays, David talks about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Case for Reparations’, published in the Atlantic in 2014.Black American life has been marked by injustice from the beginning: this essay explores what can – and what can’t – be done to remedy it, from slavery to the housing market, from Mississippi to Chicago.Plus, what has this story got to do with the origins of the state of Israel?Read the original essay here. Hosted on Acast. See

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272 results

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