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Hosted by David Runciman · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 325 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
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.
David Runciman hosts Past Present Future, a history show with 325 episodes published.
Today’s episode in the history of bad ideas is about one of the central ideas in modern philosophy: utilitarianism, or the view that what matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. David talks to philosoph
Today’s bad idea is a pervasive political myth: the notion that what really matters at election time is political leadership. David talks to political scientist Jane Green about why leaders are less important than they –
David talks to historian and broadcaster Greg Jenner about the surprising history of the idea of celebrity, from Roman generals to 18th-century child stars to contemporary pop culture icons. How is celebrity different fr
Today’s episode is about a bad idea with a very recent history: David talks to political historian David Klemperer about the dangers of deliverism. When did the view that delivering for the voters is a good idea become s
Today’s bad idea is a way of doing history: David talks to historian Alec Ryrie about the seductions and pitfalls of narrative history. Why do we need more Herodotus and less Thucydides? What makes so many historians bel
For the first in a new set of episodes about bad ideas with interesting histories David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about hysteria, an ancient idea that became a very modern diagnosis. Why was hysteri
In the second part of their conversation about what has happened to our ideas of the future David and Ivan Krastev explore where the future is going next. Why do our expectations of what comes after us shift as we live l
Today’s episode is the first of two with writer and political scientist Ivan Krastev exploring what has happened to our ideas of the future. When did thinking about the future become the way we defined our present? What
Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about Mark Romanek’s 2010 film of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 nov
Today’s episode in our occasional series looking at significant political anniversaries explores the causes and consequences of the Brexit Referendum, which took place 10 years ago this week. David talks to historian Rob
Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival: David talks to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about what we can learn from the astonishing success of an encyclopaedia built by
Our final great political fiction (for now!) is a meta-fiction and auto-fiction that is also a compelling work of historical reconstruction. Laurent Binet’s HHhH (2010) tells the story of Operation Anthropoid, the missio
The penultimate great political fiction in this series is not strictly a fiction: it’s Annie Ernaux’s retelling of her own life in The Years (2008), thereby recapturing the story of France in the second half of the twent
Today’s political fiction is a spy novel, a Cold War comedy and a meditation on the nature of good and evil: Graham Greene’s The Human Factor. Why has Greene so fallen out of fashion? What made the South African secret p
Today’s great political fiction is a path-breaking work of science fiction: David explores Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), which imagines a world without the need for government or coercive authority. What make
In the second of two episodes about Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, David talks to critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about the novel’s place in the history of feminism. Is its idea of ‘free women’ meant to be ir
In today’s episode David explores Doris Lessing’s bold and brilliant The Golden Notebook (1962), a book about female emancipation, political disillusionment and much, much more. Why did Lessing insist that the novel’s or
For the first in a new set of episodes about some of the great political fictions of the past hundred years David explores Aldous Huxley’s much misunderstood dystopian masterpiece Brave New World (1932). How did Huxley i
Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). A film about
Today it’s the second of our episodes trying to make sense of what’s happening in British politics with a bit of historical perspective: this time asking what is likely to follow from the current crisis. David talks to h
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Past Present Future is hosted by David Runciman. The show is categorised under history (news) and has published 325 episodes.
Past Present Future has published 325 episodes.
Past Present Future regularly covers history, news, politics. It sits in the history category, with a news focus.
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