Past Present Future

For our latest bad idea with an interesting history David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about what’s wrong with Nobel Prizes. Why do we revere the winners of the science prizes when we know how contrived the other prizes are? What makes us so attached to this relic of an outmoded idea of scientific progress? And what happens when someone is struck down with ‘Nobelitis’? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. PPF merch available too! Find out more at https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next up on Bad Ideas: The Marketplace of Ideas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To kick off our new series on the history of bad ideas David talks to historian Sophie Scott-Brown about the idea of ‘the silent majority’, beloved by American presidents from Nixon to Trump. Where does this idea come from? Is it conservative or revolutionary? If the majority are actually silent, how can anyone know what they are thinking? And aren’t the silent majority really the dead? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. Find out more https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next up on Bad Ideas: Nobel Prizes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the final (extended) episode in our American Elections series David talks to Gary Gerstle about the historical significance of Donald Trump’s decisive victory this week. Was this election and its outcome unprecedented in American history or are there parallels to guide us? Can Trump be both an existential threat to American democracy and a politician it’s possible for his opponents to work with? What is the likely shape of the new political order that his administration represents? And will democracy itself survive the experience? Out now: a new bonus episode to accompany our Great Political Films series in which David talks to Helen Thompson about Apocalypse Now, the ultimate film about war and madness. Sign up now to PPF+ to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. Find out more https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next time: The History of Bad Ideas: The Silent Majority Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the last episode in this season of great political films David explores Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966), which changed the face of political movie-making forever. Filmed to look like archive footage, featuring actual participants in the events it describes, and showing both sides of the vicious contest between insurgents and counter-insurgents, it humanises a horrifying conflict. It also raises the question: where is the line between realism and rage? Coming on Saturday: a new bonus episode to accompany this series in which David talks to Helen Thompson about Apocalypse Now, the ultimate film about war and madness. Sign up now to PPF+ to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus To get our free fortnightly newsletter with guides, writing and clips exploring the themes of these episodes join our mailing list https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Christmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. Find out more https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next time: Gary Gerstle on the 2024 Presidential Election Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is about two great films on the same dark theme: David talks to American historian Jill Lepore about Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove and Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, which appeared within a few months of each other in 1964. Both films explore what might happen if America’s nuclear defence system went rogue. One is grimly hilarious; the other is utterly terrifying. Which packs the biggest punch today? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. Find out more https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next time: The Battle of Algiers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For today’s great political film David discusses Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) with the Italian historian of ideas Lucia Rubinelli. How did a communist aristocrat from Milan come to make a film about a Sicilian prince? How did Burt Lancaster get cast in the leading role? Is this a political film or a film against politics? And what is the real meaning of the celebrated line: ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things must change…’? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Christmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The History of Ideas. Find out more https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts Next time: Dr Strangelove & Fail Safe w/ Jill Lepore Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s great political film is John Frankenheimer’s masterpiece of Cold War paranoia The Manchurian Candidate (1962), which came out the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s a 1960s movie about 1950s fears: brainwashing, the Korean War, McCarthyism, all shot through with Kennedy-era anxieties about sexual potency and psychoanalysis. Who’s a Soviet agent? Who’s a mummy’s boy? And it managed to anticipate what was coming next in American politics: the age of assassination. A new bonus episode to accompany this series is out now: David explores why so many American presidents choose High Noon as their favourite film. Sign up now to PPF+ for just £5 per month or £50 a year and get all our other bonuses plus ad free listening too. https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus To get our free fortnightly newsletter with guides, writing and clips exploring the themes of these episodes join our mailing list https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Next time: The Leopard w/ Lucia Rubinelli Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode David discusses Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), a great patriotic anti-war film made in the depths of WWII. Why did Churchill want the film’s production stopped and was he right to suspect it was about him? What does the film say about the politics of nostalgia and the illusions of heroism? And how is Blimp’s moustache like Kane’s Rosebud? A new bonus episode to accompany this series is out on Saturday: David explores why so many American presidents choose High Noon as their favourite film. Sign up now to PPF+ for just £5 per month or £50 a year and get all our other bonuses plus ad free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus To get our free fortnightly newsletter with guides, writing and clips exploring the themes of these episodes join our mailing list https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Next time: The Manchurian Candidate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) is many people’s favourite film of all time, including Donald Trump’s. Why does Trump love it so? What does he get right and what does he get wrong about the trajectory of the life of Charles Foster Kane? What does the film reveal about the relationship between celebrity, influence and political power? And why is Rosebud not the real mystery at the heart of this story? Like Kane, want more stuff? To get PPF merch – either an ethically-sourced canvas tote bag or a bone china mug – just go to our website https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s great political film is Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), a much-loved tale of the little guy taking on the corrupt establishment. But there’s far more to it than that, including an origin story that suggests Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) might not be what he seems. From filibusters to fascism, from the New Deal to America First, from Burton K. Wheeler to Harry S. Truman, this is a heart-warming film that still manages to go to the dark heart of American politics. To hear our bonus episode on Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (in which Burton K. Wheeler becomes America’s Hitler) sign up now to PPF+ for just £5 per month or £50 a year and get all our other bonuses plus ad free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time: Citizen Kane Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first episode in our new series David explores Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), a great anti-war film that is also a melancholy meditation on friendship between enemies, love across borders, and the inevitability of loss. What, in the end, is the great illusion: war itself, or the belief that we can escape its baleful consequences? Our bonus episode with Chris Clark on how Europe’s elites sleepwalked into war in 1914 is available on PPF+. Sign up now for just £5 per month or £50 a year to get 24 bonus episodes a year plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time: Mr Smith Goes to Washington Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David talks to author Michael Lewis about SBF and EA: about the man he got to know before, during and after his spectacular fall and about the philosophy with which he was associated. What did Sam Bankman-Fried believe was the purpose of making so much money? How did he manage to get so side-tracked from doing good? Why when it all went wrong did he fail to save himself? A conversation about utilitarianism, risk and human weakness. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis is out now in paperback with a new afterword https://bit.ly/3ZXr88u  The second bonus episode to accompany our recent series on Thinking Machines is available now: David and Shannon Vallor talk about where AI is really taking us, sorting the reality from the hype. Sign up to PPF+ for just £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus To get the latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter (out tomorrow), with lots more on SBF and EA and plenty else besides, sign up here https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Next time: The Great Political Films: La Grande Illusion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David checks in with Gary Gerstle one more time before November to explore where things now stand with the US presidential election. In a conversation recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Walz/Vance debate, they discuss dead cats, October headwinds, comparisons with 2016 and a president missing in action. Plus, if the result really is too close to call, can the American Republic survive the fallout? There is another bonus episode out now to accompany our recent series on Thinking Machines: David and Shannon Vallor talk about where AI is really taking us, sorting the reality from the hype. Sign up now for just £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus New PPF merch is available on our website: choose from a canvas tote bag or a bone china mug https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time: Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried and Effective Altruism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For episode four of our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David and Shannon discuss a very different sci-fi sensibility: Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series (A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021) and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (2022)). What would it mean for robots to ‘wake up’? How might robots teach humans about the nature of care and about the care of nature? And where do robots fit into a neurodiverse world? Plus: robots vs octopi.  There is another bonus episode to accompany this series available from Saturday on PPF+: David and Shannon talk about where AI is really taking us, sorting the reality from the hype. Sign up now for just £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes. https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus New PPF merch is available on our website: choose from a canvas tote bag or a bone china mug https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time: Gary Gerstle on the current state of the American election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s episode in our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines explores the novel that inspired Blade Runner: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). David talks to Shannon Vallor about what the book has that the film lacks and how it comprehensively messes with the line between human and machine, the natural and the artificial. What is the meaning of the electric sheep? To hear a bonus episode on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to accompany this series sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes. https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus PPF merch is now available on our website: choose from a canvas tote bag or a bone china mug https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time: Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode in our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David and Shannon discuss Isaac Asimov’s 1955 short story ‘Franchise’, which imagines the American presidential election of 2008 as decided by one voter and a giant computer. Part prophecy, part parody: have either its predictions or its warnings about democracy come true? How does the power of technology shape contemporary politics? And why was Asimov’s vision of the future so reactionary? To hear a bonus episode on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to accompany this series sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes. https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus The latest edition of our free newsletter is out tomorrow with guides, clips and links for this series: join our mailing list https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters  Next time: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first episode in our new series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David talks to philosopher Shannon Vallor about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The last great silent film is the most futuristic: a vision of robots and artificial life, it is also about where the human heart fits into an increasingly mechanised world. Is it prophetic? Is it monstrous? And who are the winners and losers when war is declared on the machines? To hear a bonus episode on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to accompany this series sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes. https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Franchise’  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our last episode in this series of historical counterfactuals, David talks to the historian Ben Jackson about what might have happened if the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum had gone the other way. How close was the vote and what could have swung it differently? Were the dark warnings about the consequences of independence likely to have been borne out? And what would an independent Scotland mean for the world today? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Coming next: a new series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, from films to novels to short stories, with Shannon Vallor, author of The AI Mirror. First up: Metropolis.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our counterfactuals series moves forward to 1989: David talks to Lea Ypi about what might have happened if the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen when it did. Was the night it came down really just one big accident? How long could the East German regime have lasted? And what does the fate of non-European communist states tell us about how it could have gone very differently?  To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Sign up here for our free fortnightly newsletter: the new edition is out now to go with our latest counterfactual episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Next time: What If… Scotland Had Voted For Independence in 2014?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David talks to historian Margaret MacMillan, author of the prize-winning Peacemakers, about whether the 1919 Paris Peace Conference deserves its reputation as a missed opportunity and the harbinger of another war. Could the peace have been fairer to the Germans? Could the League of Nations have been given real teeth? Could the Bolsheviks have been involved? Or did the peacemakers make the best of a bad job? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War, sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes: https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Sign up here for our free fortnightly newsletter: the new edition is out tomorrow to go with our latest counterfactual episodes: https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters Next time: What If… The Berlin Wall Hadn’t Fallen?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s episode is another big early twentieth-century counterfactual: David talks to the historian of Russia Edward Acton about how the Russian Revolution might have unfolded if the Left SRs and not the Bolsheviks had come out on top. Could Lenin have been sidelined? Might the Terror have been avoided? And what would it have meant to the wider world if revolutionary socialism had been liberated from Marxist communism? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time: What if… The 1919 Paris Peace Conference Had Actually Kept the Peace? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We return to our series on historical counterfactuals with the big one: how might WWI have been avoided? David talks to Chris Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers, the definitive history of the July crisis of 1914, to explore how it might have turned out differently. What would have happened if Franz Ferdinand had survived the assassination attempt in Sarajevo? Why did his death spark the greatest European conflict of them all? To hear the second part of this conversation – where David and Chris discuss how the great powers responded to the assassination – sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Part 2 with Chris Clark will be out on PPF+ tomorrow.  Next time: What if… The Russian Revolution Hadn’t Been Bolshevik? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our Great Political Fictions re-release concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (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? Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The penultimate episode in our Great Political Fictions re-release is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush.One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the Bush presidency? How does an ordinary life become an extraordinary one? And where is the line between fact and fiction? Tomorrow: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s Great Political Fiction is Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberation. It also contains perhaps the greatest of all fictional portrayals of a real-life prime minster: Thatcher dancing the night away. Tomorrow: Curtis Sittingfield’s American Wife Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the twelfth episode in our Great Political Fictions re-release, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (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. Tomorrow: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s Great Political Fiction 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? Tomorrow: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influential Atlas Shrugged (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? Tomorrow: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 17th century. 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 Shrugged Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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-19th century 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 Children Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. David explores 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 Machine Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Redux Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 2 Tomorrow: Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 & 2 Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 worth? Tomorrow: Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s episode on the Great Political Fictions is about Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’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 Stuart Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 argument? Tomorrow: Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels Find out more about Past Present Future on our new website www.ppfideas.com where you can also join PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 listening and all our bonus episodes: available now a new bonus on Michel Houellebecq’s explosive political fiction Submission www.ppfideas.com  Coming soon: More What Ifs… on WWI, the Russian Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Up next: Fifteen Fiction for Summer from Coriolanus to Hamilton   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 opportunity or a lucky escape? Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our bonus episodes: coming very soon a new bonus on Michel Houellebecq’s explosive political fiction Submission www.ppfideas.com  Next time: What if… the Vietnam War had ended in 1964? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 listening and all our bonus episodes: 24 bonuses per year for just £5 a month or a £50 annual subscription www.ppfideas.com  Next time: What if… Henry Wallace had become American President in 1945? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 bonus episodes: 24 bonuses per year for just £5 a month or a £50 annual subscription www.ppfideas.com  Next time: What if… the French Revolution had happened in China? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Something different for our last episode on 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 bonus episodes – including a new bonus episode on Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America www.ppfideas.com  Next time: Adam Rutherford on counterfactual science to kick off our new series on ‘What Ifs…’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about Harper Lee’s To 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/sequel Go Set A Watchman? Plus we discuss Demon Copperhead, JD Vance, and more. Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our bonus episodes – including a new bonus episode on Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America www.ppfideas.com  Our free fortnightly newsletter will be out tomorrow, including more to read, watch and listen to about To Kill A Mockingbird – just sign up here https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Next time: Tim Rice talks about Evita Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The writer and political philosopher Lea Ypi talks about the impact on her of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (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 – coming soon a special bonus episode on Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America www.ppfideas.com   Next time: Helen Lewis on To Kill A Mockingbird Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David talks to Mark Ford and Seamus Perry, hosts of the LRB’s Close Readings poetry 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 about Close Readings and how to subscribe, just visit the LRB’s website https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and all our bonus episodes – including bonuses on the Great Political Fictions www.ppfideas.com Next time: Lea Ypi on Ibsen’s The Wild Duck Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, including reflections on Biden’s and America’s looming choices – just sign up here https://linktr.ee/ppfideas And sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: available now for PPF+ subscribers, Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel, George Eliot’s Felix Holt Next time: The Great Political Poems Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (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 including Hamilton - is out tomorrow, with lots of extra info, clips and reflections – just sign up here: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas And sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming very soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com Next time: Gary Gerstle on the Republican National Convention Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the Bush presidency? How does an ordinary life become an extraordinary one? And where is the line between fact and fiction? Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com Next time: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our political fictions series returns with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberation. It also contains perhaps the greatest of all fictional portrayals of a real-life prime minster: Thatcher dancing the night away. Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com Next time: Curtis Sittenfeld re-imagines Laura Bush in American Wife Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To wrap up our series David and Robert attempt some instant history on the election result that’s just happened: in some ways predictable, in others utterly remarkable. What does such a big win for Labour on such a relatively small vote mean? What’s happening in Scotland? Where next for the Tories? And is the UK now an outlier in a world of increasing political turmoil, or is the turmoil just under the surface here too? Our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this series is out now, with fact, figures, clips and reflections on all these elections and more – just sign up here: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas To hear our bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses too: www.ppfideas.com Coming Up: More Great Political Fictions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For election day, David and Robert discuss the previous general election in December 2019, which saw Boris Johnson win a decisive victory under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. How did he (or Dominic Cummings) do it? Was Corbyn to blame for Labour’s defeat? And how the hell did the Tories get from that resounding victory to their current disarray in just 4½ years? To get our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this series, with fact, figures, clips and reflections on all these elections and more, just sign up via the Newsletter button here: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas To hear our bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses too: www.ppfideas.com Coming next: 2024 – What Happened? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this extra episode for election week David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the last great Labour landslide of 1997, when Tony Blair won the biggest majority in his party’s history (till now?). Why did the Tories get no credit for a strong economy? How did New Labour change political campaigning? Was this the election that did for the prospects of proportional representation? Plus – the Millennium Dome: totemic or tat? To hear our bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses too www.ppfideas.com For election day tomorrow: the Boris + Brexit election of 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s pivotal UK election is the one that brought Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street in 1979. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about how she did it and how it could have turned out very differently. What might have happened if the election had been called the previous year? Did Thatcherism already exist in 1979 or had it still to be invented? And how close did the Labour party come to permanent schism in the years following her victory? To hear our bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses: www.ppfideas.com Next time: 1997 and the New Labour landslide Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode on pivotal UK elections David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the first great Labour landslide of 1945 and how it changed Britain. Why did Churchill not get his expected reward for winning the war? How genuinely radical and popular was the Labour programme? What made the mild-mannered Attlee such an effective leader? And how did the Tories – and Churchill – manage to get themselves back in the game? To hear our bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses: www.ppfideas.com. Next time: 1979 and the advent of Thatcherism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first episode in our new series with historian Robert Saunders on pivotal general elections is about the Tory disaster and Liberal triumph of 1906. David and Robert explore the reasons behind the worst result in modern Conservative party history – until now? How did the Liberals achieve their landslide? What made ‘Big Loaf, Little Loaf’ a winning election slogan? And who was Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the great forgotten prime minister? For our next bonus episode on the epochal election of 1924 sign up now to PPF+ and you’ll get ad-free listening plus all past, present and future bonuses too: www.ppfideas.com. Coming up: the Labour landslide of 1945 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the final episode in the current series, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (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 game-changing election of 1906. Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the Newsletter link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Tale Coming next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influential Atlas Shrugged (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 Children Coming soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 17th century. 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 Shrugged Coming next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) isn’t just a book about time travel. It’s also full of late-19th century 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 Children Coming soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections To receive our fortnightly newsletter just follow the link here https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all. This week’s episode explores 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 Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Hyde. Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 listening as well www.ppfideas.com Next time: Trollope’s Phineas Redux, the great novel of parliamentary ups and downs. Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, Atlas Shrugged, Midnight’s Children, The Handmaid’s Tale, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 – sign up now to PPF+ and enjoy ad-free listening as well www.ppfideas.com Next time: Middlemarch (part 2) on marriage, hypocrisy, guilt and redemption. Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our last episode in 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 Ideas episodes – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+, where you will also get all our past and future bonus episodes plus ad-free listening www.ppfieas.com  Coming next: The Great Political Fictions resumes with Middlemarch, the greatest of them all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 very soon. Sign up now and get ad-free listening too! www.ppfideas.com Coming Next: Helen Lewis on Mesmerism Coming Soon: The Great Political Fictions Part 2, starting with Middlemarch Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 books https://bit.ly/3wp8DNX  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+ subscribers www.ppfideas.com  Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock discusses The Death of the Author. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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+ subscribers www.ppfideas.com  Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Helen Lewis on women against the enfranchisement of women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s bad idea is one with a very long history: David talks to the historian Christopher Clark about antisemitism and 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 ‘Jewish Question’ 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 and bonus episodes – including more bad ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Adam Rutherford on Taxonomy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: historian Christopher Clark on Antisemitism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second episode in 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 bonus episodes – including more bad ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock on Facebook Friends Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 19th century through its heyday in the 20th century 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 listening and bonus episodes – including more bad ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Helen Thompson on the Gold Standard Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.com In the first bonus episode – available now – David and Lea answer listeners’ questions about AI, technology, online surveillance and brains-in-a-vat: what happens to freedom if we’re living in a computer simulation? Coming next our brand new series: The History of Bad Ideas, beginning with Adam Rutherford on eugenics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.com Coming next on the History of Freedom: Liberation Movements Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea have reached anarchism and nihilism. What is the positive vision of human freedom behind the anarchist rejection of the established order? What can nineteenth-century anarchists teach us about freedom in the twenty-first century? And if nihilists are against everything, what are they for? Sign up to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and two bonus episodes a month – just go to ppfideas.com Coming up next: David and Lea discuss existentialism and psychoanalysis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the latest episode of our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea explore what makes the free market free – and where it fails. How does buying and selling stuff advance human freedom? What does the free market free us from? And is it really possible to be free in a world dominated by credit and debt?  Sign up now for PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Next on the History of Freedom: Anarchism and Nihilism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea explore Immanuel Kant’s vision of rational freedom and perpetual peace. Why was Kant so sure that human reason would produce enlightened progress? Was he right? What are the obstacles likely to derail the advance of peace, then and now? How well do his arguments about free speech and free expression hold up in the age of the internet? Sign up now for PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Coming up next on the History of Freedom: How Free is the Free Market? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History of Freedom w/ Lea Ypi: Machiavelli and Political Liberty For the third episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea discuss Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state. What are the institutions that can protect people from domination and exploitation? How can political elites be held to account? Where are human beings most likely to find themselves at the mercy of others – and what can be done to help them escape? Sign up now for PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Coming up next on the History of Freedom: Kant, Enlightenment and Peace Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In episode two of our new series David and Lea explore some ancient ideas of freedom and ask what they mean today. What can Socrates teach us about the nature of free inquiry and the pitfalls of democratic freedom? Is Stoicism a guide to emancipation from desire or an exercise in selfishness? And how did Christianity upend the notion of freedom by annexing it to ideas of salvation and love? A conversation about dissent, self-knowledge and faith. Sign up now for PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany this and all future series. Just follow the top link https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming next on the History of Freedom: Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state, then and now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first episode of our new series about the history of freedom, David and Lea discuss what the idea means to them and why it matters so much. What did freedom mean to Lea growing up in communist Albania? Is it possible to know true freedom without also having experienced oppression? And how is being free different from being lucky? Subscribe now to PPF+ to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening for this and all future series. Just go to www.ppfideas.com. Coming up next on the History of Freedom: The Ancients – Socrates, Seneca & Jesus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sign up now for bonus episodes and ad-free listening – and help support the podcast.  www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our final episode in this series, David and Gary discuss the election of 2008, which saw Barack Obama’s extraordinary ascent to the presidency. How did he outthink and outmanoeuvre Hilary Clinton? What role did the financial crisis play in his path to the White House? And was it really the vice-presidential candidates in this election who pointed the way to America’s political future? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming next: our new series – The History of Freedom with Lea Ypi. Plus news of how you can sign up to PPF Plus to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections has reached 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan. David and Gary discuss whether Jimmy Carter was always doomed, what made Reaganomics different and how Reagan succeeded in being an optimist and a scaremonger at the same time. Did this election really inaugurate a new era in American politics – and if so, are we still living in it? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming up: 2008 and the election of Barack Obama Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The election of 1936 saw FDR re-elected in a landslide. It was also an election in which fundamental questions about the future direction of America were at stake. David and Gary discuss what made it a turning point for American democracy and ultimately for the wider world. Could the power of the Supreme Court be tamed? What was the true nature of economic freedom? And what threatened the New Deal - dissent at home or looming dangers abroad? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming up: The election of 1980 and the arrival of Reaganomics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve reached the twentieth century and today’s episode is about the decisive election of 1912. David and Gary discuss the year when the Republicans split, the Democrats recaptured the White House after an absence of twenty years, and American politics shifted decisively towards progressivism. Who were the real progressives? What was Theodore Roosevelt trying to achieve in setting up a new party? How did Woodrow Wilson mange to win the nomination and the presidency? And was this the election that saw the dawn of a new environmental politics?  To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming up: How the election of 1936 sealed the New Deal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections looks at 1896, when a single speech nearly upended American politics. The speech was William Jennings Bryan’s ‘Cross of Gold’ address at the Democratic Party convention, which won him the nomination. How did a 36-year old outsider from Nebraska get so close to reaching the White House? What made the issue of silver coinage the driving force behind American populism? And why was 1896 the template for a new kind of campaigning, in which the power of oratory had to square off against the power of money? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Next time: 1912 and the great Republican split Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the third episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections David and Gary talk about what was maybe the most significant election of all: 1860, when Lincoln became president and the country careened into civil war. How did the newly formed Republican Party break the stranglehold of the established parties? Why could the South neither unite against it nor accept its victory? What enabled Lincoln to wrestle the Republican nomination at the party's convention in Chicago and what might have happened if he had failed? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming up: 1896 and the populist revolt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the second episode in our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and Gary discuss 1828: the first great populist election, which saw the arrival of Andrew Jackson and a new style of politics in the White House. What made Jackson different from his predecessors? How did this election reinvent the American party system? And why were Jackson's arguments with Vice-President John Calhoun about economic tariffs so toxic that they brought the country close to civil war? To sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter to accompany this and future series, just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming up next: the Election of 1860 and Abraham Lincoln Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first episode of our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and historian Gary Gerstle explore the presidential contest of 1800: scurrilous, complicated, game changing. How did it help create the American party system? Was it really democratic? What would have happened if Aaron Burr had won? Plus, just how accurate is the depiction of the election in Hamilton the musical? PLUS sign up now for the new PPF newsletter. A free, fortnightly guide to recent episodes, jam-packed with further reading, more to watch and listen to, plus extras from David. Starting with the Great Political Fictions. To get the newsletter just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Next week on the Ideas Behind American Elections: 1828. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an extra episode this week David answers your questions about the most recent series of the History of Ideas - in particular about the political lessons of Gulliver’s Travels, for its own time and for our own. Plus, how is Trump like - and not like - Coriolanus, and where are the female authors for this series? (A: they’re coming!) Starting in our regular slot next week, PPF moves to two episodes a week as we launch our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections with Gary Gerstle - beginning with the election of 1800: Adams v Jefferson v Hamilton v Burr. We will also be letting you know how to sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter - coming soon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s 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? More from the LRB: Pankaj Mishra on the disillusionment of Alexander Herzen  '"Emancipation", he concluded, "has finally proved to be as insolvent as redemption".' Julian Barnes on Turgenev and Flaubert  ‘When the two of them meet, they are already presenting themselves as elderly men in their early forties (Turgenev asserts that after 40 the basis of life is renunciation).’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s 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 worth? Next week: Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862) Coming up: The Ideas Behind American Elections – a twice-weekly series running throughout March with Gary Gerstle, looking at 8 American presidential elections from 1800 to 2008 and exploring the ideas that shaped them and helped to shape the world. Coming soon: sign up to the PPFIdeas newsletter! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s episode on the great political fictions is about Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’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? More from the LRB: Clare Bucknell on Swift the satirist ‘Swift’s satire was fabulous as well as honest, a distorting magnifying glass as well as a mirror.’ Terry Eagleton on Swift’s double standards ‘Swift and Montaigne are outraged by colonial brutality while being deep-dyed authoritarians themselves.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first episode of our new 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 argument? More from the LRB: Colin Burrow on Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus  Michael Wood on Coriolanus in the Hunger Games Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Books Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices