Past Present Future
Episodes
History of Ideas: Virginia Woolf
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week our history of the great essays and great essayists reaches the twentieth century and Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece ‘A Room of One’s Ow...
From Lincoln to Trump: What Happened to the Republican Party?
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week David talks to American historian Gary Gerstle about the shape-shifting journey of the US Republican Party, from the Civil War to the battle...
History of Ideas: Thoreau
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the third episode in this series about the great political essays, David explores Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), a ringing call to r...
Whose Space is it Anyway?
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk to astrophysicist Chris Lintott and writer Tom Stevenson about the threat from outer space: is it the asteroids, is it the aliens, o...
Why J.S. Mill Matters w/ Tara Westover
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week David talks to Tara Westover and the philosopher Clare Chambers about the enduring legacy of John Stuart Mill. Reading Mill’s Essays on R...
Are There Too Many People?
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week David talks to science writer Meehan Crist about Thomas Malthus and the perennial question of overpopulation. Malthus wrote 225 years ago an...
History of Ideas: Hume
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the second episode in this season of History of Ideas, David discusses the Scottish philosopher David Hume and explores how eighteenth-century arg...
Rawls, Capitalism & Justice
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week Daniel Chandler and Lea Ypi join David to talk about the legacy of the great American political philosopher John Rawls and his theory of jus...
Live Special: The American Century w/ David Miliband
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode was recorded live at the Hay Festival, where David was joined on stage by David Miliband and Helen Thompson to discuss the past,...
AI: Can the Machines Really Think?
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gary Marcus and John Lanchester join David to discuss all things AI, from ChatGPT to the Turing test. Why is the Turing test such a bad judge of mach...
History of Ideas: Montaigne
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the first episode in the new series of History of Ideas – on the great essays and the great essayists – David discusses Montaigne, the man who...
Living Behind the Iron Curtain
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week David talks to Katja Hoyer and Lea Ypi about life under communism. East Germany was the most successful of the communist states of Eastern ...
How Dallas Saw the Future
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week David talks to Helen Thompson about Dallas and the end of oil. How did the world’s most popular soap opera come to explain the energy c...
The Novel that Unravels Democracy
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David talks to Ian McEwan about Italo Calvino’s The Watcher (1963), one of the greatest of all works of political fiction. Challenging, disturbin...
Introducing Past Present Future
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Past Present Future is a new weekly podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to...