Past Present Future
By David Runciman
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. Brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books.
New episodes every Thursday and Sunday.
Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future. Brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books.
New episodes every Thursday and Sunday.
Latest episode
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The Great Political Films: Jeanne Dielman
Today’s great political film is Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. A classic of feminist cinema it is also a film about the meaning of ti… -
The Great Political Films: The Candidate w/Chris Smith
Today’s episode is a conversation between David and the former politician Chris Smith (long-time MP and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in Tony Blair’s first government) about The Candidate (1972), the first great political film of th… -
The Great Political Films: Z
We resume our series on the great political films with Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969), the quintessential late 60s movie about assassination, conspiracy, street politics and police brutality. How could a film shot in Algeria and starring French actors so fa… -
The History of Bad Ideas: Televised Leadership Debates
To finish this series of bad ideas, David tries to persuade Gary Gerstle of the futility of televised leadership debates. From Nixon vs Kennedy to Harris vs Trump, do the voters really learn anything from these supposed exchanges of ideas? Are they e… -
The History of Bad Ideas: Party Members Choosing Leaders
For our penultimate bad idea in this series, David talks to Robert Saunders about what’s gone wrong with British politics since party members got to decide who leads the party – and in some cases who gets to be prime minister. Is the problem the prin… -
The History of Bad Ideas: Steady State Theory
Today’s bad idea is a theory of the universe: David talks to astrophysicist Chris Lintott about Steady State Theory, the rival cosmological model to the Big Bang, which held its own for a while in the 1940s and 1950s but turned out to be unsustainabl… -
The History of Bad Ideas: The End of History
Today’s bad idea concerns history itself: David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about the temptations and the pitfalls of the idea of The End of History. Francis Fukuyama popularised the phrase in 1989 at the end of the Cold War. What did his v… -
The History of Bad Ideas: Modernisation!
For today’s bad idea David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what goes wrong when politicians get their hands on the concept of modernisation. Why does it leave them so in thrall to new technology? What does it miss about how change… -
The History of Bad Ideas: The Marketplace of Ideas
Today’s bad idea is about how ideas get adopted, argued over and rejected: David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what’s wrong with seeing this as a competitive marketplace. From St. Paul to Citizens United, from John Stuart Mill t… -
The History of Bad Ideas: Nobel Prizes
