Past Present Future
Past Present Future is a bi-weekly History of Ideas podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas come from, what they mean, and why they matter. Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future. New episodes every Thursday and Sunday.
Episodes
July 17, 2025 • 62 mins
For the final episode in our current series on the history of bad ideas, David talks to philosopher Alexander Douglas about the damage that can be done by the idea of identity. Why is the search for a distinctive personal identity such a futile quest? How does it lead to an identity politics of exclusion and violence? What can we learn from the philosopher Spinoza about having an identity without identity? And what can we glean fro...
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July 13, 2025 • 65 mins
In today’s episode of the history of bad ideas, David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about behaviourism, a theory of psychology that has penetrated to the heart of politics. How did we get from Pavlov’s Dog to a prescription for a better society? What is the relationship between behavioural utopianism and contemporary economics? How did behaviourism get turned into something called ‘Nudge’? And if we are being nudged...
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July 10, 2025 • 60 mins
Today’s bad idea is one with a short history but a big reach: the term polycrisis only came into being at the end of the last century but now it seems to be everywhere. David talks to historian Gary Gerstle about how this idea was originally conceived, what its current vogue says about the times in which we live and whether this really is a polycrisis or something else. Why is it comforting to think that the crises through which we...
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July 6, 2025 • 62 mins
For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to philosopher Shannon Vallor about the myth that technology can be value free. It’s easy to see why Silicon Valley is so keen on the idea that it’s never the fault of the tech, only of the people who use it. But why do we let them get away with it? Where did this idea come from? How has it also poisoned arguments about gun laws and nuclear weapons? And what can we do to f...
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July 3, 2025 • 58 mins
For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to economic historian Marc Palen about monopoly, an idea that has always had its defenders as well as its fierce critics. Why do monopolies arise even in supposedly competitive economies? How did the anti-monopoly movement of Henry George in the late-19th century argue that the monopolists could be taken down? How are those struggles echoed in the fight against Silicon Val...
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June 29, 2025 • 62 mins
Today’s bad idea is one that started out as satire and ended as a political slogan. David talks to historian of ideas Ben Jackson about meritocracy and its origins in Michael Young’s book The Rise of the Meritocracy published in 1958. Young foresaw a populist revolt against the meritocratic elite in the year 2034. Was his vision prophetic? Why did politicians like Tony Blair embrace a concept that Young thought was antithetical to ...
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June 26, 2025 • 60 mins
For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to cultural historian Tom Wright about charisma, a term that often feels essential for understanding modern politics but which ends up obscuring far more than it explains. How did an old idea from Christian theology get used to explain the hold that political leaders have over crowds? Why is it so important not to confuse charm with charisma? What has made a word from earl...
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June 22, 2025 • 61 mins
In today’s episode about the power of bad ideas, David talks to historian and podcaster Dan Snow about the myth that wars are settled on the battlefield. Why are we so drawn to the idea of the decisive military showdown? Is Napoleon to blame? What are the forces that actually settle military conflicts? Plus: were Abba really so wrong that Waterloo won the war?
Out tomorrow: A bonus episode in which David and Dan explore a range of...
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June 19, 2025 • 57 mins
Today’s bad idea is ‘genius’, the label that has enabled all sorts of terrible behaviour through the ages. Writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis explains how and why the idea of genius gets misapplied to people and things that just aren’t. Why are geniuses meant to be tortured? Why are individual geniuses prized over the collaborations that lie behind most innovations? Why do we think that people who are brilliant at one thing will be...
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June 15, 2025 • 59 mins
For the first episode in our new series about how bad ideas take hold, David talks to economist Mark Blyth about austerity, the cost-cutting idea that refuses to die. Why is it an article of faith that states need periodic purging to stop them getting too greedy? Why does this so often happen at times when it does most harm, from the 1930s to the financial crisis that began in 2008? And how is the politics of austerity playing out ...
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June 12, 2025 • 63 mins
Today’s political trial is perhaps the most consequential in English history: the trial and execution of King Charles I for treason in January 1649. How could a king commit treason when treason was a crime against the king? How could a court try a king when a king has no peers? How could anyone claim to speak for the people after a civil war when so many people had been on opposite sides? The answers to these questions would cost m...
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June 8, 2025 • 65 mins
Today’s trial is one of the most notorious in history but also one of the most misremembered. Galileo’s epic confrontation with the Catholic Church over the question of whether the earth moves round the sun – culminating with his interrogation and condemnation in Rome in 1633 – was not just a matter of truth vs ignorance or science vs superstition. It was also twenty-year long struggle on the part of both sides to find a way to co-...
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June 5, 2025 • 61 mins
Today’s episode is about a pivotal event in British history that took place exactly 50 years ago: the 1975 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Community. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about why it was so different in so many ways from the Brexit referendum in 2016. Why in 1975 were Labour and the SNP the Eurosceptic parties? What made the Tories pro-European? Where was immigration as an election issue? How...
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June 1, 2025 • 55 mins
In today’s episode an extraordinary political trial that culminated in the execution of one queen at the behest of another: Mary Queen of Scots, convicted of treason in 1586 and beheaded in 1587. But who really wanted her dead, Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth’s powerful political servants? Why did Mary demand to be tried before parliament rather than a court of noblemen? How did she attempt to defend herself in the face of apparently ...
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May 29, 2025 • 58 mins
In today’s episode another trial that forms the basis for great drama: the case of Thomas More, tried and executed in 1535, events dramatised by Robert Bolt in A Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall. How did More try to argue that silence was no evidence of treason? Why was his defence so legalistic? Was he really ‘the Socrates of England’? And who was the true villain in this case: Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich or th...
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May 25, 2025 • 61 mins
Today’s political trial took place in 1431 though it was still being re-litigated right through to the twentieth century: the case of Joan of Arc, charged with heresy by the Church and burned at the stake. Why was a political prisoner tried in an ecclesiastical court? Why were her interrogators so obsessed by her choice in clothes? How did Joan seek to explain her visions? And was this trial any more of a fix than the later trials ...
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May 22, 2025 • 54 mins
The first political trial in our new series is the one that set the template for all the others: the trial of Socrates in Athens in 399 BCE, which ended with a death sentence for the philosopher and a permanent stain on the reputation of Athenian democracy. Why, after a lifetime of philosophy, was Socrates finally prosecuted at the age of 70? Was the case motivated by private grievance or public outrage? What should Socrates have s...
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May 18, 2025 • 52 mins
To introduce our new series about historic political trials – from Socrates to Marine Le Pen – David explores what makes political confrontations in a court of law so fascinating and so revealing. Why do even the worst of dictators still want to play by the rules? What happens when realpolitik and legal principles collide? How does the political system often find itself in the dock? Who wins and who loses in the great game of lawfa...
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May 15, 2025 • 54 mins
For the final episode in this series David talks to the leading economist Dani Rodrik about the case he made in the early 2000s that globalisation was unsustainable in its current form. How does he think this prediction has been borne out? What forms of globalisation might work in the 21st century? Where are the strengths and weaknesses of the existing system? And what does he make of the antics of Donald Trump?
Available from Sat...
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May 11, 2025 • 64 mins
David talks to historian Meg Jacobs about how the 1970s changed everything for America’s understanding of its place in the global economy. How did first the Nixon Shock and then the Oil Shock reshape American politics? Why did America’s politicians respond to these shocks not with tariffs or sabre-rattling but with calls to national self-sacrifice? Did anyone heed those calls? And what lessons did Donald Trump draw from America’s c...
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