Past Present Future

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 Wednesday and Sunday.

Episodes

Dignity and Indignity w/Lea Ypi

September 7, 2025 • 59 mins
Today’s episode is the first in a three-part conversation with philosopher and writer Lea Ypi about the idea of dignity and its role in the history of ideas and in the story of our lives. What is the difference between dignity and dignitas? How does our conception of dignity shape the ways that we think about death? And why is Kant so important for showing what the idea of dignity is capable of? Out tomorrow on PPF+: Part 2 of thi...
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PPF+: More of What You’ve Been Missing!

September 3, 2025 • 61 mins
In today’s episode some more highlights from the PPF+ archive of 35 bonus episodes and counting: here are a few more excerpts we think you might enjoy. In this episode you’ll hear David talking about In the Loop and the question of why politicians do and don’t resign; Robert Saunders on the legacy of Brexit for politics in 2025; Shannon Vallor on why AI is a vision not of the future but of the past; David on the appeal of High Noo...
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Politics on Trial: Hitler vs Weimar

August 31, 2025 • 65 mins
Today’s epic political trial is the one that should have been the end of Adolf Hitler but ended up being the making of him: his treason trial in 1924 for the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. How close did Hitler’s attempted coup come to succeeding? Why was he allowed to turn the court that tried him into a platform for his poisonous politics? What were the missed opportunities to silence him once and for all? Out now on PPF+: Part 2 of...
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Politics on Trial: Easter Rising 1916 w/Fintan O’Toole

August 28, 2025 • 59 mins
Today it’s the first of two episodes with journalist and historian Fintan O’Toole about the trials that followed the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. What did the leaders of the rising hope to achieve, with or without German help? How and why did the British get it so wrong by court martialling the supposed ring leaders in secret? Were those trials anything more than kangaroo courts? And why are fourteen martyrs more potent than thou...
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PPF+: A Taste of What You've Been Missing!

August 24, 2025 • 55 mins
Today’s episode is something a little bit different – it is nearly 18 months since we started PPF+ and there are now 34 bonus episodes waiting for you as soon as you sign up. It costs £5 per month or £50 per year and you will get two new bonus episodes every month along with ad-free listening, automatic sign-up to our newsletter and access to the whole archive. It’s easy and we would really value your support https://www.ppfideas.c...
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Politics on Trial 100th Anniversary Special: Franz Kafka’s The Trial

August 21, 2025 • 59 mins
Today’s episode in Politics on Trial is about the most famous trial in literature and one that never actually takes place. David talks to writer and literary scholar Ian Ellison about Franz Kafka’s The Trial, first published in 1925. What is the meaning of a book about a legal process that never happens? How was it inspired by Kafka’s failed love life? Why has it given rise to so many different understandings of what makes our worl...
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Politics on Trial: Dreyfus vs the Conspiracy Theory

August 17, 2025 • 66 mins
Today in Politics on Trial David tells the tale of the Dreyfus Affair that split France down the middle at the turn of the last century and revealed the grip of a whole host of conspiracy theories. Across a series of courts martial, libel trials, treason trials and parliamentary commissions, the story of a letter found in a wastebin turned into a saga about who really controlled the country. Was it the Jews? The Jesuits? The Freema...
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Politics on Trial: Oscar Wilde vs the Philistines

August 14, 2025 • 63 mins
Today’s episode in Politics on Trial is about three trials that took place over two months in the late spring of 1895 that brought about the destruction of Oscar Wilde. Why did Wilde trigger his own doom by suing his nemesis Lord Queensbury for libel? What did he fail to understand about how he would come across in a courtroom? And how did the persecution of Wilde and his gay lifestyle reveal the hidden terrors of late Victorian En...
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Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Whatever Happened to Unemployment?

August 10, 2025 • 64 mins
Today’s episode is the first in a new strand with the historian Robert Saunders looking at significant political anniversaries and their meaning for today. Summer 2025 is 70 years since the UK recorded its lowest ever unemployment rate in peacetime: just 1% (or 215,800 people) in July 1955. David and Robert explore the history of unemployment: how it’s been measured, what it means, why it matters and when it changes the course of p...
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Politics on Trial: Charles Parnell vs the English

August 7, 2025 • 58 mins
For today’s episode in Politics on Trial it’s two trials for the price of one, which between them changed the course of British and Irish history. In 1889 the leading Irish politician Charles Parnell was cleared of any involvement in the notorious Phoenix Park murders by Irish republican terrorists seven years earlier. In 1890 Parnell was found to be the adulterer in a divorce case involving his mistress and her husband. That scand...
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Politics on Trial: The Haymarket Eight vs the Police

August 3, 2025 • 57 mins
Today’s political trial is one of the most notorious in American history: eight men charged with and convicted of murder in 1886 for a terrorist outrage that none of them committed. A bomb had been thrown at the police during a workers’ rally in Chicago but this trial was not about punishing the person who threw it. Rather it was a witch hunt of the men and the movement that were thought to have inspired it. Anarchism was put on tr...
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Politics on Trial: John Brown vs Slavery

July 31, 2025 • 58 mins
Today’s great political trial concerns the prosecution and execution of John Brown in 1859 for his raid on Harper’s Ferry in the attempt to free America’s slaves, an event that helped precipitate the American Civil War. It was also a trial that produced three of the greatest speeches in American history: by Brown himself, by Henry Thoreau and by Frederick Douglass, which between them constitute an indictment of slavery for the ages...
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Politics on Trial: Aaron Burr vs the Constitution

July 27, 2025 • 55 mins
For today’s epic political trial, David talks to American historian and PPF regular Gary Gerstle about the treason trial of Aaron Burr in 1807. Why was Burr not put on trial for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel? Was Burr really planning to invade Mexico or was it a set-up? Why was President Thomas Jefferson so determined to bring Burr down? Why was Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Marshall so determined to prevent that from h...
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Politics on Trial: Louis XVI vs the People

July 24, 2025 • 59 mins
Today’s epoch-making political trial concerns the interrogation, conviction and execution of Louis XVI at the heart of the French Revolution in 1792-3. For many at the time and since this event had powerful echoes of the trial and execution of Charles I - but in fact the trial of Louis was very different in almost every way. Why and how did Louis choose to defend himself? Was he condemned because he was a king or because he was no ...
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Politics on Trial: Warren Hastings vs the British Empire

July 20, 2025 • 63 mins
To start our new instalment of episodes about the most consequential political trials in history David explores the trial of the eighteenth century: the impeachment of Warren Hastings that ran in the British parliament from 1788-95. Hastings had been Governor-General of Bengal, controlling much of India for Britain and for the East India Company and making himself and many others rich in the process. So why did his former allies tu...
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The History of Bad Ideas: Identity

July 17, 2025 • 61 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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The History of Bad Ideas: Behaviourism

July 13, 2025 • 64 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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The History of Bad Ideas: Polycrisis

July 10, 2025 • 59 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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The History of Bad Ideas: Value-Free Tech

July 6, 2025 • 61 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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The History of Bad Ideas: Monopoly

July 3, 2025 • 57 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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