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.
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Copyright: Past Present Future
Episodes
History of Ideas 4: Virginia Woolf
49m · PublishedEpisode 4 in our series on the great essays is about Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929). David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence. And how, despite all that, it still manages to be as fresh and funny as anything written since.
Read more on Virginia Woolf in the LRB:
Jacqueline Rose on Woolf and madness
‘It is, one might say, a central paradox of modern family life that its members are required to mould themselves in each other’s image and yet to know, as separate individuals or egos, exactly who they are.’
Gillian Beer on Woolf and reality
‘The “real world” for Virginia Woolf was not solely the liberal humanist world of personal and social relationships: it was the hauntingly difficult world of Einsteinian physics and Wittgenstein’s private languages.’
Rosemary Hill on Woolf and domesticity
‘Woolf, who had once found it humiliating to do her own shopping, spent the last morning of her life dusting with Louie, before she put her duster down and went to drown herself.’
John Bayley on Woolf and writing
‘For Virginia Woolf wish-fulfilment was in words themselves, that protected her from herself and from society.’
Listen to David’s History of Ideas episode about Max Weber’s ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’.
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History of Ideas 3: Thoreau
54m · PublishedEpisode three in our series about the great political essays is about Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), a ringing call to resistance against democratic idiocy. Thoreau wanted to resist slavery and unjust wars. How can one citizen turn the tide against majority opinion? Was Thoreau a visionary or a hypocrite? And what do his arguments say about environmental civil disobedience today?
Read Thoreau’s essay here
From the LRB:
Paul Laity on Thoreau and self-sufficiency
Jeremy Harding on XR and civil disobedience
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History of Ideas 2: Hume
57m · PublishedEpisode two in our series on the great essays is about David Hume. How can eighteenth-century arguments about the national debt help make sense of American politics today? When does public borrowing become a recipe for national disaster? Who is really in charge of the public finances: the government or the bankers, Washington, D.C. or Wall Street? And what has all this got to do with Hume’s arguments for the morality of suicide?
Read Hume’s original essay ‘Of Public Credit’ here.
For more on Hume from the archive of the LRB:
Jonathan Rée on Hume’s voracious appetites: ‘“The Corpulence of his whole person was better fitted to communicate the Idea of the Turtle-Eating Alderman than of a refined Philosopher,” as a friend put it.’
Fara Dabhoiwala on Hume and mockery: ‘David Hume often resorted to ridicule to undermine hypocrisy or superstition, even if he doubted its capacity to settle controversial questions, arguing that mockery was as likely to distort as to reveal the truth.’
John Dunn on Hume and us: ‘Hume is in some ways so very modern . . . But just because he is in some ways so close to us, it is easy to lose the sense that in many others his beliefs and experiences stand at some little distance from our own.’
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History of Ideas 1: Montaigne
50m · PublishedHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
History of Ideas Q&A
50m · PublishedFor our last episode before Christmas David answers some of your questions about the History of Ideas series – What would Dickens have made of Trump? How would reparations work? Which essays are missing from the list?
Coming up: the whole series on the great essays, one a day, every day, starting on Christmas Day.
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The Art of the Essay
51m · PublishedAs we wrap up our History of Ideas series David discusses what makes a great essay and whether the best contemporary writing is as good as what went before. The answer is yes, as shown by Jiayang Fan’s brilliant 2020 essay ‘How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda’. David explores why this is such a remarkable example of what can be done with the form and why the art of the essay is alive and well.
Read Jiayang Fan’s essay here
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Something’s Got to Give
55m · PublishedThis week David talks to the economists Dieter Helm and Diane Coyle about the challenges of building sustainability into the way we live now. Why is GDP such a poor guide to long-term economic well-being? How can we stop squandering future resources? What should the next Labour government do to create a sustainable economy – and what will happen if they don’t?
Dieter Helm’s new book is available to download for free here
Read the Bennett Institute report on Universal Basic Infrastructure here
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Democracy Q&A w/ Lea Ypi
56m · PublishedHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
History of Ideas: Ta-Nehisi Coates
52m · PublishedIn the penultimate episode in our series on the great essays, David talks 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.
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Democracy vs Nationalism w/ Lea Ypi
51m · PublishedIn the latest instalment of David’s ongoing conversation with Lea Ypi about the past, present and future of democracy they discuss whether democratic politics can ever break free from the stranglehold of the nation-state. When and why did nationalism take such a strong grip of the idea of democracy? What are the international or cosmopolitan alternatives? And can a democracy police its borders without having actual borders or actual police?
Listen to the previous episodes in this series here.
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Past Present Future has 81 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 69:18:24. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on April 16th 2023. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on May 17th, 2024 12:41.