Past Present Future

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.

New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday.

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328 episodes
Updated Sunday

Episodes328

Newest first

January 11 · 1 hr
Politics on Trial: Muhammad Ali vs. the Draft
Today’s episode is about the epic battle between Muhammad Ali and the US government over its attempt to draft him during the Vietnam war and what happened when that fight reached the US Supreme Court. What were Ali’s grounds for claiming to be a conscientious objector? How did that argument cut across wider questions of race, religion and power? Why did the Supreme Court change its original decision against Ali to find unanimously in his favour? And who won and who lost as a result?
January 7 · 57 min
Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Home Rule for Ireland! - The Kite
Today’s episode in our occasional series with historian Robert Saunders on significant political anniversaries looks at the event that blew British politics apart at the start of 1886. The ‘Hawarden Kite’ – when William Gladstone’s son Herbert floated the idea that his father had committed to Irish Home Rule – split the Liberal party, upended political allegiances and set the country on the path to potential civil war. How did it happen? Why were passions running so high on the question of Irela
January 4 · 1 hr
Films of Ideas extra: The Designated Mourner
An extra episode to accompany our Films of Ideas series: David explores The Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn, the writer and co-star of My Dinner with Andre. How did a play first performed in 1996 turn into a prophetic text for our times? How was it shaped by Shawn’s experiences in Central America and his view of Reagan’s America? What makes it one of the greatest of all contemporary political fictions?
Dec 31, 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Films of Ideas: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind w/Beeban Kidron
Today it’s the last in our series of live episodes recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to film director and campaigner Beeban Kidron about Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), a much-loved film that’s also chock full of interesting ideas. Is memory the same as identity? Are all relationships founded on manipulation? What happens when we try to curate our mental distress? How should we resist the tech panacea of a painless existence? Who gets to ch
Dec 28, 2025 · 59 min
Films of Ideas: Wittgenstein w/Nikhil Krishnan
The fourth episode in our season of live recordings from the Regent Street Cinema is about another film that explores the relationship between biography and philosophy: Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993), which tells the story of an extraordinary life in a way that is both light and profound. David talks to writer and philosopher Nikhil Krishnan about Ludwig Wittengenstein’s ideas of war, science, truth, freedom, sexuality, language, loyalty and communism and how they are portrayed on screen. Do
Dec 24, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Films of Ideas: Rosa Luxemburg w/Lea Ypi
Today’s episode in our season of live recordings from the Regent Street Cinema looks at the biopic of a revolutionary: Margaretha von Trotta’s Rosa Luxemburg (1986), which explores the deeply unstable relationship between the personal and the political. David talks to writer and philosopher Lea Ypi (Free, Indignity) about where biography ends and philosophy begins and whether revolutionary politics requires the leading of a revolutionary life. What was Rosa Luxemburg’s true cause? Who or what be
Dec 21, 2025 · 1 hr 6 min
Films of Ideas: My Dinner with Andre w/Lee Hall
The second episode in our live series from the Regent Street Cinema explores Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981), in which two men discuss the meaning of theatre, capitalism, love, science, faith and freedom over a meal. David talks to playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, Rocketman) about how a great film can be made out of a single conversation. Who was the real Andre? How scripted was the dialogue? Who won the argument? And why has this film had such an extraordinary after
Dec 17, 2025 · 59 min
Films of Ideas: Rope w/Nicci Gerrard & Sean French
Today it’s the first in our series of live episodes recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the crime writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (aka Nicci French) about Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), based on Patrick Hamilton’s play of the same name, itself based on the real-life case of Leopold and Loeb. What is the true subject of this film: murder, sex, morality or something else? Why is James Stewart so hopelessly miscast? And how does all this connect to Nietzsche?
Dec 14, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
Politics on Trial: Nelson Mandela vs Apartheid
Today’s episode explores the trials of Nelson Mandela, variously charged by South Africa’s apartheid state with treason, incitement, illegal foreign travel, sabotage and conspiracy across a decade that saw him more often in court than out. How did Mandela defend himself? What changed from his first trial to his last? Could any justice be found in a system of blatant oppression? And what happens when the line between lawyer, defendant and prisoner becomes impossibly blurred?
Dec 10, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
Politics on Trial: Eichmann in Jerusalem
Today’s episode is about a momentous trial and the incendiary book that followed: the trial was of Adolf Eichmann, convicted by an Israeli court in 1961 of orchestrating the Holocaust, and the book was Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), which questioned the grounds on which he was prosecuted. What did Arendt mean by ‘the banality of evil’? Why was she convinced that the case against Eichmann was badly misjudged? Was the trial really intended to serve as a history lesson? And if it was
Dec 7, 2025 · 58 min
Politics on Trial: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Today we return to our series about epoch-making trials with the case of the book they tried and failed to ban. In 1960 Penguin Books was prosecuted at the Old Bailey under the new Obscene Publications Act (1959) over its plans to produce a cheap, unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. How did the prosecution try to persuade the jury that the book was a menace to public morals? Who were the expert witnesses called in its defence? What were the decisive arguments? And w
Dec 3, 2025 · 1 hr
Ian McEwan on the Present as Future Past
David talks to novelist Ian McEwan, who was our first ever guest on PPF, about how the future will view our present once the disasters we are brewing come to pass. How might humanity scrape through the rest of the century? Will future generations see us as intellectually vibrant or essentially trivial? If we turn out to be unknowable to those who follow us, does that mean we are unknowable to ourselves? A wide-ranging conversation about how past, present and future co-exist in time. Ian McEwan’s latest novel is What We Can Know https://bit.ly/4ogYN5u If you are looking for Christmas presents we have 6- and 12-month gift subscriptions to PPF+ giving access to all our bonus episodes, ad-free listening and automatic sign-up to our fortnightly newsletter – which can be delivered to the recipient of your choice on Christmas Day! https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts Plus we have gorgeous PPF canvas tote bags and bone china PPF mugs, all available now https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time in Politics on Trial: Lady Chatterley’s Lover Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nov 30, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Thatcher@100 – Her Legacy
Today’s episode is the second part of David’s conversation with historian Robert Saunders about the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher. What is the meaning of Thatcherism in the twenty-first century? Why is she still such a polarising figure? Was she a distinctively British political phenomenon? Which politicians can plausibly claim to be channelling her example today?
Nov 26, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Thatcher@100 – Her Life
Today’s episode in our occasional series about momentous political anniversaries with historian Robert Saunders looks at the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher one hundred years on from her birth. What made Thatcher such a distinctive politician? What did she believe in before she became prime minister? How did her time is power alter her political outlook? And did she succumb to her own myth in the end?
Nov 23, 2025 · 54 min
The Rise and Fall of Homo Sapiens
Today’s episode explores some very big picture history: David talks to palaeontologist and science writer Henry Gee about the story of the human species from origin to peak to inevitable decline. When and how did Homo sapiens see off the competition from its rivals in the human and animal world? Why did that point mark the start of an inexorable drift towards extinction? In what ways are our strengths as a species also our fatal weaknesses? And how near are we to the end?
Nov 19, 2025 · 58 min
Trump-like Leadership in German History w/Chris Clark: Part 2 – Chancellor, Tyrant, Emperor?
Part two of David’s conversation with historian Chris Clark asks whether the best historical insights into Trump-like leadership come from comparison with kings or commoners, democrats or dictators. Does Trump’s leadership style share much if anything with an epoch-making politician like Bismarck? Should Trump’s public persona be understood as standing outside the norm of presidential politics or as quintessentially American? And what can we learn from a close reading of his magnum opus, The Art
Nov 16, 2025 · 51 min
Trump-like Leadership in German History w/Chris Clark: Part 1 – Kaiser Wilhelm II?
Today’s episode is the first of a two-part conversation with historian Chris Clark exploring how German history might help us understand Trump-like leadership, but not through looking at the Nazi period. Instead, David and Chris explore the character and leadership style of Kaiser Wilhelm II, a monarch with many Trumpian qualities. Was Wilhelm a populist or an elitist? Did he know what he was doing and what he was saying? Or was he out of his depth? Plus, how did his maverick and mercurial behav
Nov 12, 2025 · 51 min
Politics on Trial: France on Trial Part 2 – Vichy vs the Jews
Today’s episode is the second part of David’s conversation with historian Julian Jackson about the case of Marshal Pétain and the crimes of the Vichy regime. Did Pétain really play a ‘double game’ in which he tried to deceive the Nazis? How then to explain the vicious antisemitism of the Vichy regime? Why did the fate of France’s Jews not get more attention at Pétain’s trial? And how does the case of Pétain and the question of Vichy still resonate in French politics today?
Nov 9, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
Politics on Trial: France on Trial – Pétain vs De Gaulle
Today’s episode is the first of two on the extraordinary treason trial of Marshal Pétain in the summer of 1945 that ended up putting wartime France in the dock. David talks to historian of modern France Julian Jackson about how Pétain found himself so quickly charged with treason and who was judging him. What was the essence of Pétain’s crime? Conspiracy? Surrender? Collaboration? Complicity in genocide? And what on earth was his defence?
Nov 5, 2025 · 55 min
Politics on Trial: The Moscow Show Trials
Today’s episode is the first of two exploring the origins, conduct and legacy of the Moscow Show Trials that Stalin staged from 1936-38. David talks to historian of Russia Edward Acton about what motivated these grotesque spectacles, how the defendants were chosen, how their confessions were extracted, why the rhetoric was so violent and who was fooled by what they saw and heard. Plus: how did the trials of these few lead to the murders of so many?