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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 Thursday and Sunday.

Past Present Future

Today’s revolutionary thinker is Martin Luther, the man who upended the religious, political and intellectual life of Europe, maybe without entirely meaning to. David talks to historian Alec Ryrie about how a German monk took on the entire authority of the Catholic Church and survived the experience. What did he hope to achieve? Who were his principal backers? How did he reimagine the idea of human freedom? And where is his influence most widely felt today?

Out tomorrow on PPF+ a new bonus episode: David talks to Alec Ryrie about Calvin, who may have been the Reformation’s true revolutionary. What was Calvinism and how did it change the world? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Tickets are available now for PPF Live at the Bath Curious Minds Festival: on Saturday March 29th David will be in conversation with Robert Saunders about the legacy of Winston Churchill: The Politician with Nine Lives https://bit.ly/42GPp3X

Next up in The History of Revolutionary Ideas: The Scientific Revolution

Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The History of Revolutionary Ideas: The Reformation (part 1): Luther

Today’s episode is about a revolution that took centuries to happen if it ever really happened at all: The Scientific Revolution. David talks to historian of science Simon Schaffer about what changed in human understanding – and what didn’t – in the age of Galileo and Newton. Was the new science a revolution of ideas or of practices? What did it mean for the hold of religious and political authority? Who or what were the driving forces behind it? And did the people who lived through it realise what was happening?
Out now on PPF+: David’s conversation with Alec Ryrie about Jean Calvin, who may have been the Reformation’s true revolutionary. What was Calvinism and how did it change the world? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Tickets are available now for PPF Live at the Bath Curious Minds Festival: join us on Saturday 29th March to hear David in conversation with Robert Saunders about the legacy of Winston Churchill: The Politician with Nine Lives https://bit.ly/42GPp3X
Next Time on the History of Revolutionary Ideas: The English Revolutions (part one): The Civil War
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The History of Revolutionary Ideas: The Scientific Revolution

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 ever much more than a competition to avoid gaffes? And what did British politics gain when it introduced prime ministerial election debates (apart from a brief attack of Cleggmania)?
A new bonus bad idea is available to accompany this series: David talks to Lucia Rubinelli about what’s wrong with the idea of sovereignty. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
To find out about our gift offerings for Christmas and beyond visit the gift page on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts
The latest edition of the PPF newsletter is out now - sign up to get it every fortnight https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters 
Next time: The Great Political Films resumes with Z (1969)
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The History of Bad Ideas: Televised Leadership Debates

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 faithfully reconstruct a recent Greek political killing? How did it capture the spirit of the times? And what does it say about the relationship between politics as violence and politics as story-telling?
To find out about our gift offerings for Christmas and beyond visit the gift page on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts
Next time: The Candidate (1972) w/Chris Smith
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The Great Political Films: Z

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 the 1970s. How does its portrayal of the compromises of running for office hold up today? Is it a cynical film or an inspiring one? And what lessons does it have for politics in the age of Trump?
To find out about gifting a PPF+ subscription for Christmas and beyond just click on the link https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts
Next time: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll) 
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The Great Political Films: The Candidate w/Chris Smith

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 time and the illusions of choice. How can a movie which shows a woman peeling potatoes in real time have you on the edge of your seat? If the personal is the political, what do three days in the life of a Belgian housewife tell us about the true nature of power?
Coming this weekend on PPF+: two new bonus episodes to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Next time in our regular slot: Kagemusha (1980)
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
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The Great Political Films: Jeanne Dielman

Today’s great political film is Akira Kurosawa’s epic of war and deception Kagemusha (1980). Set in late sixteenth-century Japan it tells the story of a thief tasked with impersonating a warlord. Can physical resemblance translate into political authority? How far does the conspiracy need to go? And who in the end is the real criminal?
Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Next time: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Political Films: Kagemusha

Our political films season has reached the late 1980s with Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee’s searing take on racial tension on a Brooklyn block on a boiling hot summer’s day. How does a fight over pizza turn into a full-blown riot? With everyone feeling exploited, who is really to blame? And where do Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X – not to mention Jesse Jackson Jr. – fit in?
Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Next time: Fight Club w/ Helen Lewis
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Political Films: Do The Right Thing

David talks to writer and journalist Helen Lewis about David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), the film that launched a thousand memes. Does this tale of thwarted masculinity and corporate malfeasance code left or code right? Who, in the end, is Tyler Durden: Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk or Andrew Tate? Is Fight Club a relic of the pre-digital age or a prophetic vision of what was coming? And … Meat Loaf?!
Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Next Time: There Will Be Blood
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Political Films: Fight Club w/ Helen Lewis

Our great political films series reaches the twenty-first century with Paul Thomas Anderson’s unforgettable There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis as oilman Daniel Plainview in one of the all-time great screen performances. Based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! (1927), the movie swaps out Marx for Nietzsche and tells a story of money vs religion and family vs both. What, in the end, is the force that cannot be overcome?
Out now: two bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
Next time: The Social Network
Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Political Films: There Will Be Blood

Today’s revolutionary idea is one with a long history, not all of it revolutionary: David talks to the historian Fara Dabhoiwala about the idea of free speech. When did free speech first get articulated as a fundamental right? How has that right been used and abused, from the eighteenth century to the present? And what changed in the history of the idea of free speech with the publication of J. S. Mill’s On Liberty in 1859?
Fara Dabhoiwala’s What Is Free Speech? is available now https://bit.ly/4jgcvDt
Next time: Marx and the Paris Commune w/Bruno Leipold
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The History of Revolutionary Ideas: Free Speech

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