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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 Wednesday and Sunday.

Past Present Future

Today’s episode in our series about twentieth-century philosophy and biography explores the life and thought of Elizabeth Anscombe (G. E. M. Anscombe), a remarkable and remarkably uncompromising philosopher. David talks to Nikhil Krishnan about Anscombe’s relationship with Wittgenstein, her relationship with Catholicism and her fierce relationship with the truth. Why did she believe that consequentialism was capable of corrupting the young? And why did she insist that Harry Truman was a war criminal?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in the Lives of the Philosophers: Hannah Arendt
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The Lives of the Philosophers: Elizabeth Anscombe

In the second part of David’s conversation with historian Robert Saunders about the impact of the Bulgarian crisis of 1876 on the course of British politics, they discuss how Gladstone used the controversy to plot his way back to power. What made his campaign in the Midlothian constituency a watershed in the history of parliamentary democracy? How did he overcome Queen Victoria’s resistance to return to the premiership? What was the legacy of his rivalry with Disraeli? And what are the parallels with Andy Burnham’s path to the prime ministership and his possible rivalry with Kemi Badenoch today?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Elizabeth Anscombe
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Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Gladstone vs Disraeli Part 2 (Burnham vs Badenoch)

In our occasional series with historian Robert Saunders about significant political anniversaries, we remember the appearance of a pamphlet exactly 150 years ago that changed the course of British politics. On 6th September 1876 William Gladstone published The Bulgarian Horrors: The Question of the East, which reignited and reshaped his epic rivalry with Benjamin Disraeli. What made the two men such different kinds of politicians? How did the question of empire split political and public opinion? Who were the winners and losers from this showdown? Was this the dawn of a new age of populism?

Out now on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany our series on the lives of twentieth-century philosophers in which David talks to Kate Kirkpatrick about the life and thought of Simone de Beauvoir, existentialist, feminist, memoirist and controversialist. What made Beauvoir the person she became? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Now & Then with Robert Saunders – Gladstone vs Disraeli Part 2 (Burnham vs Badenoch)
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Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Gladstone vs Disraeli – The Bulgarian Horrors

In today’s episode exploring how twentieth-century philosophy and biography intersect David talks to philosopher and biographer Kate Kirkpatrick about Jean-Paul Sartre, a thinker whose life has been as closely scrutinised as his ideas. What made Sartre an existentialist? How was he shaped by his wartime experiences? Was he, as his critics claimed, a useful idiot for fashionable causes? Why has his reputation suffered since his death and where does it stand now?

Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David talks to Kate Kirkpatrick about the life and thought of Simone de Beauvoir, existentialist, feminist, memoirist and controversialist. What made Beauvoir the person she became? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Kate Kirkpatrick is the author of Becoming Beauvoir: A Life https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/becoming-beauvoir-9781350047174/

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Now & Then with Robert Saunders – Gladstone vs Disraeli
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The Lives of the Philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre

David talks to philosopher and author Nikhil Krishnan about the life and times of a little known but highly influential twentieth-century philosopher: J. L. Austin, who believed that the deepest truths lay in understanding how ordinary language worked. Why was Austin so opposed to the ideas of A. J. Ayer? How were his experiences in planning D-Day in 1944 an extension of his approach to philosophy? What made people so frightened of him? And how did such a conventional man have such an unconventional influence on thinkers from California to Cambridge?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre
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The Lives of the Philosophers: J. L. Austin

In our series about how twentieth-century philosophy and biography intersect, David talks to philosopher Alex Carter about the life of Albert Camus, novelist, playwright, journalist, celebrity and public intellectual. What makes Camus a philosopher as well? How was he shaped by his Algerian background? Does it make sense to call him an absurdist? How did he try to reconcile the very different parts of his extraordinary life?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: J. L. Austin

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The Lives of the Philosophers: Camus

The second life we explore in our series about the twentieth-century philosophers could not be more different from the first: David talks to philosopher Alex Carter about Simone Weil, who died aged just thirty-four and lived through much political and personal hardship, some of it self-inflicted. How did her asceticism inform her philosophical outlook? Why did she believe she needed to work in a factory and fight in the Spanish civil war to be true to her beliefs? When and how does her philosophy morph into theology? Was she a saint?

 

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

 

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Albert Camus
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The Lives of the Philosophers: Simone Weil

Today we begin a new series exploring twentieth-century philosophy through the lives of the people behind the ideas. First up David talks to philosopher Nikhil Krishnan about A. J. Ayer, the man who helped inspire the rise and fall of logical positivism. What did Ayer discover about the nature of truth when he went to Vienna on his honeymoon? How did he manage to popularise such a technical approach to his subject? What was left of philosophy when he had finished with it? And what does Ayer’s taste for football, sex and celebrity tell us about his attitude to the life of the mind?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Simone Weil
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The Lives of the Philosophers: A. J. Ayer

In today’s episode David talks to forensic anthropologist Sue Black about what happens when forensic science and forensic expertise end up on trial in the courtroom. When and how did scientists get involved in the business of criminal prosecution? What changed with the advent of DNA testing? Is the adversarial system the best way of testing scientific evidence? Can a jury distinguish between good science, bad science and junk science? And what might have gone wrong in the case of Lucy Letby?

Sue Black’s An Expert Witness is available now wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/45hcTge

Out now on PPF+: a final bad ideas bonus episode in which geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford explains what’s wrong with genealogy: why does wanting to know where we come from lead us down so many blind alleys? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time a brand-new series: The Lives of the Philosophers
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Forensics on Trial

We come to the end of this series of bad ideas with a conversation with neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan about the problems of living in an age of diagnosis, when all medical conditions need a label and new labels appear all the time. What happens when the classification criteria for conditions like autism and ADHD get broader and broader? Are doctors or patients driving this? When does predictive testing do more harm than good? Why does advocacy for sufferers get in the way of good health? Is de-diagnosis achievable?

The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan is available now https://bit.ly/3U1ZwOu

Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bad ideas bonus episode in which geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford explains what’s wrong with genealogy: why does wanting to know where we come from lead us down so many blind alleys? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next Time: Forensics on Trial
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The History of Bad Ideas: Overdiagnosis

This week’s Great Political Fiction is Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), the definitive novel about the politics – and emotions – of intergenerational conflict. How did Turgenev manage to write a wistful novel about nihilism? What made Russian politics in the early 1860s so chock-full of frustration? Why did Turgenev’s book infuriate his contemporaries – including Dostoyevsky?
More from the LRB:
Pankaj Mishra on the disillusionment of Alexander Herzen 
'"Emancipation", he concluded, "has finally proved to be as insolvent as redemption".'
Julian Barnes on Turgenev and Flaubert 
‘When the two of them meet, they are already presenting themselves as elderly men in their early forties (Turgenev asserts that after 40 the basis of life is renunciation).’
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The Great Political Fictions: Fathers and Sons

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