Stay ConnectedPast 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.
Copyright: © Past Present Future
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
They can't harm you, if they can't find you! Use code ppf at the link below and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/ppf
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s bad idea is one with a very recent history but also a long backstory: David talks to author and journalist James Marriott about what happens when the written word gets supplanted by video and when videos get shorter and shorter. Did the rot set in with television, with YouTube or with TikTok? Is short-form video a symptom or a cause of our shrinking attention spans? What does it mean to have a TikTok prime minister? And is there any way to get people reading again?
The New Dark Ages by James Marriott is out next month https://bit.ly/3TJR7zd
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 History of Bad Ideas: Overdiagnosis
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s bad idea is also one that is very hard to pin down: David talks to writer and literary scholar Ian Ellison about the concept of decadence, which went from explaining the fall of ancient Rome to becoming a label modern artists wanted to claim for themselves. What makes a society decadent? Is it always a bad thing? When does decadence explain what’s happening and when does it distract from what’s happening? Was Weimar Germany the best of decadence or the worst of it? And how decadent are we today?
Out now on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David talks to political historian David Klemperer about the idea of social credit, which promised to save the world in the 1920s and 1930s and ended up doing nothing of the sort. A fascinating story of cranks, conspiracy theorists and crypto-fascists with curious echoes in Silicon Valley today. 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 merch, events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com
Next Time in The History of Bad Ideas: Short-Form Video
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s bad idea spans literature, film, pop culture and plenty else besides: David talks to literary critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about what’s wrong with romantic heroes, from Byron and Heathcliff to James Dean and Jack Kerouac to Bridget Jones’s Mr Darcy and Andy Burnham. How did Romanticism give rise to the template for the brooding outsider who gets the girl? Which was the only Bronte sister to see through the myth? Why do romantic heroines get such a raw deal by comparison? And why does this idea lead to so much bad male behaviour?
Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David talks to political historian David Klemperer about the idea of social credit, which promised to save the world in the 1920s and 1930s and ended up doing nothing of the sort. A fascinating story of cranks, conspiracy theorists and crypto-fascists with curious echoes in Silicon Valley today. 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 merch, events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com
Next Time in The History of Bad Ideas: Decadence
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
