Les meilleurs podcasts Past Present Future (2024)

1
The History of Bad Ideas: The Silent Majority 54:38

2d ago54:38

54:38

To kick off our new series on the history of bad ideas David talks to historian Sophie Scott-Brown about the idea of ‘the silent majority’, beloved by American presidents from Nixon to Trump. Where does this idea come from? Is it conservative or revolutionary? If the majority are actually silent, how can anyone know what they are thinking? And aren…

1
FIGHT THE FUTURE #063 | Groove Armada, Riordan, Mau P, Introversion + More! 1:00:13

16d ago1:00:13

1:00:13

TRACKLIST FOR #063 00:00 - 1. Groove Armada - Superstylin'(Album Version) [Jive Electro] [2001] 05:23 - 2. Delgado - The Positive [Don't Sweat the Small Stuff] [2024] 08:23 - 3. Thommy Simmons feat. Doolie - Fast Track [Medium Rare] [2024] 12:07 - 4. Dyzen - Try (Original Mix) [Habitat] [2024] 16:19 - 5. Aladag - No One [Diynamic Music] [2024] 19:5…

1
American Elections: 2024: The Meaning of Trump’s Triumph 1:21:12

7d ago1:21:12

1:21:12

For the final (extended) episode in our American Elections series David talks to Gary Gerstle about the historical significance of Donald Trump’s decisive victory this week. Was this election and its outcome unprecedented in American history or are there parallels to guide us? Can Trump be both an existential threat to American democracy and a poli…

1
The Great Political Films: The Battle of Algiers 54:09

9d ago54:09

54:09

For the last episode in this season of great political films David explores Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966), which changed the face of political movie-making forever. Filmed to look like archive footage, featuring actual participants in the events it describes, and showing both sides of the vicious contest between insurgents and cou…

1
The Great Political Films: Dr Strangelove & Fail Safe w/ Jill Lepore 50:36

13d ago50:36

50:36

This episode is about two great films on the same dark theme: David talks to American historian Jill Lepore about Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove and Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, which appeared within a few months of each other in 1964. Both films explore what might happen if America’s nuclear defence system went rogue. One is grimly hilarious; the o…

1
The Great Political Films: The Leopard w/ Lucia Rubinelli 53:39

16d ago53:39

53:39

For today’s great political film David discusses Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) with the Italian historian of ideas Lucia Rubinelli. How did a communist aristocrat from Milan come to make a film about a Sicilian prince? How did Burt Lancaster get cast in the leading role? Is this a political film or a film against politics? And what is the r…

1
The Great Political Films: The Manchurian Candidate 1:00:00

20d ago1:00:00

1:00:00

Today’s great political film is John Frankenheimer’s masterpiece of Cold War paranoia The Manchurian Candidate (1962), which came out the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s a 1960s movie about 1950s fears: brainwashing, the Korean War, McCarthyism, all shot through with Kennedy-era anxieties about sexual potency and psychoanalysis. Who’s a Sovi…

1
The Great Political Films: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 50:42

23d ago50:42

50:42

In today’s episode David discusses Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), a great patriotic anti-war film made in the depths of WWII. Why did Churchill want the film’s production stopped and was he right to suspect it was about him? What does the film say about the politics of nostalgia and the illusions…

1
The Great Political Films: Citizen Kane 52:47

27d ago52:47

52:47

Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) is many people’s favourite film of all time, including Donald Trump’s. Why does Trump love it so? What does he get right and what does he get wrong about the trajectory of the life of Charles Foster Kane? What does the film reveal about the relationship between celebrity, influence and political power? And why is …

1
The Great Political Films: Mr Smith Goes to Washington 53:17

1M ago53:17

53:17

Today’s great political film is Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), a much-loved tale of the little guy taking on the corrupt establishment. But there’s far more to it than that, including an origin story that suggests Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) might not be what he seems. From filibusters to fascism, from the New Deal to America…

1
The Great Political Films: La Grande Illusion 50:51

1M ago50:51

50:51

For the first episode in our new series David explores Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), a great anti-war film that is also a melancholy meditation on friendship between enemies, love across borders, and the inevitability of loss. What, in the end, is the great illusion: war itself, or the belief that we can escape its baleful consequences? …

1
Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried and Effective Altruism 56:52

1M ago56:52

56:52

David talks to author Michael Lewis about SBF and EA: about the man he got to know before, during and after his spectacular fall and about the philosophy with which he was associated. What did Sam Bankman-Fried believe was the purpose of making so much money? How did he manage to get so side-tracked from doing good? Why when it all went wrong did h…

1
American Elections: 2024: Is Anyone Winning? 55:37

1M ago55:37

55:37

David checks in with Gary Gerstle one more time before November to explore where things now stand with the US presidential election. In a conversation recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Walz/Vance debate, they discuss dead cats, October headwinds, comparisons with 2016 and a president missing in action. Plus, if the result really is too clo…

1
Thinking About Thinking Machines: Monk & Robot 56:32

1M ago56:32

56:32

For episode four of our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David and Shannon discuss a very different sci-fi sensibility: Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series (A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021) and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (2022)). What would it mean for robots to ‘wake up’? How might robots teach humans about the nature of…

1
Thinking About Thinking Machines: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 56:00

2M ago56:00

56:00

Today’s episode in our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines explores the novel that inspired Blade Runner: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). David talks to Shannon Vallor about what the book has that the film lacks and how it comprehensively messes with the line between human and machine, the natural…

1
Thinking About Thinking Machines: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Franchise’ 53:47

2M ago53:47

53:47

In today’s episode in our series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David and Shannon discuss Isaac Asimov’s 1955 short story ‘Franchise’, which imagines the American presidential election of 2008 as decided by one voter and a giant computer. Part prophecy, part parody: have either its predictions or its warnings about democracy co…

1
Thinking About Thinking Machines: Metropolis 52:32

2M ago52:32

52:32

For the first episode in our new series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David talks to philosopher Shannon Vallor about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The last great silent film is the most futuristic: a vision of robots and artificial life, it is also about where the human heart fits into an increasingly mechanised world. Is i…

1
What if… Scotland Had Voted for Independence? 57:31

2M ago57:31

57:31

For our last episode in this series of historical counterfactuals, David talks to the historian Ben Jackson about what might have happened if the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum had gone the other way. How close was the vote and what could have swung it differently? Were the dark warnings about the consequences of independence likely to have …

1
What if… The Berlin Wall Hadn’t Fallen? 53:43

2M ago53:43

53:43

Our counterfactuals series moves forward to 1989: David talks to Lea Ypi about what might have happened if the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen when it did. Was the night it came down really just one big accident? How long could the East German regime have lasted? And what does the fate of non-European communist states tell us about how it could have gone…

1
What if… The 1919 Paris Peace Conference Had Actually Kept the Peace? 56:08

2M ago56:08

56:08

David talks to historian Margaret MacMillan, author of the prize-winning Peacemakers, about whether the 1919 Paris Peace Conference deserves its reputation as a missed opportunity and the harbinger of another war. Could the peace have been fairer to the Germans? Could the League of Nations have been given real teeth? Could the Bolsheviks have been …

1
What If… The Russian Revolution Hadn’t Been Bolshevik? 56:02

2M ago56:02

56:02

Today’s episode is another big early twentieth-century counterfactual: David talks to the historian of Russia Edward Acton about how the Russian Revolution might have unfolded if the Left SRs and not the Bolsheviks had come out on top. Could Lenin have been sidelined? Might the Terror have been avoided? And what would it have meant to the wider wor…

1
What If… Franz Ferdinand Had Survived Sarajevo? 52:14

2M ago52:14

52:14

We return to our series on historical counterfactuals with the big one: how might WWI have been avoided? David talks to Chris Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers, the definitive history of the July crisis of 1914, to explore how it might have turned out differently. What would have happened if Franz Ferdinand had survived the assassination attempt in…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Hamilton 55:12

3M ago55:12

55:12

Our Great Political Fictions re-release concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (2015). What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers? How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history? And why does a product of the Obama…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: American Wife 53:47

3M ago53:47

53:47

The penultimate episode in our Great Political Fictions re-release is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush.One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version l…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: The Line of Beauty 52:29

3M ago52:29

52:29

Today’s Great Political Fiction is Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberation. It …

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: The Handmaid’s Tale 52:05

3M ago52:05

52:05

For the twelfth episode in our Great Political Fictions re-release, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), her unforgettable dystopian vision of a future American patriarchy. Where is Gilead? When is Gilead? How did it happen? How can it be stopped? From puritanism and slavery to Iran and Romania, from demography and racism t…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Midnight’s Children 52:38

3M ago52:38

52:38

In today’s Great Political Fiction David explores Salman Rushdie’s 1981 masterpiece Midnight’s Children, the great novel about the life and death of Indian democracy. How can one boy stand in for the whole of India? How can a nation as diverse as India ever have a single politics? And how is a jar of pickle the answer to these questions? Plus, how …

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Atlas Shrugged 57:45

3M ago57:45

57:45

In today’s episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influential Atlas Shrugged (1957), the bible of free-market entrepreneurialism and source book to this day for vicious anti-socialist polemics. Why is this novel so adored by Silicon Valley tech titans? How can something so bad have so much lasting power? And what did Rand hav…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Mother Courage & Her Children 52:59

3M ago52:59

52:59

Our ninth Great Political Fiction is Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play, written in 1939 at the start of one terrible European war but set in the time of another: the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century. How did Brecht think a three-hundred-year gap could help us to understand our own capacity for violence and cruelty? Why did he make Mother …

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: The Time Machine 55:03

3M ago55:03

55:03

Our eighth Great Political Fiction is H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) which isn’t just a book about time travel. It’s also full of late-19th century fear and paranoia about what evolution and progress might do to human beings in the long run. Why will the class struggle turn into savagery and human sacrifice? Who will end up on top? And how wi…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 50:11

3M ago50:11

50:11

Today’s Great Political Fiction is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) - a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all. David explores all the ways that Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale confounds our expectations about good and evil. What does Dr Jekyll really want? What are all the men in the book trying to hide? And what has any of this g…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Phineas Redux 53:10

3M ago53:10

53:10

The sixth Great Political Fiction in our summer re-release is Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1874), his lightly and luridly fictionalised account of parliamentary polarisation in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. A tale of political and personal melodrama, it explores what happens when political parties steal each other’s clothes and politician…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Middlemarch Part 2 49:47

3M ago49:47

49:47

This second episode about George Eliot’s masterpiece explores questions of politics and religion, reputation and deception, truth and public opinion. What is the relationship between personal power and faith in a higher power? Is it ever possible to escape from the gossip of your friends once it turns against you? Who can rescue the ambitious when …

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Middlemarch Part 1 48:46

3M ago48:46

48:46

Today’s Great Political Fiction is George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), which has so much going on that it needs two episodes to unpack it. In this episode David discusses the significance of the book being set in 1829-32 and the reasons why Nietzsche was so wrong to characterise it as a moralistic tale. Plus he explains why a book about personal rel…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Fathers and Sons 52:58

3M ago52:58

52:58

Our fourth 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 cont…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Mary Stuart 53:50

3M ago53:50

53:50

Our third Great Political Fiction is Friedrich Schiller’s monumental play Mary Stuart (1800), which lays bare the impossible choices faced by two queens – Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots – in a world of men. Schiller imagines a meeting between them that never took place and unpicks its fearsome consequences. Why does it do such damag…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Gulliver’s Travels 54:04

3M ago54:04

54:04

Today’s episode on the Great Political Fictions is about Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – part adventure story, part satire of early-eighteenth-century party politics, but above all a coruscating reflection on the failures of human perspective and self-knowledge. Why do we find it so hard to see ourselves for who we really are? What mak…

1
Fifteen Fictions for Summer re-release: Coriolanus 55:45

3M ago55:45

55:45

In the first episode of the summer daily re-release of our series on the Great Political Fictions, David talks about Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1608-9), the last of his tragedies and perhaps his most politically contentious play. Why has Coriolanus been subject to so many wildly different political interpretations? Is pride really the tragic flaw of…

1
What If… The Vietnam War Had Ended in 1964? 56:35

3M ago56:35

56:35

What If… The Vietnam War Had Ended in 1964? For our latest counterfactual David talks to historian Thant Myint-U about his grandfather U Thant, UN Secretary General for most of the 1960s and the man who might have ended the Vietnam War before it really got started. How close did U Thant get to bringing LBJ and the Vietcong to the negotiating table …

1
What If… Wallace not Truman Had Become US President in 1945? 59:18

3M ago59:18

59:18

Today’s episode explores one of the big counterfactuals of twentieth-century American politics: David talks to historian Benn Steil about how close the ultraliberal Henry Wallace came to being FDR’s running mate in 1944 and successor as president in 1945. How near did Wallace get to making it onto the ticket at the 1944 Democratic National Conventi…

1
What If… The French Revolution Had Happened in China? 53:03

3M ago53:03

53:03

For our second episode on big historical counterfactuals, David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about how the East might well have risen to global dominance before the West. What if the key revolutions of the modern world – political and industrial – had happened in Asia first? What if there had been an Iranian Napoleon? And how much of our u…

1
What If… Science Counterfactuals w/ Adam Rutherford 57:15

3M ago57:15

57:15

To kick off our new series on counterfactual histories David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about whether ‘What Ifs’ make sense in science. If one person doesn’t make the big discovery, will someone else do it? Are scientific breakthroughs the product of genius or of wealth and power? And how might the world have been a …

1
The Great Political Fictions: Tim Rice on Evita 49:25

3M ago49:25

49:25

Something different for our last episode on the Great Political Fictions as this time David talks to the person who wrote it: Tim Rice, the lyricist of the epic musical about the life of Eva Peron, Evita (co-written with Andrew Lloyd-Webber). Where did the idea for such an unlikely subject come from? Why has it struck a chord with politicians from …

1
The Great Political Fictions: Helen Lewis on To Kill A Mockingbird 59:34

4M ago59:34

59:34

David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), one of the most widely read and best-loved novels of the twentieth century, and in the twenty-first century increasingly one of the most controversial. Is the book an attack on or an apology for Southern racism? How does its view of race relate to…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Lea Ypi on The Wild Duck 59:10

4M ago59:10

59:10

The writer and political philosopher Lea Ypi talks about the impact on her of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884), which she first read when she was eight – thinking it was a children’s book (it isn’t!) – and has been returning to ever since. A play about family and betrayal, idealism and disappointment, temptation and self-destruction, is it also …

1
The Great Political Poems 54:23

4M ago54:23

54:23

David talks to Mark Ford and Seamus Perry, hosts of the LRB’s Close Readings poetry podcast, about what makes a great political poem. Can great poetry be ideological? How much does context matter? And is it possible to tell political truths in verse? From Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’ to Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ to Auden’s ‘Spain 1937’: a conversation abou…

1
American Elections: The Republican Convention 59:36

4M ago59:36

59:36

This week we check back in with Gary Gerstle to discuss what’s been happening in American politics after a tumultuous week. What does it say about Trump’s electoral strategy that he picked J.D. Vance as his running mate? How would the Republican party have coped if the assassin’s bullet hadn’t missed? Who might replace Biden at the top of the Democ…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Hamilton 54:42

4M ago54:42

54:42

Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (2015). What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers? How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history? And why does a product of the Obama era still resonate so powerf…

1
The Great Political Fictions: American Wife 54:18

4M ago54:18

54:18

The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the …

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Line of Beauty 53:46

4M ago53:46

53:46

Our political fictions series returns with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberat…

Podcasts qui valent la peine d'être écoutés

Past Present Future Podcasts

Podcasts qui valent la peine d'être écoutés

Guide de référence rapide