Past Present Future

The History of Bad Ideas: Deliverism

Today’s episode is about a bad idea with a very recent history: David talks to political historian David Klemperer about the dangers of deliverism. When did the view that delivering for the voters is ...

2026-07-15

Download

The History of Bad Ideas: Narrative History

Today’s bad idea is a way of doing history: David talks to historian Alec Ryrie about the seductions and pitfalls of narrative history. Why do we need more Herodotus and less Thucydides? What makes so...

2026-07-12

Download

The History of Bad Ideas: Hysteria

For the first in a new set of episodes about bad ideas with interesting histories David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about hysteria, an ancient idea that became a very modern diagno...

2026-07-08

Download

Where Are We Going? The Future of the Future

In the second part of their conversation about what has happened to our ideas of the future David and Ivan Krastev explore where the future is going next. Why do our expectations of what comes after u...

2026-07-05

Download

Where Are We Going? The Idea of the Future

Today’s episode is the first of two with writer and political scientist Ivan Krastev exploring what has happened to our ideas of the future. When did thinking about the future become the way we define...

2026-07-01

Download

Live Film Special: Never Let Me Go w/Adam Rutherford

Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about Mark Romanek’s 2010 film of Kazuo...

2026-06-28

Download

Now & Then with Robert Saunders: The Brexit Referendum 10 Years On

Today’s episode in our occasional series looking at significant political anniversaries explores the causes and consequences of the Brexit Referendum, which took place 10 years ago this week. David ta...

2026-06-24

Download

Live Special: Jimmy Wales on the Lessons of Wikipedia

Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival: David talks to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about what we can learn from the astonishing success of an enc...

2026-06-21

Download

The Great Political Fictions: HHhH

Our final great political fiction (for now!) is a meta-fiction and auto-fiction that is also a compelling work of historical reconstruction. Laurent Binet’s HHhH (2010) tells the story of Operation An...

2026-06-17

Download

The Great Political Fictions: The Years

The penultimate great political fiction in this series is not strictly a fiction: it’s Annie Ernaux’s retelling of her own life in The Years (2008), thereby recapturing the story of France in the seco...

2026-06-14

Download

The Great Political Fictions: The Human Factor

Today’s political fiction is a spy novel, a Cold War comedy and a meditation on the nature of good and evil: Graham Greene’s The Human Factor. Why has Greene so fallen out of fashion? What made the So...

2026-06-10

Download

The Great Political Fictions: The Dispossessed

Today’s great political fiction is a path-breaking work of science fiction: David explores Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), which imagines a world without the need for government or coercive ...

2026-06-07

Download

The Great Political Fictions: The Golden Notebook Part 2 w/Catherine Taylor

In the second of two episodes about Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, David talks to critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about the novel’s place in the history of feminism. Is its idea of ‘free w...

2026-06-03

Download

The Great Political Fictions: The Golden Notebook

In today’s episode David explores Doris Lessing’s bold and brilliant The Golden Notebook (1962), a book about female emancipation, political disillusionment and much, much more. Why did Lessing insist...

2026-05-31

Download

The Great Political Fictions: Brave New World

For the first in a new set of episodes about some of the great political fictions of the past hundred years David explores Aldous Huxley’s much misunderstood dystopian masterpiece Brave New World (193...

2026-05-27

Download

Live Film Special: Good Night, and Good Luck w/Helen Lewis

Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (...

2026-05-24

Download

The Starmer Crisis in Historical Perspective – Part 2: What’s Next?

Today it’s the second of our episodes trying to make sense of what’s happening in British politics with a bit of historical perspective: this time asking what is likely to follow from the current cris...

2026-05-20

Download

The Starmer Crisis in Historical Perspective – Part 1

Today it’s the first of two episodes in which we try to make sense of what’s happening in British politics with a bit of historical perspective: how did we arrive at the current crisis and what might ...

2026-05-17

Download

Where Are We Going? The Future Of Work

David talks to author and journalist Sarah O’Connor, who writes about the changing character of work for the Financial Times, to explore what is happening to the world of jobs and employment in the tw...

2026-05-13

Download

Live Film Special: The Third Man w/Misha Glenny

Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the writer and broadcaster Misha Glenny about Carol Reed’s 1949 masterpiece The Third Man...

2026-05-10

Download

Past Present Future

Episodes (323 episodes)

Related Podcasts