Past Present Future

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 about political conviction and poetic ambiguity.

To find out more about Close Readings and how to subscribe, just visit the LRB?s website https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings

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Next time: Lea Ypi on Ibsen?s The Wild Duck

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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 Democratic ticket and how? Plus, what fate lies in store for Bidenomics if Trump plasters his name all over it?

Our free fortnightly newsletter is out now, including reflections on Biden?s and America?s looming choices ? just sign up here https://linktr.ee/ppfideas

And sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: available now for PPF+ subscribers, Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel, George Eliot?s Felix Holt

Next time: The Great Political Poems

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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 powerfully in the age of Trump and Biden?

The latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter - which accompanies the last three episodes in this Fictions series including Hamilton - is out tomorrow, with lots of extra info, clips and reflections ? just sign up here: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas

And sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming very soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Gary Gerstle on the Republican National Convention

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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 Bush presidency? How does an ordinary life become an extraordinary one? And where is the line between fact and fiction?

Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Lin-Manuel Miranda?s Hamilton

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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 liberation. It also contains perhaps the greatest of all fictional portrayals of a real-life prime minster: Thatcher dancing the night away.

Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Curtis Sittenfeld re-imagines Laura Bush in American Wife

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To wrap up our series David and Robert attempt some instant history on the election result that?s just happened: in some ways predictable, in others utterly remarkable. What does such a big win for Labour on such a relatively small vote mean? What?s happening in Scotland? Where next for the Tories? And is the UK now an outlier in a world of increasing political turmoil, or is the turmoil just under the surface here too?

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Coming Up: More Great Political Fictions

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For election day, David and Robert discuss the previous general election in December 2019, which saw Boris Johnson win a decisive victory under the slogan ?Get Brexit Done?. How did he (or Dominic Cummings) do it? Was Corbyn to blame for Labour?s defeat? And how the hell did the Tories get from that resounding victory to their current disarray in just 4½ years?

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Coming next: 2024 ? What Happened?

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In this extra episode for election week David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the last great Labour landslide of 1997, when Tony Blair won the biggest majority in his party?s history (till now?). Why did the Tories get no credit for a strong economy? How did New Labour change political campaigning? Was this the election that did for the prospects of proportional representation? Plus ? the Millennium Dome: totemic or tat?

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For election day tomorrow: the Boris + Brexit election of 2019

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Today?s pivotal UK election is the one that brought Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street in 1979. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about how she did it and how it could have turned out very differently. What might have happened if the election had been called the previous year? Did Thatcherism already exist in 1979 or had it still to be invented? And how close did the Labour party come to permanent schism in the years following her victory?

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Next time: 1997 and the New Labour landslide

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In today?s episode on pivotal UK elections David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the first great Labour landslide of 1945 and how it changed Britain. Why did Churchill not get his expected reward for winning the war? How genuinely radical and popular was the Labour programme? What made the mild-mannered Attlee such an effective leader? And how did the Tories ? and Churchill ? manage to get themselves back in the game?

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Next time: 1979 and the advent of Thatcherism

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The first episode in our new series with historian Robert Saunders on pivotal general elections is about the Tory disaster and Liberal triumph of 1906. David and Robert explore the reasons behind the worst result in modern Conservative party history ? until now? How did the Liberals achieve their landslide? What made ?Big Loaf, Little Loaf? a winning election slogan? And who was Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the great forgotten prime minister?

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Coming up: the Labour landslide of 1945

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For the final episode in the current series, 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 to Playboy and Scrabble, this novel takes the familiar and the known and makes them hauntingly and terrifyingly new.

Coming next: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections, starting with the game-changing election of 1906.

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In the penultimate episode of the current part of our Fictions series, 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 does Rushdie?s story read today, in the age of Modi?

Next time: Margaret Atwood?s The Handmaid?s Tale

Coming next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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In this 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 have against her arch-villain Robert Oppenheimer?

Next time: Salman Rushdie?s Midnight?s Children

Coming soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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Bertolt Brecht?s classic anti-war play was 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 Courage such an unlovable character? Why do we feel for her plight anyway? And what can we do about it?

Next time: Ayn Rand?s Atlas Shrugged

Coming next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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H. G. Wells? The Time Machine (1895) 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 will the world ultimately end?

Next time: Bertolt Brecht?s Mother Courage and Her Children

Coming soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a story that it?s easy to know without really knowing it at all. This week?s episode 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 got to do with Q-Anon and Hillary Clinton?

Next time: H.G. Wells?s The Time Machine.

Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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This week's great political novel 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 politicians find themselves hung out to dry by their colleagues. A story of integrity and hypocrisy and how hard it is to tell them apart.

Next time: Robert Louis Stevenson?s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections

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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 their ambitions are their undoing?

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Next time: Trollope?s Phineas Redux, the great novel of parliamentary ups and downs.

Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, Atlas Shrugged, Midnight?s Children, The Handmaid?s Tale, and much more.

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Our series on the great political novels and plays resumes with 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 relationships is also a deeply political novel.

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Next time: Middlemarch (part 2) on marriage, hypocrisy, guilt and redemption.

Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, and much more.

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For our last episode in this series David is joined by Helen Lewis to discuss Mesmerism ? aka animal magnetism ? an eighteenth-century method of hypnosis for which great medical benefits were claimed. Was its originator, Franz Mesmer, a charlatan or a healer? Was his movement science or religion or something in between? And what can it tell us about twenty-first century phenomena from online social contagion to hypnotherapy? 

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Coming next: The Great Political Fictions resumes with Middlemarch, the greatest of them all.

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For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes?s idea of the Death of the Author (1967). Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife. As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots, Kathleen discusses her personal experience of how it can go wrong.

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Coming Next: Helen Lewis on Mesmerism

Coming Soon: The Great Political Fictions Part 2, starting with Middlemarch

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In this episode of our series on the lingering hold of bad ideas David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about the arguments made at the turn of the last century against giving the vote to women. Why were so many women against female enfranchisement? What did attitudes to women in politics reveal about the failings of men? And where can the echoes of these arguments still be heard today?

Helen Lewis?s Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights is available wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/3wp8DNX 

Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany every series. Coming soon: two bonus bad ideas just for PPF+ subscribers www.ppfideas.com 

Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock discusses The Death of the Author.

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For the latest episode in our series about the hold of bad ideas, we welcome back the geneticist Adam Rutherford to talk about Linnaean taxonomy, a seemingly innocuous scheme of classification that has had deeply pernicious consequences. From scientific racism to social stratification to search engine optimisation, taxonomy gets everywhere. Can we escape its grip?

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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Helen Lewis on women against the enfranchisement of women.

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Today?s bad idea is one with a very long history: David talks to the historian Christopher Clark about antisemitism and the reasons for its endless recurrence. What has made discrimination against the Jews different from other kinds of violent prejudice over the course of European history? How did the ?Jewish Question? become the battleground of German politics? Why do so many Christians have a love-hate relationship with Judaism? And where does the state of Israel fit into this story?

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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Adam Rutherford on Taxonomy.

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In today?s episode about seemingly good ideas gone badly wrong David talks to the philosopher and journalist Kathleen Stock about Facebook Friends, something that was meant to make us happier and better connected but really didn?t. How did online friendship become so performative? Does its failings say more about Facebook and its business models or does it say more about us? And why are academics so susceptible to the madness of social media?

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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: historian Christopher Clark on Antisemitism

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In the second episode in our series on bad ideas David talks to the political economist Helen Thompson about the gold standard, which was meant to anchor the world economy until it all fell apart a hundred years ago. Why does gold so often appear like a stable basis for money in an unstable world ? and why not silver? What made the gold standard a source of instability instead?  How can money work if it has no material basis? And is quantitative easing a bad idea as well?

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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock on Facebook Friends

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For the first episode in our new series about the hold of bad ideas David talks to the geneticist and science broadcaster Adam Rutherford about eugenics: from its origins in the 19th century through its heyday in the 20th century to its continuing legacy today. Is eugenics bad science, bad morality, bad politics ? or all three? What are the fears that keep drawing people back to trying to control the consequences of human reproduction? And is a new age of consumerist eugenics upon us?

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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Helen Thompson on the Gold Standard

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In our final episode David and Lea discuss liberation movements, from post-colonial liberation to women?s liberation, gay liberation and animal liberation. What, if anything, do these movements have in common? Is liberation about equality or is it about difference? And who needs liberating next ? children?

You can hear our bonus episodes for this series by signing up to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com In the first bonus episode ? available now ? David and Lea answer listeners? questions about AI, technology, online surveillance and brains-in-a-vat: what happens to freedom if we?re living in a computer simulation?

Coming next our brand new series: The History of Bad Ideas, beginning with Adam Rutherford on eugenics.

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In the penultimate episode in this series David and Lea discuss two twentieth-century philosophies of freedom and the human psyche. What can existentialism teach us about the nature of free choice under conditions of despair? Is there any escape from bad faith? And what can individuals ? or even entire societies ? learn about their freedom from being put on the couch?

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Coming next on the History of Freedom: Liberation Movements

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In our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea have reached anarchism and nihilism. What is the positive vision of human freedom behind the anarchist rejection of the established order? What can nineteenth-century anarchists teach us about freedom in the twenty-first century? And if nihilists are against everything, what are they for?

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Coming up next: David and Lea discuss existentialism and psychoanalysis.

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In the latest episode of our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea explore what makes the free market free ? and where it fails. How does buying and selling stuff advance human freedom? What does the free market free us from? And is it really possible to be free in a world dominated by credit and debt? 

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Next on the History of Freedom: Anarchism and Nihilism

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In this episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea explore Immanuel Kant?s vision of rational freedom and perpetual peace. Why was Kant so sure that human reason would produce enlightened progress? Was he right? What are the obstacles likely to derail the advance of peace, then and now? How well do his arguments about free speech and free expression hold up in the age of the internet?

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Coming up next on the History of Freedom: How Free is the Free Market?

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History of Freedom w/ Lea Ypi: Machiavelli and Political Liberty

For the third episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea discuss Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state. What are the institutions that can protect people from domination and exploitation? How can political elites be held to account? Where are human beings most likely to find themselves at the mercy of others ? and what can be done to help them escape?

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Coming up next on the History of Freedom: Kant, Enlightenment and Peace

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In episode two of our new series David and Lea explore some ancient ideas of freedom and ask what they mean today. What can Socrates teach us about the nature of free inquiry and the pitfalls of democratic freedom? Is Stoicism a guide to emancipation from desire or an exercise in selfishness? And how did Christianity upend the notion of freedom by annexing it to ideas of salvation and love? A conversation about dissent, self-knowledge and faith.

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Coming next on the History of Freedom: Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state, then and now.

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In the first episode of our new series about the history of freedom, David and Lea discuss what the idea means to them and why it matters so much. What did freedom mean to Lea growing up in communist Albania? Is it possible to know true freedom without also having experienced oppression? And how is being free different from being lucky?

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Coming up next on the History of Freedom: The Ancients ? Socrates, Seneca & Jesus.

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For our final episode in this series, David and Gary discuss the election of 2008, which saw Barack Obama?s extraordinary ascent to the presidency. How did he outthink and outmanoeuvre Hilary Clinton? What role did the financial crisis play in his path to the White House? And was it really the vice-presidential candidates in this election who pointed the way to America?s political future?

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Coming next: our new series ? The History of Freedom with Lea Ypi. Plus news of how you can sign up to PPF Plus to get bonus episodes and ad-free listening.

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Our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections has reached 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan. David and Gary discuss whether Jimmy Carter was always doomed, what made Reaganomics different and how Reagan succeeded in being an optimist and a scaremonger at the same time. Did this election really inaugurate a new era in American politics ? and if so, are we still living in it?

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Coming up: 2008 and the election of Barack Obama

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The election of 1936 saw FDR re-elected in a landslide. It was also an election in which fundamental questions about the future direction of America were at stake. David and Gary discuss what made it a turning point for American democracy and ultimately for the wider world. Could the power of the Supreme Court be tamed? What was the true nature of economic freedom? And what threatened the New Deal - dissent at home or looming dangers abroad?

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Coming up: The election of 1980 and the arrival of Reaganomics.

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We?ve reached the twentieth century and today?s episode is about the decisive election of 1912. David and Gary discuss the year when the Republicans split, the Democrats recaptured the White House after an absence of twenty years, and American politics shifted decisively towards progressivism. Who were the real progressives? What was Theodore Roosevelt trying to achieve in setting up a new party? How did Woodrow Wilson mange to win the nomination and the presidency? And was this the election that saw the dawn of a new environmental politics? 

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Coming up: How the election of 1936 sealed the New Deal.

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This episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections looks at 1896, when a single speech nearly upended American politics. The speech was William Jennings Bryan?s ?Cross of Gold? address at the Democratic Party convention, which won him the nomination. How did a 36-year old outsider from Nebraska get so close to reaching the White House? What made the issue of silver coinage the driving force behind American populism? And why was 1896 the template for a new kind of campaigning, in which the power of oratory had to square off against the power of money?

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Next time: 1912 and the great Republican split

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In the third episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections David and Gary talk about what was maybe the most significant election of all: 1860, when Lincoln became president and the country careened into civil war. How did the newly formed Republican Party break the stranglehold of the established parties? Why could the South neither unite against it nor accept its victory? What enabled Lincoln to wrestle the Republican nomination at the party's convention in Chicago and what might have happened if he had failed?

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Coming up: 1896 and the populist revolt

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For the second episode in our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and Gary discuss 1828: the first great populist election, which saw the arrival of Andrew Jackson and a new style of politics in the White House. What made Jackson different from his predecessors? How did this election reinvent the American party system? And why were Jackson's arguments with Vice-President John Calhoun about economic tariffs so toxic that they brought the country close to civil war?

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Coming up next: the Election of 1860 and Abraham Lincoln

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In the first episode of our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and historian Gary Gerstle explore the presidential contest of 1800: scurrilous, complicated, game changing. How did it help create the American party system? Was it really democratic? What would have happened if Aaron Burr had won? Plus, just how accurate is the depiction of the election in Hamilton the musical?

PLUS sign up now for the new PPF newsletter. A free, fortnightly guide to recent episodes, jam-packed with further reading, more to watch and listen to, plus extras from David. Starting with the Great Political Fictions.

To get the newsletter just click on the top link in our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas

Next week on the Ideas Behind American Elections: 1828.

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In an extra episode this week David answers your questions about the most recent series of the History of Ideas - in particular about the political lessons of Gulliver?s Travels, for its own time and for our own. Plus, how is Trump like - and not like - Coriolanus, and where are the female authors for this series? (A: they?re coming!)

Starting in our regular slot next week, PPF moves to two episodes a week as we launch our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections with Gary Gerstle - beginning with the election of 1800: Adams v Jefferson v Hamilton v Burr.

We will also be letting you know how to sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter - coming soon!

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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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This week?s 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 damage to them both? How does the powerless Mary maintain her hold over the imperious Elizabeth? Who suffers most in the end and what is that suffering really worth?

Next week: Turgenev?s Fathers and Sons (1862)

Coming up: The Ideas Behind American Elections ? a twice-weekly series running throughout March with Gary Gerstle, looking at 8 American presidential elections from 1800 to 2008 and exploring the ideas that shaped them and helped to shape the world.

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This week?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 makes us so vulnerable to mindless feuds and wild conspiracy theories? And what could we learn from the talking horses?

More from the LRB:

Clare Bucknell on Swift the satirist

?Swift?s satire was fabulous as well as honest, a distorting magnifying glass as well as a mirror.?

Terry Eagleton on Swift?s double standards

?Swift and Montaigne are outraged by colonial brutality while being deep-dyed authoritarians themselves.?

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In the first episode of our new 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 the military monster at its heart? What does it say about the struggle between elite power and popular resistance and about the limits of political argument?

More from the LRB:

Colin Burrow on Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus 

Michael Wood on Coriolanus in the Hunger Games

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