Past Present Future

In today’s episode of the history of bad ideas, David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about behaviourism, a theory of psychology that has penetrated to the heart of politics. How did we get from Pavlov’s Dog to a prescription for a better society? What is the relationship between behavioural utopianism and contemporary economics? How did behaviourism get turned into something called ‘Nudge’? And if we are being nudged into better behaviour, what is left for politics?

Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Identity

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Today’s bad idea is one with a short history but a big reach: the term polycrisis only came into being at the end of the last century but now it seems to be everywhere. David talks to historian Gary Gerstle about how this idea was originally conceived, what its current vogue says about the times in which we live and whether this really is a polycrisis or something else. Why is it comforting to think that the crises through which we are living are all connected in some way? Why is it also dangerous to think like that? An...

For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to philosopher Shannon Vallor about the myth that technology can be value free. It’s easy to see why Silicon Valley is so keen on the idea that it’s never the fault of the tech, only of the people who use it. But why do we let them get away with it? Where did this idea come from? How has it also poisoned arguments about gun laws and nuclear weapons? And what can we do to fight it and try to get technology that works with – not agai...

For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to economic historian Marc Palen about monopoly, an idea that has always had its defenders as well as its fierce critics. Why do monopolies arise even in supposedly competitive economies? How did the anti-monopoly movement of Henry George in the late-19th century argue that the monopolists could be taken down? How are those struggles echoed in the fight against Silicon Valley monopolists today? And what has all this got to do with Monopoly the board game?

Coming on Saturday on PPF+: A bonus episode wit...

Today’s bad idea is one that started out as satire and ended as a political slogan. David talks to historian of ideas Ben Jackson about meritocracy and its origins in Michael Young’s book The Rise of the Meritocracy published in 1958. Young foresaw a populist revolt against the meritocratic elite in the year 2034. Was his vision prophetic? Why did politicians like Tony Blair embrace a concept that Young thought was antithetical to a fair and just society? And who are the winners and losers from meritocracy today?

Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Monopoly

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For today’s episode in the history of bad ideas David talks to cultural historian Tom Wright about charisma, a term that often feels essential for understanding modern politics but which ends up obscuring far more than it explains. How did an old idea from Christian theology get used to explain the hold that political leaders have over crowds? Why is it so important not to confuse charm with charisma? What has made a word from early twentieth-century social science ubiquitous on twenty-first-century dating sites? And if Trump hasn’t got charisma, then what has he got?

Out...

In today’s episode about the power of bad ideas, David talks to historian and podcaster Dan Snow about the myth that wars are settled on the battlefield. Why are we so drawn to the idea of the decisive military showdown? Is Napoleon to blame? What are the forces that actually settle military conflicts? Plus: were Abba really so wrong that Waterloo won the war?

Out tomorrow: A bonus episode in which David and Dan explore a range of battles to see what got settled and what didn’t: Yarmuk, Hastings, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Warsaw 1920, Stalingrad. To get this...

Today’s bad idea is ‘genius’, the label that has enabled all sorts of terrible behaviour through the ages. Writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis explains how and why the idea of genius gets misapplied to people and things that just aren’t. Why are geniuses meant to be tortured? Why are individual geniuses prized over the collaborations that lie behind most innovations? Why do we think that people who are brilliant at one thing will be good at everything else? Plus, David makes the case for Dickens as a bona fide genius.

The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis is...

For the first episode in our new series about how bad ideas take hold, David talks to economist Mark Blyth about austerity, the cost-cutting idea that refuses to die. Why is it an article of faith that states need periodic purging to stop them getting too greedy? Why does this so often happen at times when it does most harm, from the 1930s to the financial crisis that began in 2008? And how is the politics of austerity playing out today, in Starmer’s Britain, in Milei’s Argentina and in the DOGE wars happening in Trump’s America?

Davi...

Today’s political trial is perhaps the most consequential in English history: the trial and execution of King Charles I for treason in January 1649. How could a king commit treason when treason was a crime against the king? How could a court try a king when a king has no peers? How could anyone claim to speak for the people after a civil war when so many people had been on opposite sides? The answers to these questions would cost more than one person his life – but they would also change forever the prospect of holding tyrants to account.

Today’s trial is one of the most notorious in history but also one of the most misremembered. Galileo’s epic confrontation with the Catholic Church over the question of whether the earth moves round the sun – culminating with his interrogation and condemnation in Rome in 1633 – was not just a matter of truth vs ignorance or science vs superstition. It was also twenty-year long struggle on the part of both sides to find a way to co-exist. Did they succeed? Not exactly, but it wasn’t for want of trying. Then – and perhaps now – science and religion needed each other.

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Today’s episode is about a pivotal event in British history that took place exactly 50 years ago: the 1975 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Community. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about why it was so different in so many ways from the Brexit referendum in 2016. Why in 1975 were Labour and the SNP the Eurosceptic parties? What made the Tories pro-European? Where was immigration as an election issue? How did the Yes campaign overturn a big deficit in the polls? Plus: why didn’t it settle the question, so that another referendum had to be held four decade...

In today’s episode an extraordinary political trial that culminated in the execution of one queen at the behest of another: Mary Queen of Scots, convicted of treason in 1586 and beheaded in 1587. But who really wanted her dead, Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth’s powerful political servants? Why did Mary demand to be tried before parliament rather than a court of noblemen? How did she attempt to defend herself in the face of apparently overwhelming incriminating evidence against her? And who was the only person who voted for her acquittal?

Listen to David’s episode about Schiller’s Mary Stua...

In today’s episode another trial that forms the basis for great drama: the case of Thomas More, tried and executed in 1535, events dramatised by Robert Bolt in A Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall. How did More try to argue that silence was no evidence of treason? Why was his defence so legalistic? Was he really ‘the Socrates of England’? And who was the true villain in this case: Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich or the King himself?

Available now on PPF+: Socrates part 2, in which David explores the verdict of history on this c...

Today’s political trial took place in 1431 though it was still being re-litigated right through to the twentieth century: the case of Joan of Arc, charged with heresy by the Church and burned at the stake. Why was a political prisoner tried in an ecclesiastical court? Why were her interrogators so obsessed by her choice in clothes? How did Joan seek to explain her visions? And was this trial any more of a fix than the later trials that exonerated her?

Available now on PPF+: Socrates part 2, in which David explores the verdict of history on this ca...

The first political trial in our new series is the one that set the template for all the others: the trial of Socrates in Athens in 399 BCE, which ended with a death sentence for the philosopher and a permanent stain on the reputation of Athenian democracy. Why, after a lifetime of philosophy, was Socrates finally prosecuted at the age of 70? Was the case motivated by private grievance or public outrage? What should Socrates have said in his own defence? Why, in the end, did he choose defiance instead?

Out on Saturday on PPF+: Socrates part 2 - David...

To introduce our new series about historic political trials – from Socrates to Marine Le Pen – David explores what makes political confrontations in a court of law so fascinating and so revealing. Why do even the worst of dictators still want to play by the rules? What happens when realpolitik and legal principles collide? How does the political system often find itself in the dock? Who wins and who loses in the great game of lawfare?

Out now: a new bonus episode on PPF+ where David tries to answer your questions about Trump and the international order. Sign up n...

For the final episode in this series David talks to the leading economist Dani Rodrik about the case he made in the early 2000s that globalisation was unsustainable in its current form. How does he think this prediction has been borne out? What forms of globalisation might work in the 21st century? Where are the strengths and weaknesses of the existing system? And what does he make of the antics of Donald Trump?

Available from Saturday on PPF+: David tries to answer your questions about Trump and the international order. Is it over? Is he over? When w...

David talks to historian Meg Jacobs about how the 1970s changed everything for America’s understanding of its place in the global economy. How did first the Nixon Shock and then the Oil Shock reshape American politics? Why did America’s politicians respond to these shocks not with tariffs or sabre-rattling but with calls to national self-sacrifice? Did anyone heed those calls? And what lessons did Donald Trump draw from America’s crisis decade?

The latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter is out now with guides, insights and clips to accompany this series, plus David writes about...

Today David talks to political and economic theorist Leah Downey about the role that central banks in general – and the Federal Reserve in particular – have played in the story of globalisation. How has the Fed tried to reconcile its obligations to American democracy with its obligations to the global order? Is the Eurodollar a token of American strength or American vulnerability? Are the world’s central bankers really just a private club? And what does history tell us about the likely outcome of Trump vs Powell?

The latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter is out tomorrow with g...

David talks to historian Gary Gerstle about the last time the Republican party got caught up in a tariffs disaster and how it changed American politics. The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 brought tariffs back and helped bring down both the Republican Party and the global economy. Why didn’t Hoover stop it? What did the fiasco reveal about the limits of presidential power back then? And what does it suggest about the limits of presidential power today?

Next time on Ideas of Globalisation: Central Banks vs the People (and Trump!)

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Today we explore the explosive fight over tariffs that took place in Britain in the first decade of the twentieth century. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about how Joseph Chamberlain made tariff reform a great popular cause and how it nearly destroyed his party. Are there parallels with Trump’s tariff wars today? Yes! Are there lessons for Trump’s opponents too? Yes!

Out now on PPF+: Lenin and Trotsky part 2, taking the story on from 1917 to explore civil war, the rise of Stalin and the re-invention of Trotskyism. To get this and all our bonus epis...

We start a new mini-series on the history of ideas of globalisation by exploring how arguments from 150 years ago foreshadow what’s happening with Trump today. David talks to economic historian Marc Palen about the nineteenth-century fight between economic nationalists and the champions of an open economy. Was free trade for everyone or just for white people? Was it possible to be an imperialist and a globalist? What did the socialists want? And who thought that Canada should be annexed by the United States?

Out now on PPF+: Lenin and Trotsky part 2, taking the story on from 1917 to...

To conclude this part of our revolutionary ideas series, we explore the overlapping lives and thinking of two emblematic twentieth-century revolutionaries: Lenin and Trotsky. David talks to historian of Russia Edward Acton about what inspired them, what connected them and what divided them. How were they radicalised? How did they interpret the failure of the 1905 revolution? How did they make the 1917 revolution happen?

Available from Saturday on PPF+: Lenin and Trotsky part 2, taking the story on from 1917 to explore civil war, the rise of Stalin and the re-invention of Trotskyism. To get this and all our bonus...

Today’s episode is the second of our two recent live recordings of PPF, this one in front of an audience at the Bath Curious Minds Festival. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the life of Winston Churchill and all its twists and turns of fortune: from disgrace in WWI, economic disaster in the 1920s, wilderness in the 1930s, through to redemption in 1945 and rejection by the voters in the same year. How to make sense of it all? Is there a thread that connects the ups and downs? Has there ever – anywhere – been another political life like it?

Our third Parisian revolution is another explosive night in the theatre, this time in the world of dance. David talks to Dominic Dromgoole about Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which provoked absolute outrage when it premiered in 1913. Is that what its impresario Diaghilev wanted? How did Nijinsky cope? Did the response foreshadow the trauma to come in 1914? And how did the set designer Roerich end up playing a part in American presidential history?

Dominic Dromgoole’s Astonish Me! First Nights that Changed the World is available wherever you get your books https://profilebooks.com/work/astonish-me/

Out...

Today’s Parisian revolution is a theatrical performance that produced a riot. David talks to theatre director Dominic Dromgoole about Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896), which only ran for a couple of nights but left an indelible mark on the culture of the age and has resonated ever since. Why did a play effectively written by children provoke such a storm among the adults? What made it it blow the mind of W. B. Yeats who was in the audience? How can something so bad be so liberating?

Next time: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring

Today’s episode is the first of three this week with the theatre director and writer Dominic Dromgoole, exploring revolutionary events in the world of art and theatre, starting with the opening of the Salon des Refusés in Paris in May 1863. How did the Emperor Napoleon end up sponsoring such a counter-cultural event? Why did it provoke such public outrage and astonishment? And in what ways did Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe revolutionise what was possible in the creation and consumption of modern art?

A new edition of our newsletter is out now with guide...

Today the first of four episodes about Parisian revolutions. We start with the definitive nineteenth-century revolutionary and his definitive revolution: David talks to historian Bruno Leipold about why Karl Marx thought the Paris Commune in 1871 was the model of a workers' uprising and provided a vision of the socialist future. How had the Communards reinvented democracy? Was this a social, an economic or a political revolution? And how did Marx reconcile himself to its bloody failure?

Bruno Leipold’s intellectual biography of Marx and Marxism Citizen Marx is available now https://bit.ly/4i8Gmga

A new...

Today’s revolutionary idea is one with a long history, not all of it revolutionary: David talks to the historian Fara Dabhoiwala about the idea of free speech. When did free speech first get articulated as a fundamental right? How has that right been used and abused, from the eighteenth century to the present? And what changed in the history of the idea of free speech with the publication of J. S. Mill’s On Liberty in 1859?

Fara Dabhoiwala’s What Is Free Speech? is available now https://bit.ly/4jgcvDt

Next time: Marx and the Paris C...

We take a brief break from revolutionary ideas for a special live episode of PPF recorded in front of an audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London. David talks to writer and journalist Helen Lewis about Network (1976), a film still best remembered for its catchphrase: ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Just how prophetic is that cry of rage in the age of Trump? What does the film say about the continuing power of television in the era of social media? And who or what does it remind us of: Ye, Tucker...

David talks to geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about the book that fundamentally altered our understanding of just about everything: Darwin’s On The Origin of Species (1859). What made the idea of natural selection so different from the theories of evolution that preceded it? How did Darwin arrive at it? What changed when he published his theory and why is it, in so many ways, the most revolutionary idea of them all?

Out tomorrow on PPF+ Darwin Part 2: Adam Rutherford explores how Darwin’s ideas evolved after 1859 and how the revolution in thinking that he started has co...

Today’s revolutionary ideas come from China: David talks to historian Julia Lovell about the Taiping Revolution, another massive mid-19th-century upheaval that nearly overturned the established order. How did Christianity inspire an uprising against the Qing dynasty? Was it a revolution or a civil war? What was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom? And where does this cataclysmic event fit into China’s 20th-century revolutionary history?

Out now: a bonus episode on 1848 with Chris Clark looking at the counter-revolution – how did the ruling regimes of Europe fight back? To get this and a year’s worth of bonus episodes...

In our second of three episodes on the revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848 David and Chris Clark explore the forces demanding radical change. What was ‘the Social Question’ and who was asking it? Where did the violence that erupted in the summer of 1848 come from? What, if anything did it achieve? And who paid the price?

Out tomorrow: a final bonus episode on 1848 looking at the counter-revolution: how did the ruling regimes of Europe fight back? To get this and a year’s worth of bonus episodes sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-pp...

In the first of three episodes about the revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848 David is joined by historian Chris Clark to explore the ideas behind this continental upheaval. We start with the ‘Liberal Revolution’: Who were the liberals and what had turned them into revolutionaries? How did the original French Revolution overshadow their hopes and fears? Were parliaments and constitutions capable of sustaining revolutionary fervour? And did the liberals of 1848 realise what they had unleashed?

Come to see PPF Live at the Bath Curious Minds Festival: join us on Saturday March 29th to hear David in conve...

Today’s revolutionary idea is something a bit different: David talks to statistician David Spiegelhalter about how an eighteenth-century theory of probability emerged from relative obscurity in the twentieth century to reconfigure our understanding of the relationship between past, present and future. What was Thomas Bayes’s original idea about doing probability in reverse: from effect to cause? What happened when this way of thinking passed through the vortex of the French Revolution? How has it come to lie behind recent innovations in political polling, AI, self-driving cars, medical research and so much more? Why does it remain controversial to t...

Today’s episode is about a very different revolution from any we’ve discussed so far: David talks to historian Hank Gonzalez about the Haitian Revolution, which for the first time in history saw a slave revolt result in an independent free state. How did the Haitian Revolution intersect with the American and French Revolutions that preceded it? Why were European powers unable to reverse it despite massive military intervention? What is its legacy for the state of Haiti today?

Tickets are still available for PPF Live at the Bath Curious Minds Festival: join us on Saturday 29th M...

For our third episode on the ideas behind the French Revolution, David talks to Richard Whatmore about the ubiquitous Thomas Paine, the Englishman who championed revolutionary politics around the world. How did Paine come to see France as the locus of all his revolutionary hopes? How were those hopes ultimately disappointed? And what happened to Paine’s vision of the Rights of Man?

Out now on PPF+: a special bonus episode on King Donald The First. David explores the arguments being made in 2025 for the restoration of monarchy in America. Who’s making them and why? What on ear...

For our second episode on the people and ideas behind the French Revolution David talks to historian and biographer Ruth Scurr about the man who came to embody the revolution in all its radicalism and all its terror: Maximilien Robespierre. Who was he and how did he rise so fast once the upheaval was underway? How did he harness the power of the Jacobin Club? How did he marshal the violence of the streets? What did he believe in? And what made him think it was possible to reconcile virtue with terror?

Out now: a special bonus...

In the first of three episodes about the people and ideas behind the French Revolution, David talks to Lucia Rubinelli about the man who helped kickstart it all: the Abbé Sieyès. How did an obscure cleric galvanise a nation? What did he mean by the Third Estate and why did he think it was everything? What went wrong with his idea of a new constitutional order for France? And what happened when Sieyès encountered Napoleon?

Out now on PPF+: a special bonus episode on King Donald The First. David explores the arguments being made in 2025 for...