As we wrap up our History of Ideas series David discusses what makes a great essay and whether the best contemporary writing is as good as what went before. The answer is yes, as shown by Jiayang Fan’s brilliant 2020 essay ‘How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda’. David explores why this is such a remarkable example of what can be done with the form and why the art of the essay is alive and well. Read Jiayang Fan’s essay here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Le...
Dec 14, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 34
This week David talks to the economists Dieter Helm and Diane Coyle about the challenges of building sustainability into the way we live now. Why is GDP such a poor guide to long-term economic well-being? How can we stop squandering future resources? What should the next Labour government do to create a sustainable economy – and what will happen if they don’t? Dieter Helm’s new book is available to download for free here Read the Bennett Institute report on Universal Basic Infrastructure here Ho...
Dec 07, 2023•59 min•Ep. 33
This week David and Lea answer your questions about democracy. When does democratic freedom shade over into anarchy? What’s the connection between democracy and human rights? Do the voters choose the government or does the government choose the voters? Plus: what makes Lea an optimist about socialism? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 32
In the penultimate episode in our series on the great essays, David talks about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Case for Reparations’, published in the Atlantic in 2014. Black American life has been marked by injustice from the beginning: this essay explores what can – and what can’t – be done to remedy it, from slavery to the housing market, from Mississippi to Chicago. Plus, what has this story got to do with the origins of the state of Israel? Read the original essay here. Hosted on Acast. See acast....
Nov 23, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 31
In the latest instalment of David’s ongoing conversation with Lea Ypi about the past, present and future of democracy they discuss whether democratic politics can ever break free from the stranglehold of the nation-state. When and why did nationalism take such a strong grip of the idea of democracy? What are the international or cosmopolitan alternatives? And can a democracy police its borders without having actual borders or actual police? Listen to the previous episodes in this series here. Ho...
Nov 16, 2023•55 min•Ep. 30
This week David talks to the historian and essayist Jill Lepore about where the chaotic last decade of American politics fits into the longer history of the nation. When and how did gun rights become a matter of principle rather than of pragmatism? What makes insurrection so appealing to so many people? Is another civil war really a possibility? Plus, what did the January 6th Committee miss about January 6th? Jill Lepore’s new book is The American Beast: Essays 2012-2022 Listen to Gary Gerstle o...
Nov 09, 2023•56 min•Ep. 29
This week David explores a different way of thinking about the current epoch: what if this isn’t the Anthropocene but the Leviacene? Who or what is really driving planetary destruction? Can human nature explain it? Or should we be looking at the political and economic superpowers that are leaving their marks all over the natural world? For more on these themes, David’s new book The Handover is available now, including as an audiobook. Listen to our earlier podcast with historian of science Meeha...
Nov 02, 2023•56 min•Ep. 28
This week’s episode in our series on the great essays and great essayists explores Umberto Eco’s ‘Thoughts on Wikileaks’ (2010). Eco writes about what makes a true scandal, what are real secrets, and what it would mean to expose the hidden workings of power. It is an essay that connects digital technology, medieval mystery and Dan Brown. Plus David talks about the hidden meaning of Julian Assange. More from the LRB: Andrew O’Hagan on Julian Assange ‘I’d never been with a person who had such a go...
Oct 26, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 27
This week David and Lea resume their conversation – and their differences of opinion – about how to understand politics in the modern world. What is it reasonable to expect of democracy? Are its failures because of bad design or bad faith? And why don’t we have more democracy at the international level where it’s really needed? This is the start of a series of monthly conversations between David and Lea about rethinking the ideas that made the modern world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy...
Oct 19, 2023•55 min•Ep. 26
This week David asks Mary Beard what the Roman Empire can tell us about the nature of unaccountable power, then and now. How did Roman emperors rule when they had so little knowledge of the lives of their subjects? Can absolute personal power ever escape the limits of biology, from sex to death? And who are the modern-day equivalent of the Caesars: democratic populists or tech titans? Mary Beard’s new book is Emperor of Rome Read or listen to Mary Beard’s LRB lecture on Women in Power Hosted on ...
Oct 12, 2023•53 min•Ep. 25
This week David talks to the novelist Zadie Smith about Charles Dickens: what he means to her, why we still read him, and what’s missing from the Dickensian view of the world. It’s a conversation about other writers as well – Turgenev, George Orwell and Toni Morrison – and about whether fiction shows us how to live or rather helps us to see the ways in which the truth about how we live is hidden from view. Zadie Smith’s new novel is The Fraud, available now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...
Oct 05, 2023•50 min•Ep. 24
This week’s episode in our series on the great political essays is about David Foster Wallace’s ‘Up, Simba!’, which describes his experiences following the doomed campaign of John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Wallace believed that McCain’s distinctive political style revealed some hard truths about American democracy. Was he right? What did he miss? And how do those truths look now in the age of Trump? More on David Foster Wallace from the LRB: Jenny Turner on Walla...
Sep 28, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 23
This week David talks to novelists Adam Biles and John Lanchester about the timeless appeal of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Why has it retained its hold far longer than other political allegories? Do readers need to know about the Russian history it describes? What makes the animals so relatable? Plus we discuss other favourite political allegories, from The Wizard of Oz to WALL-E. Adam Biles’s new novel – inspired by Animal Farm – is Beasts of England, available now. Read John Lanchester in the...
Sep 21, 2023•54 min•Ep. 22
This week is the fiftieth anniversary of the coup in Chile that ended the life of Salvador Allende and marked the temporary death of Chilean democracy. We talk to the politician and economist Andrés Velasco and the writer and translator Lorna Scott Fox about their memories of the coup and their understanding of its significance today. What does it say about the unfulfilled promise and ongoing fragility of democratic politics, in Chile and beyond? More from the LRB: Lorna Scott Fox on the feminis...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 21
This week Lea Ypi joins David to talk about some of the ideas in his new book, The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs. They discuss how to think about the power of the state in the modern world: Can it be changed? Can it be controlled? Can it be anything other than capitalist? Plus, how will AI alter the relationship between human beings and the corporate machines that rule our world? To order the Handover and support independent bookshops, please use the ...
Sep 07, 2023•55 min•Ep. 20
In this bonus episode David answers some of your questions about our series on the great political essays and essayists, from Montaigne to Joan Didion. Can great political thinkers also be committed members of political parties? Which of these writers would make a good prime minister? And where are the great essays being written today? With PPF producer Ben Walker posing the questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....
Sep 03, 2023•57 min
For the last episode in our summer season on the great twentieth-century essays and essayists, David discusses Joan Didion's 'The White Album' (1979), her haunting, impressionistic account of the fracturing of America in the late 1960s. From Jim Morrison to the Manson murders, Didion offers a series of snapshots of a society coming apart in ways no one seemed to understand. But what was true, what was imagined, and where did the real sickness lie? More on Joan Didion from the LRB archive: Thomas...
Aug 31, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 19
This episode in our history of the great essays and great essayists is about Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’ (1963). What was interpretation and why was Sontag so against it? David explores how an argument about art, criticism and the avant-garde can be applied to contemporary politics and can even explain the monstrous appeal of Donald Trump. Sontag in the LRB: Terry Castle on Sontag and friendship ‘At its best, our relationship was rather like the one between Dame Edna and her feeble s...
Aug 24, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 18
This week David discusses James Baldwin’s ‘Notes of a Native Son’ (1955), an essay that combines autobiography with a searing indictment of America’s racial politics. At its heart it tells the story of Baldwin’s relationship with his father, but it is also about fear, cruelty, violence and the terrible compromises of a country at war. What happens when North and South collide? More on Baldwin from the LRB: Michael Wood on Baldwin and power ‘James Baldwin’s thinking recalls Virginia Woolf’s view ...
Aug 17, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 17
This week’s episode in our series on the great essays and great essayists is about Simone Weil’s ‘Human Personality’ (1943). Written shortly before her death aged just 34, it is an uncompromising repudiation of the building blocks of modern life: democracy, rights, personal identity, scientific progress – all these are rejected. What does Weil have to put in their place? The answer is radical and surprising. Read ‘Human Personality’ here For more on Weil from the LRB archive: Toril Moi on living...
Aug 10, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 16
This week David discusses George Orwell’s ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ (1941), his great wartime essay about what it does – and doesn’t – mean to be English. How did the English manage to resist fascism? How are the English going to defeat fascism? These were two different questions with two very different answers: hypocrisy and socialism. David takes the story from there to Brexit and back again. For more on Orwell from the LRB: Samuel Hynes on Orwell and politics ‘He was not, in fact, really a p...
Aug 03, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 15
This week our history of the great essays and great essayists reaches the twentieth century and Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929). David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence. And how, despite all that, it still manages to be as fresh and funny as anything written since. Read more on Virginia Woolf in the LRB: Jacqueline Rose on Woolf and mad...
Jul 27, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 14
This week David talks to American historian Gary Gerstle about the shape-shifting journey of the US Republican Party, from the Civil War to the battles of today. How did the party of the North become the party of the South? When did the war party lose its appetite for war? Why does an organisation born out of anti-Catholicism now see its mission as to get Catholics onto the Supreme Court? And what could finally break the party apart? Gary Gerstle’s latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Neolibe...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 13
For the third episode in this series about the great political essays, David explores Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), a ringing call to resistance against democratic idiocy. Thoreau wanted to resist slavery and unjust wars. How can one citizen turn the tide against majority opinion? Was Thoreau a visionary or a hypocrite? And what do his arguments say about environmental civil disobedience today? Read Thoreau’s essay here From the LRB: Paul Laity on Thoreau and self-sufficiency Jeremy Har...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 12
This week we talk to astrophysicist Chris Lintott and writer Tom Stevenson about the threat from outer space: is it the asteroids, is it the aliens, or is it us? What changed when space travel moved from a Cold War battleground to a billionaire’s playground? Are China and America about to re-start the space race? And what will happen if we do find evidence of extraterrestrial life - will anyone believe it? Read more from Chris and Tom about space in the LRB: Space Snooker Where are the Space Ark...
Jul 06, 2023•56 min•Ep. 11
This week David talks to Tara Westover and the philosopher Clare Chambers about the enduring legacy of John Stuart Mill. Reading Mill’s Essays on Religion changed Tara’s life: she explains what happened, and discusses how Mill speaks to contemporary concerns about identity, conviction and doubt. Plus we talk free speech, the marketplace of ideas, the subjection of women - and why Mill isn’t comfort reading (but Thomas Carlyle is!). Sign up to LRB Close Readings: Directly in Apple: https://apple....
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 10
This week David talks to science writer Meehan Crist about Thomas Malthus and the perennial question of overpopulation. Malthus wrote 225 years ago and was wrong about almost everything, yet his ideas still have a powerful hold on our imaginations and our fears. How many people is too many? What are the limits of population in the age of climate change? And why does Elon Musk think we should all be having more children? Thomas Malthus, ‘An Essay on the Principle of Overpopulation’ (1798) Meehan ...
Jun 22, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 9
For the second episode in this season of History of Ideas, David discusses the Scottish philosopher David Hume and explores how eighteenth-century arguments about the national debt can help make sense of American politics today. When does public borrowing become a recipe for national disaster? Who is really in charge of the public finances: the government or the bankers, Washington, D.C. or Wall Street? And what has all this got to do with Hume’s arguments for the morality of suicide? Read Hume’...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 8
This week Daniel Chandler and Lea Ypi join David to talk about the legacy of the great American political philosopher John Rawls and his theory of justice. Did Rawls provide a prescription for the only fair way of doing capitalism? Or did he really show why capitalism and justice will never be reconciled? What can Rawls teach us about how to treat each other as equals? And does it even make sense to talk about justice in Britain or America when the world as a whole remains so fundamentally unequ...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 7
This week’s episode was recorded live at the Hay Festival, where David was joined on stage by David Miliband and Helen Thompson to discuss the past, present and future of American power. What explains American global dominance? Can it be justified? How will it be replaced? They discuss the fall-out of the Ukraine war, the threat posed by China, the challenge of climate change and the possibility of a second Trump presidency and ask – is the American century over? David Miliband writes about the ...
Jun 01, 2023•57 min•Ep. 6
