Today’s great political film is Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. A classic of feminist cinema it is also a film about the meaning of time and the illusions of choice. How can a movie which shows a woman peeling potatoes in real time have you on the edge of your seat? If the personal is the political, what do three days in the life of a Belgian housewife tell us about the true nature...
Dec 19, 2024•54 min•Season 10Ep. 142
Today’s episode is a conversation between David and the former politician Chris Smith (long-time MP and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in Tony Blair’s first government) about The Candidate (1972), the first great political film of the 1970s. How does its portrayal of the compromises of running for office hold up today? Is it a cynical film or an inspiring one? And what lessons does it have for politics in the age of Trump? To find out about gifting a PPF+ subscription for Christ...
Dec 15, 2024•59 min•Season 10Ep. 141
We resume our series on the great political films with Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969), the quintessential late 60s movie about assassination, conspiracy, street politics and police brutality. How could a film shot in Algeria and starring French actors so faithfully reconstruct a recent Greek political killing? How did it capture the spirit of the times? And what does it say about the relationship between politics as violence and politics as story-telling? To find out about our gift offerings for Christ...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 10Ep. 140
To finish this series of bad ideas, David tries to persuade Gary Gerstle of the futility of televised leadership debates. From Nixon vs Kennedy to Harris vs Trump, do the voters really learn anything from these supposed exchanges of ideas? Are they ever much more than a competition to avoid gaffes? And what did British politics gain when it introduced prime ministerial election debates (apart from a brief attack of Cleggmania)? A new bonus bad idea is available to accompany this series: David ta...
Dec 08, 2024•1 hr•Season 5Ep. 139
For our penultimate bad idea in this series, David talks to Robert Saunders about what’s gone wrong with British politics since party members got to decide who leads the party – and in some cases who gets to be prime minister. Is the problem the principle of the thing or the people who end up in charge (Corbyn, Truss)? How did reforms undertaken in the name of democracy manage to undermine democracy? And what are the alternatives? A new bonus bad idea is available to accompany this series: David...
Dec 05, 2024•57 min•Season 5Ep. 138
Today’s bad idea is a theory of the universe: David talks to astrophysicist Chris Lintott about Steady State Theory, the rival cosmological model to the Big Bang, which held its own for a while in the 1940s and 1950s but turned out to be unsustainable. Why did its best-known champion Fred Hoyle have so much faith in it? What did it expose about the limitations of Big Bang theory? And what does it reveal about scientific hubris and human weakness in the face of the unknown? Available now is a new...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 137
Today’s bad idea concerns history itself: David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about the temptations and the pitfalls of the idea of The End of History. Francis Fukuyama popularised the phrase in 1989 at the end of the Cold War. What did his vision of the triumph of liberal democracy miss? Was it a Western fantasy or a modern fantasy or both? How has history exacted its revenge? And if history doesn’t end, does it repeat? Coming on Saturday a bonus bad idea to accompany this series: David...
Nov 28, 2024•57 min•Season 5Ep. 136
For today’s bad idea David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what goes wrong when politicians get their hands on the concept of modernisation. Why does it leave them so in thrall to new technology? What does it miss about how change really happens? And where does the modernisation project end? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipient will also receive a personally inscribed copy of David’s new book The His...
Nov 24, 2024•59 min•Season 5Ep. 135
Today’s bad idea is about how ideas get adopted, argued over and rejected: David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what’s wrong with seeing this as a competitive marketplace. From St. Paul to Citizens United, from John Stuart Mill to Jordan Peterson, what happens when ideas get turned into commodities? Who wins and who loses? And what is an ‘ideological entrepreneur’? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipie...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 134
For our latest bad idea with an interesting history David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about what’s wrong with Nobel Prizes. Why do we revere the winners of the science prizes when we know how contrived the other prizes are? What makes us so attached to this relic of an outmoded idea of scientific progress? And what happens when someone is struck down with ‘Nobelitis’? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and...
Nov 17, 2024•56 min•Season 5Ep. 133
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’t the silent majority really the dead? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscription to PPF+ and your recipi...
Nov 14, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 132
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 politician it’s possible for his opponents to work with? What is the likely shape of the new political order that his administration represents? And will ...
Nov 09, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Season 3Ep. 131
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 counter-insurgents, it humanises a horrifying conflict. It also raises the question: where is the line between realism and rage? Coming on Saturday: a ne...
Nov 07, 2024•58 min•Season 10Ep. 130
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 other is utterly terrifying. Which packs the biggest punch today? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Xmas gift offer: give a subscriptio...
Nov 03, 2024•54 min•Season 10Ep. 129
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 real meaning of the celebrated line: ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things must change…’? Looking for Christmas presents? We have a special Ch...
Oct 31, 2024•57 min•Season 10Ep. 128
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 Soviet agent? Who’s a mummy’s boy? And it managed to anticipate what was coming next in American politics: the age of assassination. A new bonus episode t...
Oct 27, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 10Ep. 127
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 of heroism? And how is Blimp’s moustache like Kane’s Rosebud? A new bonus episode to accompany this series is out on Saturday: David explores why so ...
Oct 24, 2024•54 min•Season 10Ep. 126
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 Rosebud not the real mystery at the heart of this story? Like Kane, want more stuff? To get PPF merch – either an ethically-sourced canvas tote bag or...
Oct 20, 2024•56 min•Season 10Ep. 125
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 First, from Burton K. Wheeler to Harry S. Truman, this is a heart-warming film that still manages to go to the dark heart of American politics. To he...
Oct 17, 2024•57 min•Season 10Ep. 124
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? Our bonus episode with Chris Clark on how Europe’s elites sleepwalked into war in 1914 is available on PPF+. Sign up now for just £5 per month or £50 ...
Oct 13, 2024•54 min•Season 10Ep. 123
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 he fail to save himself? A conversation about utilitarianism, risk and human weakness. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lew...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 122
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 close to call, can the American Republic survive the fallout? There is another bonus episode out now to accompany our recent series on Thinking Machines:...
Oct 06, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 121
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 care and about the care of nature? And where do robots fit into a neurodiverse world? Plus: robots vs octopi. There is another bonus episode to accom...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 120
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 and the artificial. What is the meaning of the electric sheep? To hear a bonus episode on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to accompany this series sign u...
Sep 29, 2024•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 119
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 come true? How does the power of technology shape contemporary politics? And why was Asimov’s vision of the future so reactionary? To hear a bonus episo...
Sep 26, 2024•57 min•Season 9Ep. 118
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 it prophetic? Is it monstrous? And who are the winners and losers when war is declared on the machines? To hear a bonus episode on Mary Shelley’s Frank...
Sep 22, 2024•56 min•Season 9Ep. 117
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 been borne out? And what would an independent Scotland mean for the world today? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark abou...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 116
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 very differently? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War sign up now to PP...
Sep 15, 2024•57 min•Season 7Ep. 115
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 involved? Or did the peacemakers make the best of a bad job? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origin...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr•Season 7Ep. 114
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 world if revolutionary socialism had been liberated from Marxist communism? To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fa...
Sep 08, 2024•1 hr•Season 7Ep. 113
