Past Present Future

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 natu...

2 Nov 202355min

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 ...

26 Okt 202350min

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 failu...

19 Okt 202354min

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 t...

12 Okt 202352min

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 abou...

5 Okt 202349min

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 Repub...

28 Sep 202355min

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 ...

21 Sep 202352min

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 V...

14 Sep 20231h 5min