Past Present Future

Gary Marcus and John Lanchester join David to discuss all things AI, from ChatGPT to the Turing test. Why is the Turing test such a bad judge of machine intelligence? If these machines aren’t thinking...

25 Maj 202354min

For the first episode in the new series of History of Ideas – on the great essays and the great essayists – David discusses Montaigne, the man who invented a whole new way of writing and being read. F...

18 Maj 202354min

This week David talks to Katja Hoyer and Lea Ypi about life under communism. East Germany was the most successful of the communist states of Eastern Europe, measured by economic prosperity and sportin...

11 Maj 202356min

This week David talks to Helen Thompson about Dallas and the end of oil. How did the world’s most popular soap opera come to explain the energy crisis and the future of a world hooked on fossil fuels?...

4 Maj 202353min

David talks to Ian McEwan about Italo Calvino’s The Watcher (1963), one of the greatest of all works of political fiction. Challenging, disturbing, redemptive: this is a book about who gets to count a...

27 Apr 202355min

Past Present Future is a new weekly podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to...

12 Apr 20234min