The 2 Best Past Present Future Podcast Episodes
1) What If… Wallace not Truman Had Become US President in 1945?
Today’s episode explores one of the big counterfactuals of twentieth-century American politics: David talks to historian Benn Steil about how close the ultraliberal Henry Wallace came to being FDR’s r...Show More
2) Rawls, Capitalism & Justice
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 th...Show More
3) Where Are We Going? Societal Collapse – The Modern Age
In today’s episode David talks to Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse, about the strengths and weaknesses of modern states and modern structures of authority. Are modern states any different from the...Show More
4) Where Are We Going? Societal Collapse – Origins
Today’s episode is the first in a series of conversations about what causes human societies to fall apart and what might come next. David talks to Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse, about how we bu...Show More
5) Where Are We Going? Nuclear War Part 3
Today’s episode is the third and final of David’s conversations with S. M. Amadae about nuclear weapons and nuclear war, this time looking to the future. What are the prospects for nuclear disarmament...Show More
6) Where Are We Going? Nuclear War Part 2
In today’s episode David talks to S. M. Amadae about what happened when the nuclear age turned into an all-consuming arms race. What is the supposed logic and the terrifying illogic behind the idea o...Show More
7) Where Are We Going? Nuclear War Part 1
For the first in a new series of conversations exploring the future that faces us all, David talks to S. M. Amadae about what nuclear weapons and the prospect of nuclear war have done to the human con...Show More
8) What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Bernard Williams and Judith Shklar
Today’s episode explores the ideas of two late-twentieth-century thinkers who argued that political philosophy needs to be concerned with more than just justice. David talks to Paul Sagar about why Be...Show More
9) What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Max Weber
In the third part of our series David and Paul Sagar explore what the German writer and sociologist Max Weber can teach us about the pitfalls of political life and political philosophy. Why is doing p...Show More
10) What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Adam Smith
In the second episode in our short series about how the history of ideas can help with the deepest puzzles of politics, David talks to political theorist Paul Sagar about the eighteenth-century polyma...Show More