Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play was written in 1939 at the start of one terrible European war but set in the time of another: the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century. How did Brecht think a three-hundred-year gap could help us to understand our own capacity for violence and cruelty? Why did he make Mother Courage such an unlovable character? Why do we feel for her plight anyway? And what can we do about it? Next time: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged Coming next week on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) isn’t just a book about time travel. It’s also full of late-19th century fear and paranoia about what evolution and progress might do to human beings in the long run. Why will the class struggle turn into savagery and human sacrifice? Who will end up on top? And how will the world ultimately end? Next time: Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children Coming soon on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections To receive our fortnightly newsletter just follow the link here https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all. This week’s episode explores all the ways that Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale confounds our expectations about good and evil. What does Dr Jekyll really want? What are all the men in the book trying to hide? And what has any of this got to do with Q-Anon and Hillary Clinton? Next time: H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's great political novel is Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1874), his lightly and luridly fictionalised account of parliamentary polarisation in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. A tale of political and personal melodrama, it explores what happens when political parties steal each other’s clothes and politicians find themselves hung out to dry by their colleagues. A story of integrity and hypocrisy and how hard it is to tell them apart. Next time: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Coming next month on PPF: The Ideas Behind UK General Elections Sign up now to PPF+ to get 2 bonus episodes every month and ad-free listening www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This second episode about George Eliot’s masterpiece explores questions of politics and religion, reputation and deception, truth and public opinion. What is the relationship between personal power and faith in a higher power? Is it ever possible to escape from the gossip of your friends once it turns against you? Who can rescue the ambitious when their ambitions are their undoing? To get two bonus episodes from our recent Bad Ideas series – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+ and enjoy ad-free listening as well www.ppfideas.com Next time: Trollope’s Phineas Redux, the great novel of parliamentary ups and downs. Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, Atlas Shrugged, Midnight’s Children, The Handmaid’s Tale, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Our series on the great political novels and plays resumes with George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), which has so much going on that it needs two episodes to unpack it. In this episode David discusses the significance of the book being set in 1829-32 and the reasons why Nietzsche was so wrong to characterise it as a moralistic tale. Plus he explains why a book about personal relationships is also a deeply political novel. To get two bonus episodes from our recent Bad Ideas series – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+ and enjoy ad-free listening as well www.ppfideas.com Next time: Middlemarch (part 2) on marriage, hypocrisy, guilt and redemption. Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For our last episode in this series David is joined by Helen Lewis to discuss Mesmerism – aka animal magnetism – an eighteenth-century method of hypnosis for which great medical benefits were claimed. Was its originator, Franz Mesmer, a charlatan or a healer? Was his movement science or religion or something in between? And what can it tell us about twenty-first century phenomena from online social contagion to hypnotherapy? To get two bonus Bad Ideas episodes – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+, where you will also get all our past and future bonus episodes plus ad-free listening www.ppfieas.com Coming next: The Great Political Fictions resumes with Middlemarch, the greatest of them all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes’s idea of the Death of the Author (1967). Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife. As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots, Kathleen discusses her personal experience of how it can go wrong. Two bonus Bad Ideas episodes for PPF+ subscribers – on Email and VAR – will be available very soon. Sign up now and get ad-free listening too! www.ppfideas.com Coming Next: Helen Lewis on Mesmerism Coming Soon: The Great Political Fictions Part 2, starting with Middlemarch Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of our series on the lingering hold of bad ideas David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about the arguments made at the turn of the last century against giving the vote to women. Why were so many women against female enfranchisement? What did attitudes to women in politics reveal about the failings of men? And where can the echoes of these arguments still be heard today? Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights is available wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/3wp8DNX Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany every series. Coming soon: two bonus bad ideas just for PPF+ subscribers www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock discusses The Death of the Author. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The History of Bad Ideas: Taxonomy For the latest episode in our series about the hold of bad ideas, we welcome back the geneticist Adam Rutherford to talk about Linnaean taxonomy, a seemingly innocuous scheme of classification that has had deeply pernicious consequences. From scientific racism to social stratification to search engine optimisation, taxonomy gets everywhere. Can we escape its grip? Sign up now to PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany every series. Coming soon: two bonus bad ideas just for PPF+ subscribers www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Helen Lewis on women against the enfranchisement of women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today’s bad idea is one with a very long history: David talks to the historian Christopher Clark about antisemitism and the reasons for its endless recurrence. What has made discrimination against the Jews different from other kinds of violent prejudice over the course of European history? How did the ‘Jewish Question’ become the battleground of German politics? Why do so many Christians have a love-hate relationship with Judaism? And where does the state of Israel fit into this story? For ad-free listening and bonus episodes – including more bad ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Adam Rutherford on Taxonomy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In today’s episode about seemingly good ideas gone badly wrong David talks to the philosopher and journalist Kathleen Stock about Facebook Friends, something that was meant to make us happier and better connected but really didn’t. How did online friendship become so performative? Does its failings say more about Facebook and its business models or does it say more about us? And why are academics so susceptible to the madness of social media? For ad-free listening and bonus episodes – including more bad ideas – subscribe to PPF+ www.ppfideas.com Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: historian Christopher Clark on Antisemitism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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