This week David talks to American historian Gary Gerstle about the shape-shifting journey of the US Republican Party, from the Civil War to the battles of today. How did the party of the North become the party of the South? When did the war party lose its appetite for war? Why does an organisation born out of anti-Catholicism now see its mission as to get Catholics onto the Supreme Court? And what could finally break the party apart? Gary Gerstle’s latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order. For more on the Great Abortion Switcheroo of the 1970s. Listen again to David’s episode on Hume and American default. Sign up to LRB Close Readings: Directly in Apple: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.supportingcast.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Lincoln to Trump: What Happened to the Republican Party?

Past Present Future is a bi-weekly History of Ideas podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology.&nbsp;David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas come from, what they mean, and why they matter.
Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future.&nbsp;Brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books.
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In the penultimate episode of the current part of our Fictions series, David explores Salman Rushdie’s 1981 masterpiece Midnight’s Children, the great novel about the life and death of Indian democracy.  How can one boy stand in for the whole of India?  How can a nation as diverse as India ever have a single politics?  And how is a jar of pickle the answer to these questions?  Plus, how does Rushdie’s story read today, in the age of Modi?
Next time: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
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.

The Great Political Fictions: Midnight’s Children

In this episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influential Atlas Shrugged (1957), the bible of free-market entrepreneurialism and source book to this day for vicious anti-socialist polemics.  Why is this novel so adored by Silicon Valley tech titans?  How can something so bad have so much lasting power?  And what did Rand have against her arch-villain Robert Oppenheimer?
Next time: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Coming soon 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.

The Great Political Fictions: Atlas Shrugged

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.

The Great Political Fictions: Mother Courage and Her Children

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
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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.

The Great Political Fictions: The Time Machine

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.

From Lincoln to Trump: What Happened to the Republican Party?

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