Our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections has reached 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan. David and Gary discuss whether Jimmy Carter was always doomed, what made Reaganomics different and how Reagan succeeded in being an optimist and a scaremonger at the same time. Did this election really inaugurate a new era in American politics – and if so, are we still living in it?
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Coming up: 2008 and the election of Barack Obama Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

American Elections: 1980

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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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? 
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Coming next: The Great Political Fictions resumes with Middlemarch, the greatest of them all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History of Bad Ideas: Mesmerism

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.
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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.

The History of Bad Ideas: The Death of the Author

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: Anti-Suffragettes

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.

The History of Bad Ideas: Taxonomy

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.

American Elections: 1980

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