Best David Runciman Podcasts (2024)

1
The Great Political Poems 54:23

1h ago54:23

54:23

David talks to Mark Ford and Seamus Perry, hosts of the LRB’s Close Readings poetry podcast, about what makes a great political poem. Can great poetry be ideological? How much does context matter? And is it possible to tell political truths in verse? From Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’ to Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ to Auden’s ‘Spain 1937’: a conversation abou…

1
Creating Life from Art, with Catherine Lacey 58:12

2d ago58:12

58:12

We recently welcomed Catherine Lacey to the bookshop to discuss her vertiginous latest novel Biography of X. Ostensibly the quest of a journalist, C.M. Lucca, to discover more about the life of her late wife—an artist who went by many names, but who she knew only as X—it quickly becomes clear that, in Biography of X, it’s not just one life being ca…

1
American Elections: The Republican Convention 59:36

17m ago59:36

59:36

This week we check back in with Gary Gerstle to discuss what’s been happening in American politics after a tumultuous week. What does it say about Trump’s electoral strategy that he picked J.D. Vance as his running mate? How would the Republican party have coped if the assassin’s bullet hadn’t missed? Who might replace Biden at the top of the Democ…

51
The Great Political Fictions: Hamilton 54:42

7d ago54:42

54:42

Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (2015). What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers? How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history? And why does a product of the Obama era still resonate so powerf…

1
Paul Murray on The Bee Sting 1:05:31

3h ago1:05:31

1:05:31

Set in small-town, post-crash Ireland, The Bee Sting follows the Barnes family—Dickie, Imelda, Cass and PJ—as the fabric of their lives first frays at the edges, then begins to unravel completely. The Barnes’ are endearing, and complex, and funny, and infuriating… In short, one of the most realistic and memorable portrayals of a family you’ll find …

1
The Great Political Fictions: American Wife 54:18

16m ago54:18

54:18

The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the …

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Line of Beauty 53:46

2d ago53:46

53:46

Our political fictions series returns with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberat…

1
UK General Elections: 2024 55:21

10d ago55:21

55:21

To wrap up our series David and Robert attempt some instant history on the election result that’s just happened: in some ways predictable, in others utterly remarkable. What does such a big win for Labour on such a relatively small vote mean? What’s happening in Scotland? Where next for the Tories? And is the UK now an outlier in a world of increas…

1
UK General Elections: 2019 53:40

9d ago53:40

53:40

For election day, David and Robert discuss the previous general election in December 2019, which saw Boris Johnson win a decisive victory under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. How did he (or Dominic Cummings) do it? Was Corbyn to blame for Labour’s defeat? And how the hell did the Tories get from that resounding victory to their current disarray in j…

1
Claire Kilroy on Parenting under the Patriarchy 54:57

19d ago54:57

54:57

A woman tells her son about his early life. About the months and years that he will by now have forgotten. When he was a baby, then a toddler, and when she was going into battle every day. For him first, and only then for herself. It’s a battle fought on many fronts. Against exhaustion, against time, against the loss of selfhood, against an increas…

1
UK General Elections: 1997 56:00

10d ago56:00

56:00

In this extra episode for election week David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the last great Labour landslide of 1997, when Tony Blair won the biggest majority in his party’s history (till now?). Why did the Tories get no credit for a strong economy? How did New Labour change political campaigning? Was this the election that did for the pr…

1
UK General Elections: 1979 59:32

25d ago59:32

59:32

Today’s pivotal UK election is the one that brought Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street in 1979. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about how she did it and how it could have turned out very differently. What might have happened if the election had been called the previous year? Did Thatcherism already exist in 1979 or had it still to be inve…

1
UK General Elections: 1945 55:51

25d ago55:51

55:51

In today’s episode on pivotal UK elections David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the first great Labour landslide of 1945 and how it changed Britain. Why did Churchill not get his expected reward for winning the war? How genuinely radical and popular was the Labour programme? What made the mild-mannered Attlee such an effective leader? And…

1
UK General Elections: 1906 53:45

29d ago53:45

53:45

The first episode in our new series with historian Robert Saunders on pivotal general elections is about the Tory disaster and Liberal triumph of 1906. David and Robert explore the reasons behind the worst result in modern Conservative party history – until now? How did the Liberals achieve their landslide? What made ‘Big Loaf, Little Loaf’ a winni…

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Handmaid’s Tale 53:24

24d ago53:24

53:24

For the final episode in the current series, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), her unforgettable dystopian vision of a future American patriarchy. Where is Gilead? When is Gilead? How did it happen? How can it be stopped? From puritanism and slavery to Iran and Romania, from demography and racism to Playboy and Scrabble,…

1
Rachel Cusk on Art, Violence and Freedom through Destruction 1:00:16

1M ago1:00:16

1:00:16

The biographies of several artists, all named G, form a kind of exoskeleton to Rachel Cusk’s latest novel Parade, encasing the book’s other captivating strands—the story of an unprovoked attack on a Parisian street, the story of a couple on a remote island, the story of a suicide at a museum, the story of the death of a mother. Elements which thems…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Midnight’s Children 54:05

1M ago54:05

54:05

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 a…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Atlas Shrugged 58:45

1M ago58:45

58:45

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 a…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Mother Courage and Her Children 53:55

1M ago53:55

53:55

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 characte…

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Time Machine 55:55

2M ago55:55

55:55

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: Bert…

1
When Radical Art meets Obscene Wealth, with Hari Kunzru 56:55

1M ago56:55

56:55

Last week we were joined in the bookshop by Hari Kunzru, whose new novel Blue Ruin is a deeply unsettling, and intensely thought provoking reflection on the impact capital has on people, but also on art, and those who create it. It is the perfect final instalment—alongside White Tears and Red Pill—in Hari Kunzru’s own trois couleurs —a loose trilog…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 51:28

2M ago51:28

51:28

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…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux 53:53

2M ago53:53

53:53

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 ou…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 2) 50:32

2M ago50:32

50:32

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 …

1
Sheila Heti on Alphabetical Diaries 50:07

2M ago50:07

50:07

Last week we were joined by the wonderful Sheila Heti to celebrate the launch of her Alphabetical Diaries. In taking a decade of her journals, sorting the sentences alphabetically, then paring them down to about a tenth of their original length, Sheila Heti has freed a slice of her life from the shackles of time and in doing so has extracted some o…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 1) 52:03

2M ago52:03

52:03

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 …

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Mesmerism 53:22

2M ago53:22

53:22

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 abou…

1
BONUS: Celebrating Dylan Thomas with Cerys Matthews…with exclusive live music from Flora Hibberd! 57:26

2M ago57:26

57:26

To celebrate Dylan Thomas Day 2024 we’re delighted to share this recording of our recent event with award-winning songwriter, author and broadcaster Cerys Matthews. The evening also featured live music from Flora Hibberd and her band, including a brand new song composed for this evening. Enjoy! More from Cerys Matthews: Out of Chaos Comes Bliss: ht…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: The Death of the Author 48:38

2M ago48:38

48:38

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…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Anti-Suffragettes 54:11

2M ago54:11

54:11

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 c…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Taxonomy 46:50

2M ago46:50

46:50

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 …

1
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Memory, Migration and Model Minorities 1:03:03

2M ago1:03:03

1:03:03

A few weeks ago, we welcomed Pulitzer Prizewinner Viet Thanh Nguyen to Shakespeare and Company to discuss his engrossing new work A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial, a book about family, and memory, and storytelling, and history, on all the levels that it impacts upon a life. Buy A Man of Two Faces here: https://www.shakespeareandc…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Antisemitism 49:49

3M ago49:49

49:49

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 Ge…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Facebook Friends 50:04

3M ago50:04

50:04

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…

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