Best Lea Rice Podcasts (2024)

1
The Great Political Fictions: Tim Rice on Evita 49:25

1h ago49:25

49:25

Something different for our last episode on the Great Political Fictions as this time David talks to the person who wrote it: Tim Rice, the lyricist of the epic musical about the life of Eva Peron, Evita (co-written with Andrew Lloyd-Webber). Where did the idea for such an unlikely subject come from? Why has it struck a chord with politicians from …

1
The Great Political Fictions: Helen Lewis on To Kill A Mockingbird 59:34

14m ago59:34

59:34

David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), one of the most widely read and best-loved novels of the twentieth century, and in the twenty-first century increasingly one of the most controversial. Is the book an attack on or an apology for Southern racism? How does its view of race relate to…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Lea Ypi on The Wild Duck 59:10

14m ago59:10

59:10

The writer and political philosopher Lea Ypi talks about the impact on her of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884), which she first read when she was eight – thinking it was a children’s book (it isn’t!) – and has been returning to ever since. A play about family and betrayal, idealism and disappointment, temptation and self-destruction, is it also …

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
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
The Great Political Fictions: American Wife 54:18

16d 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

20d 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

24d 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
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
The Great Political Fictions: Midnight’s Children 54:05

2M 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
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
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
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
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…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: The Gold Standard 44:42

3M ago44:42

44:42

In the second episode in our series on bad ideas David talks to the political economist Helen Thompson about the gold standard, which was meant to anchor the world economy until it all fell apart a hundred years ago. Why does gold so often appear like a stable basis for money in an unstable world – and why not silver? What made the gold standard a …

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Eugenics 55:24

3M ago55:24

55:24

For the first episode in our new series about the hold of bad ideas David talks to the geneticist and science broadcaster Adam Rutherford about eugenics: from its origins in the 19th century through its heyday in the 20th century to its continuing legacy today. Is eugenics bad science, bad morality, bad politics – or all three? What are the fears t…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Liberation Movements 56:04

4M ago56:04

56:04

In our final episode David and Lea discuss liberation movements, from post-colonial liberation to women’s liberation, gay liberation and animal liberation. What, if anything, do these movements have in common? Is liberation about equality or is it about difference? And who needs liberating next – children? You can hear our bonus episodes for this s…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Existentialism and Psychoanalysis 51:23

4M ago51:23

51:23

In the penultimate episode in this series David and Lea discuss two twentieth-century philosophies of freedom and the human psyche. What can existentialism teach us about the nature of free choice under conditions of despair? Is there any escape from bad faith? And what can individuals – or even entire societies – learn about their freedom from bei…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Anarchism and Nihilism 50:14

4M ago50:14

50:14

In our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea have reached anarchism and nihilism. What is the positive vision of human freedom behind the anarchist rejection of the established order? What can nineteenth-century anarchists teach us about freedom in the twenty-first century? And if nihilists are against everything, what are they for?…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: What is the Free Market? 50:29

4M ago50:29

50:29

In the latest episode of our series about different ideas of freedom David and Lea explore what makes the free market free – and where it fails. How does buying and selling stuff advance human freedom? What does the free market free us from? And is it really possible to be free in a world dominated by credit and debt? Sign up now for PPF+ to get bo…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Kant, Enlightenment and Peace 53:57

4M ago53:57

53:57

In this episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea explore Immanuel Kant’s vision of rational freedom and perpetual peace. Why was Kant so sure that human reason would produce enlightened progress? Was he right? What are the obstacles likely to derail the advance of peace, then and now? How well do his arguments about free speech an…

1
The History of Freedom w/ Lea Ypi: Machiavelli and Political Liberty 49:45

4M ago49:45

49:45

History of Freedom w/ Lea Ypi: Machiavelli and Political Liberty For the third episode in our series about ideas of freedom David and Lea discuss Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state. What are the institutions that can protect people from domination and exploitation? How can political elites be held to account? Where…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: The Ancients - Socrates, Seneca & Jesus 53:51

4M ago53:51

53:51

In episode two of our new series David and Lea explore some ancient ideas of freedom and ask what they mean today. What can Socrates teach us about the nature of free inquiry and the pitfalls of democratic freedom? Is Stoicism a guide to emancipation from desire or an exercise in selfishness? And how did Christianity upend the notion of freedom by …

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Why Does It Matter? 55:51

4M ago55:51

55:51

In the first episode of our new series about the history of freedom, David and Lea discuss what the idea means to them and why it matters so much. What did freedom mean to Lea growing up in communist Albania? Is it possible to know true freedom without also having experienced oppression? And how is being free different from being lucky? Subscribe n…

1
Introducing PPF+ 1:38

4M ago1:38

1:38

Sign up now for bonus episodes and ad-free listening – and help support the podcast. www.ppfideas.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1
American Elections: 2008 57:13

4M ago57:13

57:13

For our final episode in this series, David and Gary discuss the election of 2008, which saw Barack Obama’s extraordinary ascent to the presidency. How did he outthink and outmanoeuvre Hilary Clinton? What role did the financial crisis play in his path to the White House? And was it really the vice-presidential candidates in this election who point…

1
American Elections: 1980 48:42

5M ago48:42

48:42

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 – an…

1
American Elections: 1936 48:12

5M ago48:12

48:12

The election of 1936 saw FDR re-elected in a landslide. It was also an election in which fundamental questions about the future direction of America were at stake. David and Gary discuss what made it a turning point for American democracy and ultimately for the wider world. Could the power of the Supreme Court be tamed? What was the true nature of …

1
American Elections: 1912 45:53

5M ago45:53

45:53

We’ve reached the twentieth century and today’s episode is about the decisive election of 1912. David and Gary discuss the year when the Republicans split, the Democrats recaptured the White House after an absence of twenty years, and American politics shifted decisively towards progressivism. Who were the real progressives? What was Theodore Roose…

1
American Elections: 1896 51:47

5M ago51:47

51:47

This episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections looks at 1896, when a single speech nearly upended American politics. The speech was William Jennings Bryan’s ‘Cross of Gold’ address at the Democratic Party convention, which won him the nomination. How did a 36-year old outsider from Nebraska get so close to reaching the White Hous…

1
American Elections: 1860 58:07

5M ago58:07

58:07

In the third episode in our series on the Ideas Behind American Elections David and Gary talk about what was maybe the most significant election of all: 1860, when Lincoln became president and the country careened into civil war. How did the newly formed Republican Party break the stranglehold of the established parties? Why could the South neither…

1
American Elections: 1828 51:26

5M ago51:26

51:26

For the second episode in our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and Gary discuss 1828: the first great populist election, which saw the arrival of Andrew Jackson and a new style of politics in the White House. What made Jackson different from his predecessors? How did this election reinvent the American party system? And why …

1
American Elections: 1800 55:07

5M ago55:07

55:07

In the first episode of our new series on the Ideas Behind American Elections, David and historian Gary Gerstle explore the presidential contest of 1800: scurrilous, complicated, game changing. How did it help create the American party system? Was it really democratic? What would have happened if Aaron Burr had won? Plus, just how accurate is the d…

1
Q & A: Shakespeare, Gulliver and Trump 43:17

5M ago43:17

43:17

In an extra episode this week David answers your questions about the most recent series of the History of Ideas - in particular about the political lessons of Gulliver’s Travels, for its own time and for our own. Plus, how is Trump like - and not like - Coriolanus, and where are the female authors for this series? (A: they’re coming!) Starting in o…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Fathers and Sons 53:54

6M ago53:54

53:54

This week’s Great Political Fiction is Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), the definitive novel about the politics – and emotions – of intergenerational conflict. How did Turgenev manage to write a wistful novel about nihilism? What made Russian politics in the early 1860s so chock-full of frustration? Why did Turgenev’s book infuriate his con…

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