"Inside Politics Newsletter"

"During the election campaign, I hugely enjoyed a podcast mini-series on dramatic general elections with David Runciman and Robert Saunders, both of them such interesting historians. But Runciman’s Past Present Future podcast has recently been putting out a mouth-watering new crop of episodes on political fictions — so far I’ve swooned along to the episode about The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, set in the 80s zenith of Thatcherism and a favourite of mine. This weekend I listened to one on Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife — also fantastic. For political types who want a thoughtful change of pace for long summer journeys, this series is pure audio joy."

"The 25 best podcasts for 2024 — chosen by our critics"

"David Runciman, the Cambridge politics professor turned podcaster, provides an erudite spin through the history of political thought. Recent highlights include episodes on the great political fictions (featuring George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). Especially good is the history of bad ideas: episodes on antisemitism, mesmerism and the case against giving women the vote."

“New Scientist recommends”

“I am a podcast addict and my current favourite is Past Present Future, with David Runciman.  It is about the history of ideas, and Runciman’s mellifluous tones guide us through an eclectic mix.  My favourite episode looked at Gulliver’s Travels, a book I thought I knew. But I didn’t realise that, as well as visiting Lilliput, Gulliver goes to Balnibarbi, a land where its inventors work on wild projects, like how to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Runciman wonderfully unpacks the layers of meaning in this clever satire of the Royal Society."

“Pick of the Week”

“Academic David Runciman’s excellent podcast about political ideas has just finished a tangent series about the history of bad ideas (examples including Anti-Votes for Women, eugenics, antisemitism and Facebook friends) which does us a useful service in pointing out that there was a time when otherwise sane, quite prominent people held views that you would be immediately cancelled for holding these days. His expert guests, who include Helen Lewis, Kathleen Stock and Christopher Clark, are all people with that increasingly rare ability to outline a point of view that they don’t happen to share. One carp: Past Present Future is surely too snoozy a name for this podcast, which deserves a broad popular following."

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“The Cambridge politics professor David Runciman’s premise is to take ideas such as the anti-suffragette movement seriously, with fascinating results. Intellectual history, just as much as political or military history, is written by the victors. The History of Bad Ideas from the podcast Past Present Future is a superb corrective to that bias. The premise (and it is a good one) is to take bad ideas seriously. Each episode takes on one with the help of a guest: the historian Christopher Clark on antisemitism, the geneticist Adam Rutherford on eugenics, the economist Helen Thompson on the gold standard. It’s gripping. A shadow history of the modern mind. If the podcast has a lesson it is that bad and good ideas are not as easy to tell apart as we may hope.”

Top of the list of readers’ "best and most-loved podcasts of 2023”

“My favourite new podcast by far this year has been David Runciman’s Past Present Future. The History of Ideas series contained within it is unique in the podcast field. Runciman weaves a tale through his series of intimate, noteless lectures that draws you in completely. Listening, you feel nourished and clever all at once. Plus, as a welcome break from all the blokey bants podcasts, a lot of his guests are women, including regular conversations with the terrifyingly clever Lea Ypi!”

“The Economist’s Favourite Podcasts of 2023”

“David Runciman, a professor of politics at Cambridge University, hosts this enlightening podcast about the history of ideas. In commute-length episodes, he surveys the work of thinkers including James Baldwin, John Rawls and Virginia Woolf."