Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Great Political Films: Do The Right Thing
Season 10 Episode 144
Our political films season has reached the late 1980s with Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee’s searing take on racial tension on a Brooklyn block …
1 year ago
The Great Political Films: Kagemusha
Season 10 Episode 143
Today’s great political film is Akira Kurosawa’s epic of war and deception Kagemusha (1980). Set in late sixteenth-century Japan it tells the story o…
1 year ago
The Great Political Films: Jeanne Dielman
Season 10 Episode 142
Today’s great political film is Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), voted the greatest film of all time in …
1 year ago
The Great Political Films: The Candidate w/Chris Smith
Season 10 Episode 141
Today’s episode is a conversation between David and the former politician Chris Smith (long-time MP and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Spo…
1 year ago
The Great Political Films: Z
Season 10 Episode 140
We resume our series on the great political films with Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969), the quintessential late 60s movie about assassination, conspiracy, st…
1 year, 1 month ago
The History of Bad Ideas: Televised Leadership Debates
Season 5 Episode 139
To finish this series of bad ideas, David tries to persuade Gary Gerstle of the futility of televised leadership debates. From Nixon vs Kennedy to Ha…
1 year, 1 month ago
The History of Bad Ideas: Party Members Choosing Leaders
Season 5 Episode 138
For our penultimate bad idea in this series, David talks to Robert Saunders about what’s gone wrong with British politics since party members got to …
1 year, 1 month ago
The History of Bad Ideas: Steady State Theory
Season 5 Episode 137
Today’s bad idea is a theory of the universe: David talks to astrophysicist Chris Lintott about Steady State Theory, the rival cosmological model to …
1 year, 1 month ago
The History of Bad Ideas: The End of History
Season 5 Episode 136
Today’s bad idea concerns history itself: David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about the temptations and the pitfalls of the idea of The End o…
1 year, 1 month ago
The History of Bad Ideas: Modernisation!
Season 5 Episode 135
For today’s bad idea David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what goes wrong when politicians get their hands on the concept of mod…
1 year, 1 month ago