"... when people talk about 'democracy', they mean the democracy that we've had for the past 100 years and they think that that is the absolutely universal default. And it is ... historically contingent, it's probably moved quite a long way through it's life cycle - is my guess - and it's coming to the end of its life."
#DavidRunciman, 2025
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/fixing-democracy%3A-citizens%E2%80%99-assemblies
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All countries that claim to practice 'compulsory voting', don't. Because they all offer a 'no confidence' option. Which is, in effect, not voting.
It's a nonsense, and a distraction from meaningful attempts at democratic reform
https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/past-present-future/fixing-democracy-compulsory-voting
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#podcasts #DavidRunciman #PastPresentFuture #democracy #elections #CompulsoryVoting
"There is in Gillead a wall ... where traitors are hung after execution ... But these places are guarded by ... potentially trigger-happy young men, with guns, but who look to the women like they should be in school.
This is, Checkpoint Charlie, this is the Berlin Wall. These things were policed by young men who looked like maybe they should Stoll be in school."
#DavidRunciman, August, 2024
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes
Reminds me of the checkpoints in the walls around Occupied Palestine.
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"It might in the US seem impossible that a society based on 'American freedoms' could turn into this kind of repressive theocracy overnight."
#DavidRunciman, August, 2024
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes
A year later ...
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I've never thought deeply about exactly what people might mean when they talk about "the polycrisis". So I'm glad I got the chance, thanks to David Runciman doing an episode about it for his History of Bad Ideas series;
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-history-of-bad-ideas%3A-polycrisis
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#podcast #PastPresentFuture #HistoryOfBadIdeas #DavidRunciman #polycrisis
"What If… The French Revolution Had Happened in China?"
"David talks to world historian Ayse Zarakol about how the East might well have risen to global dominance before the West. What if the key revolutions of the modern world – political and industrial – had happened in Asia first?"
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes
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#podcasts #PastPresentFuture #DavidRunciman #AyseZarakol #FrenchRevolution #China
@Gotterdammerung I realise you're defending it, but thought you might find interesting that the "marketplace of ideas" trope has a chequered history. I'd found a piece years back by Jill Gordon, "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'" which strongly corresponded to (and extended) my own thinking:
https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1997_0023_0002_0235_0250
More recently, David Runciman (podcast, sorry, and no transcript of which I'm aware) did a really good 'splainer in his "History of Bad Ideas" series on the Marketplace of Ideas as well:
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-history-of-bad-ideas%3A-the-marketplace-of-ideas
(Others may find that more useful than you will.)
If you'd like I can re-listen and synopsise the podcast for you.
Upshot though is that good ideas don't tend to emerge in a free-for-all marketplace. Laboratories, seminars, and non-motivated (dialectical, rather than sophistical / rhetorical) exchange. My argument is that "marketplace of ideas" was more about selling markets (many early advocates were also free-market advocates) than the metaphor vis-a-vis ideas themselves.
(If you go through especially Oliver Wendell Holmes's characterisation in Schenck v. US, one of the strong influences on him was Francis Wrigley Hirst, former editor of The Economist, itself created to promote free speech ideas as is made clear in its prospectus: https://web.archive.org/web/20180825113414/https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus. The story's covered in The Great Dissent by Thomas Healy: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/thomas-healy/the-great-dissent/)
#MarketplaceOfIdeas #DavidRunciman #JohnStuartMill #ThomasHealy #FrancisWrigleyHirst #OliverWendellHolmes
Last night I listened to podcaster David Runciman and journalist Helen Lewis talking about Fight Club, and how it holds up 25 years later;
https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-great-political-films%3A-fight-club-w%2F-helen-lewis
The political aspect of the discussion exemplified a common lack of understanding among the political class, about what fascism really is and how it works. One that I also lacked when I first watched the film, about 20 years ago.
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#podcasts #PastPresentFuture #FightClub #DavidRunciman #HelenLewis
Just listening to David Runciman and Gary Gerstle discuss the history of televised leadership debates;
I suspect we will look back on 2024 as a watershed year, where the net replacing television as the dominant media. Just as television did with radio.
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#podcasts #PastPresentFuture #HistoryOfBadIdeas #media #television #DavidRunciman #GaryGerstle
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 Harris vs Trump, do the voters really learn anyt... – Listen to The History of Bad Ideas: Televised Leadership Debates by Past Present Future instantly on your tablet, phone or browser - no downloads needed.
"In a way the Bolshevik revolution created the 20th century. It created all of the far right reactions to it. I don't know how far we can go with this counterfactual, whether with a Left-SR revolution you don't get Hitler but... maybe you don't?"
#DavidRunciman, 2024
"I think you don't, and I think it's much easier with counterfactuals to identity what you don't get than what you do get."
#EdwardActon, 2024
https://shows.acast.com/pastpresentfuture/episodes/66d99b6cd4991eb8a6d39ac6
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Strypey
Doc Edward Morbius ⭕