logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2024
49m 35s

History of Ideas 11: Umberto Eco

David Runciman
About this episode
Episode 11 in our series on the great essays explores Umberto Eco’s ‘Thoughts on Wikileaks’ (2010). Eco writes about what makes a true scandal, what are real secrets, and what it would mean to expose the hidden workings of power. It is an essay that connects digital technology, medieval mystery and Dan Brown. Plus David talks about the hidden meaning of Juli ... Show More
Up next
Mar 18
Live Special: Is This How Democracy Ends? w/Lyse Doucet, Chris Clark & Thant Myint-U
Today’s episode was recorded last Wednesday in front of a live audience at Friends’ House in London, where David was joined by the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, historian Chris Clark and diplomat and writer Thant Myint-U to discuss the fate of democracy in the long run and in the short term ... Show More
1h 13m
Mar 15
Now & Then with Robert Saunders: The Twists and Turns of the Special Relationship
Today’s episode looks backwards and forwards from 1946 to explore the different ways the UK has imagined the US over time, as friend and as foe, as inspiration and as warning, as threat and as salvation. David and Robert examine how America has both illuminated and confused Brita ... Show More
1h 2m
Mar 11
Now & Then with Robert Saunders: Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech @80
Today’s episode sees the return of our occasional series with historian Robert Saunders looking at significant political anniversaries: this time it’s the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s ‘Sinews of Peace’ speech given at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. The speech is best ... Show More
1h 5m
Recommended Episodes
Nov 1995
Umberto Eco
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50.He'll be talking to Sue La ... Show More
36m 46s
Mar 2022
Margaret Atwood on Stories, Deception and the Bible
<p>A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now is likely what the rest of us will be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. The seductions and dangers of genetic engineering. Climat ... Show More
1h 8m
Sep 2022
Dangerous ideas & scandalous lives: Germany’s first Romantics
At the turn of the 19th century, a small university town in Germany became the beating heart of an intellectual revolution. From philosophers and poets to scientists and playwrights, Jena attracted some of Europe’s brightest minds. Andrea Wulf tells Ellie Cawthorne about how the ... Show More
39m 42s
Jun 2023
What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal
<p>“Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — ... Show More
1h 10m
Feb 2021
History of Ideas S2 E1 : Rousseau on Inequality
This is episode 1 of the new HISTORY OF IDEAS series from Talking Politics. To hear the remaining 11 episodes, please subscribe to History of Ideas!Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer ... Show More
47m 55s
Jul 2021
Désordres extraordinaires | Épisode 2
tail spinning
19m 4s
Sep 2021
88/ A History of Nothing (With Susan A. Crane)
tail spinning
1h 27m