logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2024
41m 56s

The Future of the Future: A Discussion w...

NEW BOOKS NETWORK
About this episode

"An air of finality pervades today’s world." That is the opening sentence of Jonathan White’s book In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (Profile, 2024). What role, the book asks, has the idea of "the future" played in past politics? What role does it play in contemporary politics? Listen to White in discussion with Owen Bennett-Jones.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Up next
Today
Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 5
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of peopl ... Show More
52m 12s
Jul 3
153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)
John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against anticipatory despair in the face of the Trump administration's relentless campaign of lies, half-lies, bluster, and bullshit by turning for ins ... Show More
26m 33s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2023
The Future of Political Time and Space: A Discussion with Jan Zielonka
What is the future of time and space in democracy? It's now widely accepted that Chinese politicians are advantaged by the lack of the short time horizons that come with electoral cycles. And all the discussion of immigration raises issues of borders in politics. Professor Jan Zi ... Show More
47m 34s
Dec 2023
The Future of Predictions: A Discussion with Christopher E. Mason
Predictive algorithms are changing the world – that is the claim of Christopher E. Mason who has co-authored (with Igor Tulchinsky) the book The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk (MIT Press, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett ... Show More
32m 18s
Oct 2023
The Future of Incarceration: A Discussion with Colleen P. Eren
The United States has long been associated with a very harsh criminal justice system with, in some cases, people serving long sentence for minor crimes. But attempts to reform the system have proven very difficult. In her new book Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movemen ... Show More
41m 33s
Feb 2024
The Future of the Chinese Military: A Discussion with James A. Siebens
For all the talk of China being a peaceful country with no aggressive intentions, it has behaved like most other rising powers – spending lots of money on its military. But what do we know of how that military is used? James A. Siebens is the editor of China’s Use of Armed Coerci ... Show More
39m 29s
Mar 2023
The Future of Nonviolence: A Conversation with Julie M. Norman
Ever since Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, non-violent resistance has held a special place in the public imagination. What can be better after all than forcing political change without the violence that so often accompanies it. But the Gandhi and King stories are so powerf ... Show More
41m 11s
Apr 2023
Introducing Past Present Future
Past Present Future is a new weekly podcast with David Runciman, host of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas co ... Show More
2m 18s
Jun 2022
The Future of Philanthropy: A Conversation with Emma Saunders-Hastings
Philanthropists are praise for their generosity but does their desire to keep control of what happens to their donations mean they exercise power in ways that clash with democratic principles? Approval of philanthropists’ good intentions can mask some important moral consideratio ... Show More
46m 37s
Apr 2023
New Podcast: Past Present Future
Past Present Future is a new weekly podcast with David Runciman, host of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas co ... Show More
2m 18s
Jan 2021
WHY WE NEED TO DREAM – Award-Winning Author Gary Younge on MLK, Inequality and Race
A remarkable conversation with a great thinker and giant of journalism who has covered the great stories of our time. We ask what can be learnt from MLK about the fight against inequality? What holds back change and what is the role of journalism? How can America heal under Biden ... Show More
28m 47s
Jul 2008
Christopher Capozzola, “Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of The Modern American Citizen” (Oxford UP, 2008)
I confess I sometimes wonder where we got in the habit of proclaiming, usually with some sort of righteous indignation, that we have the “right” to this or that as citizens. I know that the political theorists of the eighteenth century wrote a lot about “rights,” and that “rights ... Show More
1h 7m