271 | Judith Butler: Then and Now

This week two conversations with the feminist theorist and writer Judith Butler: one recorded the week Trump won the presidency in 2016 and one recorded a few days ago, as his presidency (just maybe) approaches its end.  We reflect on what has changed over the last four years, what has stayed the same, and whether our worst fears were realised.  Plus Judith tells us what she sees when she sees Biden and what she hopes might come next.  Two linked conversations about misogyny, racism, representation, empowerment, hope, rage, and the damage one man can do to democracy.

270 | Brexit, Trump and Aldershot FC

This week David and Helen talk with the historian David Kynaston about his diary of the 2016-17 season in football and in politics, when a lot happened both to the world and to his beloved Aldershot FC.  It's a conversation about loyalty, identity and belonging, and about what sorts of change we can tolerate and what we can't.  Plus Helen reflects on her life as a West Ham fan.

269 | Whose Work is it Anyway?

David and Helen talk with Diane Coyle about what the pandemic has revealed about the changing nature of work.  Who is doing more of it?  Who is still getting paid for it?  Which jobs are not coming back?  Plus we explore the impact of the digital revolution on how we get rewarded for what we do and we ask whether the big tech firms can continue to hoover up so many of the rewards.  Is Jeff Bezos really worth it?

268 | Revisiting Yuval Harari

This week we go back to the first ever interview we recorded for Talking Politics, when David talked to Yuval Noah Harari in 2016 about his book Homo Deus. That conversation touched on many of the themes that we've kept coming back to in the four years since: the power of the big technology companies; the vulnerability of democracy; the deep uncertainty we all feel about the future. David reflects on what difference those four years have made to how we think about these questions now.

267 | Twilight of Democracy

David talks to the writer Anne Applebaum about her highly personal new book, which charts the last twenty years of broken friendships and democratic failure.  We start in Poland with the story of what happened to the high hopes for Polish democracy, including what we've learned from this week's presidential election.  But we also take in Trump and Brexit, Hungary and Spain. What explains the prevalence of conspiracy theories in contemporary politics? Why are so many conservatives drawn to the politics of despair?  Is history really circular?  And is democracy doomed?

266 | Helen's History of Ideas

David talks with Helen to get her take on the history of ideas - both what's there and what's missing.  Why start with Hobbes?  What can we learn from the Federalist Papers?  Where's Nietzsche?  Plus we talk about whether understanding where political ideas come from is liberating or limiting and we ask how many of them were just rationalisations for power.