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
(1/2)
#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.
(3/3)
"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 ...
(1/?)
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
(1/2)
#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
(1/2)
#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.
(1/?)
#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.
(1/2)
#podcasts #PastPresentFuture #HistoryOfBadIdeas #media #television #DavidRunciman #GaryGerstle
"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
(2/?)
I don't like to lead characterising a piece rather than just stating it, but that feels necessary here: the review / analysis I'm linking here is not sympathetic with its subject. It is however excellent, and its subject is, well, significant in today's world, though largely in a negative way.
#DavidRunciman's #PastPresentFuture has been tackling the Great Political Novels for the first part of 2024, and the episode which just dropped addresses every intellectually-stunted permadolescent's favourite book, by A.R.: A.S.
(You've either already guessed or can open the link for the reveal. Kitten pics for the rest of you to avoid a thumbnail spoiler.)
Much of the review covers bits I'm familiar with. The parts I wasn't aware of (and maybe that speaks poorly of me) were the associations with Keynes and Oppenheimer, obvious as Runciman reveals them. And I could add a bunch more on how much Silicon Valley was influenced by this book. Hell, the University Ave., incubator space which both Teh Goog and BookFace came out of was literally emblazoned with a sign reading "Rearden Steel" for much of the 1990s / aughts.
And if you absolutely can't stand this book (and I can't blame you), the rest of the series, the podcast, and others by Runciman ("Talking Politics") are also excellent. Despite the title and Runciman's own background as a historian of politics, it's remarkably free of highly topical current-issue discussion, whilst at the same time illuminating that in ways virtually no other source does.
There are three ad spots, 30s intro & outro and an annoying one spang in the middle of things.
Intrigued? Runciman hosts the Past Present Future podcast;
https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/pastpresentfuture
...and co-hosted Talking Politics from 2015 until its end in 2022.
https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/
#podcasts #DavidRunciman #PastPresentFuture #TalkingPolitics
I recently stumbled on the work of David Runciman, whose political analysis I find both unusual and insightful. Just listened to the audio version of his 2024 Guardian piece, looking at the effects of the pandemic on both geopolitics, and domestic politics in a range of countries;
Text:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/07/how-covid-changed-politics
Audio: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-audio-long-read
"It's incredibly hard for any politicians once they start being in the vote-winning business... and it's not even that just there'll be some spindoctor will take them in hand and beat the radicalism out of them. It's just that with the best intentions - Syriza, Podemos, all of them - they're being funneled through this narrow gap and then out the other side is meant to come an alternative future, and you never really get through with that politics."
#DavidRunciman, 2019
https://shows.acast.com/under-the-skin-with-russell-brand/episodes/64f8ce2012fc9a00110ddd7d
@NoGods1936 Peter Adamson's "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps", both primary and secondary (Indian and Africana) channels. Comprehensive...
Stephen West's "Philosophize This". Less comprehensive, more formal, and unfortunately of late, with advertising. But some solid material including coverage of topics / people I'd been unfamiliar with of late. Ethics of Care was a particularly impressive as a topic I'd been utterly unfamiliar with (July 2022): https://yewtu.be/watch?v=sxfbWdShtSo&listen=false
Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds put out "Philosophy Bites" and a number of related podcasts ("Philosophy Sites").
David Runciman has a number of podcasts he's done with the London Review of Books, present is "Past Present Future", also a few on the History of Ideas, and a couple of standalone lectures. Uniformly excellent. Much of it concerns political thought, but it's very rarely enmeshed in current events. I find the latter tiresome generally. The context Runciman provides is both captivating and useful.
Wes Cecil has a series based on his community college course in Washington State. Informal, some bloopers that I've caught, but entertaining. https://yewtu.be/channel/UC9ff15w4ufviWfv9UfIuByA (also as podcast subscription).
Carneades is another YT channel I've found good in the past: https://yewtu.be/channel/UC1VzCyqpmCaRh8_BnijbOvg
You can also find audiobooks of various philosophical texts, including of course Plato, also the histories by Bertrand Russel and Will Durant. Not podcasts per se but available on YouTube last I'd checked.
Hope this gives you a good start at recreating your library. And back up your subscriptions as an OPML list!!!
#podcasts #philosophy #PeterAdamson #DavidRunciman #StephenWest #NigelWarburton #WesCecil #DavidEdmonds
The Handover by David Runciman review – is the future out of our control?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/10/the-handover-how-we-gave-control-of-our-lives-to-corporations-states-ais-by-david-runciman-review-is-the-future-out-of-our-control?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
#DavidRunciman
I’m sharing this article to make a comment about the framing for these kinds of things. The article is an extract from a book by David Runciman, and implicitly links human worth to jobs.
Part of the existential dread of AI replacing humans is that, if your job is your life, then who are you without the doing? Instead of hand-wringing about robots and machines, […]
https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/08/21/jobs-ai-and-human-worth/
Our proposal is simple: extend the right to vote to any citizen who is able to walk into a polling booth alone to draw a cross or write a couple of names in block capitals!
Let’s see why this choice would be convenient and, above all, right …
https://www.informapirata.it/2023/03/28/sinite-parvulos-a-truly-universal-suffrage/
La nostra proposta è semplice: estendere il diritto di voto a qualsiasi cittadino sia in grado di entrare da solo in una cabina elettorale per tracciare una croce o scrivere un paio di nomi in stampatello!
Vediamo perché questa scelta sarebbe conveniente e, soprattutto, giusta…
https://www.informapirata.it/2021/02/22/sinite-parvulos-un-suffragio-veramente-universale/
La nostra proposta è semplice: estendere il diritto di voto a qualsiasi cittadino sia in grado di entrare da solo in una cabina elettorale per tracciare una croce o scrivere un paio di nomi in stampatello!
Vediamo perché questa scelta sarebbe conveniente e, soprattutto, giusta…
https://www.informapirata.it/2023/03/28/sinite-parvulos-un-suffragio-veramente-universale-2/
