To begin our history of revolutionary ideas in earnest, David talks to the philosopher Agnes Callard about Socrates, the philosopher who changed – and can still change – everything. Just what is so radical about the Socratic method? How does it open up new ways of thinking about the meaning of life? Can anyone do it? And where does it leave 2000+ years of intervening philosophy?

Out tomorrow on PPF+: the second part of David’s conversation with Agnes Callard about Socrates, exploring politics, AI, therapy and death. Sign up now for £5 per month or £50 for a whole year to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life by Agnes Callard is available now https://bit.ly/4h0pZmg

Next up in The History of Revolutionary Ideas: Christianity w/Tom Holland

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To kick off our new series on revolutionary ideas past, present and future David talks to two regular PPF contributors – the philosopher Lea Ypi and the scientist Adam Rutherford – about what makes an idea truly revolutionary. Do revolutionary ideas change the world? Can the world be changed without them? Can bad ideas ever be revolutionary ideas? And where should we be looking for revolutionary ideas today?

Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter to get more ideas, clips, reading suggestions and extra insights to accompany this and all our series. Join our mailing list now: https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters

Next Time: The History of Revolutionary Ideas: Socrates w/Agnes Callard

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The final episode in our great political films series explores Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), his haunting take on the home life of the man who ran Auschwitz. This is a film like nothing else. It is not about the banality of evil or the proximity of innocence to horror. Instead it takes us inside a nightmare world from which there is no escape: the grimmest fairy story of them all.

Out now: a new bonus episodes on PPF+ exploring the joys of Armando Iannucci’s In The Loop, not just one of the smartest films about contemporary politics but also the funniest. Sign up now for £5 per month or £50 for a whole year to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Coming next: we begin our new series on The History of Revolutionary Ideas

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The penultimate episode in our great political films series explores Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), her controversial take on the War on Terror. Tracking the CIA’s years-long pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, it’s part spy procedural, part story of a female outsider in a man’s world, and part a complex disquisition on political violence. Where does bureaucracy end and killing begin? Can torture ever be justified? And whose judgment is ultimately the one that counts?

Out now: a new bonus episodes on PPF+ exploring the joys of Armando Iannucci’s In The Loop, not just one of the smartest films about contemporary politics but also the funniest. Sign up now for £5 per month or £50 for a whole year to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: The Zone of Interest

Coming soon: a new series on The History of Revolutionary Ideas

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The second David Fincher film in our series (after Fight Club) is The Social Network (2010), the Aaron Sorkin-scripted take on how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and the price paid by everyone else. A tale of power and privilege, innocence and cynicism, it is also about how exploitation can be sold as exclusivity. What is left when we have given away our control over who we are in order to decide who counts as a friend?

Out later this week: a new bonus episodes on PPF+ exploring the joys of Armando Iannucci’s In The Loop, not just one of the smartest films about contemporary politics but also the funniest. Sign up now for £5 per month or £50 for a whole year to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: Zero Dark Thirty

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Our great political films series reaches the twenty-first century with Paul Thomas Anderson’s unforgettable There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis as oilman Daniel Plainview in one of the all-time great screen performances. Based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! (1927), the movie swaps out Marx for Nietzsche and tells a story of money vs religion and family vs both. What, in the end, is the force that cannot be overcome?

Out now: two bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: The Social Network

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David talks to writer and journalist Helen Lewis about David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), the film that launched a thousand memes. Does this tale of thwarted masculinity and corporate malfeasance code left or code right? Who, in the end, is Tyler Durden: Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk or Andrew Tate? Is Fight Club a relic of the pre-digital age or a prophetic vision of what was coming? And … Meat Loaf?!

Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next Time: There Will Be Blood

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Our political films season has reached the late 1980s with Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee’s searing take on racial tension on a Brooklyn block on a boiling hot summer’s day. How does a fight over pizza turn into a full-blown riot? With everyone feeling exploited, who is really to blame? And where do Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X – not to mention Jesse Jackson Jr. – fit in?

Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: Fight Club w/ Helen Lewis

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Today’s great political film is Akira Kurosawa’s epic of war and deception Kagemusha (1980). Set in late sixteenth-century Japan it tells the story of a thief tasked with impersonating a warlord. Can physical resemblance translate into political authority? How far does the conspiracy need to go? And who in the end is the real criminal?

Out now: two new bonus episodes on PPF+ to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing

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Today’s great political film is Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. A classic of feminist cinema it is also a film about the meaning of time and the illusions of choice. How can a movie which shows a woman peeling potatoes in real time have you on the edge of your seat? If the personal is the political, what do three days in the life of a Belgian housewife tell us about the true nature of power?

Coming this weekend on PPF+: two new bonus episodes to accompany this series: Shoah part one and Shoah part two, exploring Claude Lanzmann’s path-breaking, harrowing, unforgettable 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust. Sign up to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time in our regular slot: Kagemusha (1980)

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Today’s episode is a conversation between David and the former politician Chris Smith (long-time MP and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in Tony Blair’s first government) about The Candidate (1972), the first great political film of the 1970s. How does its portrayal of the compromises of running for office hold up today? Is it a cynical film or an inspiring one? And what lessons does it have for politics in the age of Trump?

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Next time: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll) 

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