TALKING POLITICS

S02-EP 13 Paul Cartledge on democracy ancient and modern: what can we learn from Greeks?

Democracies ancient and modern: just how far have we come from the ancient Athenian idea of democracy and what can we do to get back to it?  Are we still really democracies at all?  We speak to classicist and historian Paul Cartledge about what the ancient Greeks meant by democracy and what it should still mean to us.  Plus we ask the panel for their views about the current state of democracy in the age of Trump and Brexit: how bad is it?  In this bumper final episode we also get their predictions for the US presidential election and the EU referendum.

Coronavirus! Climate! Brexit! Trump! Politics has never been more unpredictable, more alarming or more interesting: Talking Politics is the podcast that tries to make sense of it all. Every week David Runciman and Helen Thompson talk to the most interesting people around about the ideas and events that shape our world: from history to economics, from philosophy to fiction. What does the future hold? Can democracy survive? How crazy will it get? This is the political conversation that matters. Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's leading magazine of books and ideas.