Hello, my name's David Rumserman, and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today, in fixing democracy, I'm talking to the political theorist Alan Finlayson about what's gone

wrong with political speech, with the way politicians talk to us, talk to each other, we talk

to them, and whether the ancient art of rhetoric could make it go better.

As you'll hear in this conversation, the kind of rhetoric we will be talking about is maybe

not what you associate with that word, but this is a wide-ranging conversation about lots of other

things too. All of the different ways that political communication has got corrupted and some of the

ways it could be saved.

Alan, I want to start with a big question, which is simply about what role argument plays in democratic politics. And there is maybe an even more blunt question here, which is,

is it the thing that defines democratic politics?

Is it actually the distinguishing characteristic of a democracy that people are allowed, are able to have real political arguments?

I'm going to say yes and no, which is a bit of an academics cop out, isn't it?

But on the one hand, obviously,

authoritarian regimes have lots of talk and lots of speeches in them. You know, Castro spoke

for over seven hours once or something. So there was speech of all kinds in authoritarian regime.

So the question would be not, is argument distinct to democracy? Be what kinds of arguments

and what ways in which arguments happen are distinct to democracy?

By argument, because I know it can mean lots of different things, I'm kind of thinking of back and forth.

So he talks for seven hours.

The democratic version of that is five minutes in, someone tells him to shut the F-Up and get to the point.

Or stop talking rubbish or whatever it is. I mean, heckling,

jeering, booing is a very crude version of it, but by argument, I mean back and forth.

...