Ian McEwan on the Present as Future Past

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, Politics, News, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David talks to novelist Ian McEwan, who was our first ever guest on PPF, about how the future will view our present once the disasters we are brewing come to pass. How might humanity scrape through the rest of the century? Will future generations see us as intellectually vibrant or essentially trivial? If we turn out to be unknowable to those who follow us, does that mean we are unknowable to ourselves? A wide-ranging conversation about how past, present and future co-exist in time. Ian McEwan’s latest novel is What We Can Know https://bit.ly/4ogYN5u If you are looking for Christmas presents we have 6- and 12-month gift subscriptions to PPF+ giving access to all our bonus episodes, ad-free listening and automatic sign-up to our fortnightly newsletter – which can be delivered to the recipient of your choice on Christmas Day! https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts Plus we have gorgeous PPF canvas tote bags and bone china PPF mugs, all available now https://www.ppfideas.com/merch Next time in Politics on Trial: Lady Chatterley’s Lover Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:48.2	Price and participation may vary, present, future, the History of Ideas
1:05.4	podcast. Today, I'm speaking to the novelist Ian McEwen, who was our first ever guest on PPF.
1:13.6	This time, we're talking about the ideas in his remarkable new novel,
1:19.3	what we can know, which, as you'll hear in this conversation,
1:22.5	is really a meditation on the relationship between past, present and future.
1:28.5	In particular, what it would be to imagine our present as a future past.
1:33.7	That is, how will future generations think about us,
1:37.6	particularly if they have suffered some of the calamities that we may be brewing.
1:55.0	Ian, maybe we could start with me asking you just to say something about a phrase that appears in your novel. And I've heard you talk about it elsewhere.
1:57.0	The idea that there is a great deal of ruin in a planet, which is riffing on Adam Smith's
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