Live Film Special: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut w/Beeban Kidron

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, Politics, News, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to film director and campaigner Beeban Kidron about the 1999 film-length version of South Park. In among all the swearing and stupidity is a serious satire of censorship, moral panics and political manipulation. How did a film from the 20th century see so sharply what was coming in the 21st? And how does the satire look now in the age of big tech and social media madness? Plus philosopher Paul Sagar gives us his grand theory of South Park. You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Next time: Now & Then with Robert Saunders – The General Strike @100 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:27.4	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello, my name's David Runcman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
0:44.8	Today's episode was recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London after a screening of the South Park movie.
0:52.2	South Park, bigger, longer and uncut. I'm talking to the one-time film director
0:57.7	and now campaigner against the power of big tech companies, B-Ban Kidron, about what makes this film so funny,
1:05.8	what makes it so shocking, but also what makes it prophetic.
1:19.6	As always with these film episodes, we're very aware that the conversation you're about to hear is in front of an audience who have just seen the movie, and you probably, almost certainly,
1:25.2	haven't. So I normally do a little summary here of what the film's
1:29.0	about, tell you the plot, among other things. It's a little tricky for this one, not least because
1:34.2	I don't think the plot is the point. And if people listening have never seen South Park, let
1:40.4	alone the South Park movie, it's going to be quite hard to convey what it's like.
1:46.6	This is the film based on the very long-running animation series South Park, which for people
1:53.0	who don't know, is set in a fictional town, South Park. I think it's in Colorado.
1:58.7	And in an elementary school with a group of, I think, their third graders, young boys called Stan, Kyle, Eric, aka Cartman and Kenny.
2:10.7	And it is vicious adult satire put into the mouths of children.
2:16.7	That's the point. In this, the film-length version,
2:20.4	which was made in 1999, so fairly early in the South Park story, South Park is still running.
2:26.2	The plot revolves around a fictional film inside the film made by two imagined Canadian comedians, I guess they're comedians,
	...

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