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

Today and for the next few episodes, we're going back to our series that we've been doing for much of this year,

called Politics on Trial, about the most significant, the most interesting trials in history,

political trials, but also trials that reveal something about the politics, the temper of their age,

and reveal something about our age too.

Today, it's a truly extraordinary trial.

It took place 100 years ago in the summer of 1925.

It became known as and has been known as this ever since.

Scopes Monkey or the Monkey Trial.

For this series, Politics on Trial, there is a website that I use that I want to pay homage to

because I don't think I could do this series without it.

It's an amazing resource.

It's called Famous Trials. It's curated by a man called

Douglas Linda, Professor Douglas Linda. I have to say I don't know much about him. It seems to be

a labour of love. And on it, there are a hundred trials and all of the documents and information

that anyone could need who wants to find out

what happened. Court transcripts, transcripts of investigations and interrogations, newspaper reports,

the reports of higher courts, appeal verdicts and judgment. All of it is there. It's fantastic.

That's the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing I wanted to say is that on the site, roughly half the trials, I think maybe

even exactly half, there are 150 of them from the 20th century. And at a certain point, Douglas

Linda, as the proprietor of this site, was asked to nominate his trial of the

century. And I think he was being encouraged to say it was the O.J. Simpson trial. And he said it's not

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