Hello, this is Catherine Carr, producer of talking politics.

Since we finished our series of talks by David on the history of ideas,

we've received lots of questions from listeners,

wanting to know more, or wanting to tell David

how he might be wrong. Today I'm going to put some of those questions to him and

he's going to try and answer them.

Talking Politics, history of ideas is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of

Books, Europe's leading literary magazine.

After each episode, continue your exploration of the history of ideas in their unrivaled

archive of essays and reviews, films and podcasts, and find out more about how a subscription to the

L.R.B. can be an indispensable home learning and student resource by heading over to their

website L.r.

me forward slash ideas.

That's L.r.

dot me forward slash ideas.

Before we get going, you will hear at the end that we are in early planning stages for another series so do keep

subscribe to history of ideas wherever you get your podcasts. So first up a big one

you start with the idea of the modern state but what is the difference in your terms between a state and a government?

That is the big question.

I'm going to give two kinds of answers.

The first is a cop-out, which is there is a really good answer to that

question in a lecture by Quentin Skinner and we have it in our guide to extra material on

...