The Great Political Fictions: Brave New World

About this episode

David Runciman explores Aldous Huxley's dystopian masterpiece Brave New World and its relevance to contemporary society.

For the first in a new set of episodes about some of the great political fictions of the past hundred years David explores Aldous Huxley’s much misunderstood dystopian masterpiece Brave New World (1932). How did Huxley imagine that a future society could be both horribly regimented and crazily libertarian? Why is it Pavlovian conditioning and not genetic engineering that builds the humans of the future? What makes the book eerily prophetic of 21st-century consumer culture? And where does Shakespeare fit in? Do scroll back in your feed for many more earlier episodes of The Great Political Fictions! Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode about the other great English-language dystopia of the last century – George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Why does a book that is out of date and out of time still haunt everyone who reads it today? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus 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 including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Next time in Great…

People in this episode

Host: David Runciman

Topics covered

• political fiction
• dystopia
• consumer culture
• literature
• 21st century
• Pavlovian conditioning

Keywords

• Brave New World
• Aldous Huxley
• dystopia
• consumer culture
• Pavlovian conditioning
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• George Orwell

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Golden Notebook

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