The spectres of political disillusionment and apathy have weighed heavily on this year of momentous elections. With the present feeling bleak, do we need to look to the past to reinvigorate our political imagination going forward? In this episode, Cambridge Professor and host of the Past Present Future podcast David Runciman looks back on how big thinkers have tried to reimagine the way we do politics. Speaking to Dr Sophie Scott-Brown about his new book, The History of Ideas: Equality, Justice and Revolution, he discusses what thinkers from Rousseau to Rawls, Nietzsche to de Beauvoir can teach us today, and what the big personalities dominating contemporary politics and ‘gotcha’-driven media cycle mean for democracy.