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?
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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 Why does a book that is out of date and out of time still haunt everyone who reads it today?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
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Next time in Great Political Fictions: The Golden Notebook
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May 27, 2026