David is a recovering academic and fully committed podcaster. He worked at Cambridge University for nearly 25 years, winding up as Professor of Politics. He has written books on many different subjects, from the history of democracy to the value of hypocrisy. His most recent book is The History of Ideas: Equality, Justice and Revolution, which is based on an earlier podcast series about the ideas that shaped modern politics. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, where he is a contributing editor, and The Guardian, including recent pieces on Dominic Cummings, Elon Musk and Liz Truss. He is the host of Past Present Future, he comes up with the ideas, and writes some (but definitely not all) of the newsletter.

Until she gave it all up to work full-time on Past Present Future, Helen spent almost 20 years as a UKCP-registered existential psychotherapist, including a decade as the on-staff counsellor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Before that she trained in Stage Management & Technical Theatre at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and spent several years working as a Stage Manager on plays, operas and West End musicals. She has now returned to those roots in production and currently produces and edits every episode of PPF, manages the social media, the business and the finances, and proofreads everything. She runs the show!

Ben is a podcast producer at the London Review of Books and was the original producer of Past Present Future. He most recently worked as a producer on The Belgrano Diary, a six-part series about the Falklands war, hosted by the novelist Andrew O’Hagan, and is now working on a follow up series, due to be released in 2025. Before moving into audio, he was an editorial assistant at the LRB and writes for the paper on a range of subjects, with recent pieces on VAR, ASMR and NFTs. In 2023 he completed an MSc in Environmental Politics at University College London and spent the year researching and writing about sea urchins. The PPF team now keep him on hand for technical emergencies and moral support!

Ella is a History and Politics graduate who has been following David’s podcasts since the creation of Talking Politics in 2016. In its current incarnation, Past Present Future provided the soundtrack to the final year of her degree. She was part of the original PPF interns team who created the newsletter, and became so indispensable that she was offered a job! She's excited to see the newsletter grow, along with its brilliant archive, and firmly believes it offers a seriously entertaining learning resource for anyone interested in big ideas.