In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and mind of Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Russian-British social theorist hailed as "the world’s greatest talker" and one of the finest minds of the 20th century. We trace his journey from a childhood in Riga and Petrograd—where witnessing the violence of the Russian Revolution instilled in him a "permanent horror of violence"—to his rise as a central figure at Oxford University.

We unpack Berlin's most enduring contributions to political philosophy, including:

• Two Concepts of Liberty: We break down his famous 1958 distinction between "negative liberty" (freedom from coercion) and "positive liberty" (self-mastery), and his warning that positive liberty is often conflated with collective control to justify authoritarianism.
• The Hedgehog and the Fox:  ...