Can Donald Trump Be Compared To Julius Caesar? (Your Radical Questions with Tom Holland)

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2:16Please send us a voice note on WhatsApp. The number is 0330 123 9480. That's 0330 123 9480. Or you can email us at radical at bbc.co.uk. Now, on to today's episode. Hello and welcome to your first Your Radical Questions episode of 2026. Happy New Year. This is where I put your questions to one of our brilliant radical guests. And this is your chance to engage with them directly, to really connect with these super smart, super interesting people that we are privileged to have on this podcast and ask them about their ideas for the future. And also, giving today's guest about the past. We ended last year on an absolute high.

2:59Our guests, the team and myself, have loved engaging with your interesting thoughts and ideas. We are so thrilled to be continuing this bonus episode, your Radical Questions, into the new year. We are kicking off this year in absolute style with a brilliant historian, author, occasional six hitter. He's also a podcaster, one half of a podcast you may have heard of called The Rest is History. Which one? Did it win Apple 2025? Apple UK podcast of the year? No, not UK, Amo. Global. Oh, my goodness me. Wow. So that's what we've got to do. OK, this time next year, can you tell your mates at Apple that Radical is going to be the global podcast of the year 2026?

3:36Anyway, it is, of course, Tom Holland who has stuck around to answer your questions. Tom, thank you so much for doing this. You've been very generous with your time because I know you've almost certainly got another podcast to record. Are you ready to take on the questions from our radical listeners? Time will tell. Okay, here is our first question. Hi, this is Joel from Belfast. And my question to Tom is, Tom, do you think that in Britain we are in a more precarious situation or better position? economically and politically than we were in the 1970s, because the 70s have a pretty bad reputation on that front.

4:15Thanks. Yeah, that's a great question. Because the 70s did seem bleak, I think, in a way that perhaps life today in Britain can seem bleak. It's interesting, You're calling from Belfast and you're referring to Britain because I think the what was happening in the 70s that thankfully is not happening at the moment is sectarian war, both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland of Britain, which was, I think, something that I think violence on the street, sectarian violence is the worst, almost the worst curse that can afflict. a country and the fact that, you know, there are still tensions, but to a degree, the peace is held in Northern Ireland and therefore on the mainland of Britain as well.

5:12I think that is a huge advantage. And I think also the other thing that although we live in geopolitically an unstable state and there's lots of anxious talk about the threat from Russia, the threat from China. the other thing the existential thing to remember about britain in the 70s and the whole world is that we lived under the the daily shadow of possible possible nuclear apocalypse that was potential in a way that it simply isn't today and ultimately you can worry about the economy you can worry about all kinds of social conditions but if you are nervous about going down onto a tube or to a railway station or getting on a bus or sitting in a pub and anxious that you might get blown up by a bomb i think that is a cause of anxiety that we don't have today and if you have the shadow of the possibility that at any minute a nuclear apocalypse might break out that will wipe out the world.

6:19I think that also is a shadow that, I mean, maybe it will happen, but I don't think it's as omnipresent an anxiety as it is today. And for those of us of, dare I say, my generation who, I guess, grew up during the Cold War but don't remember it really, I think we need to be alert to the fact that that omnipresent danger of nuclear annihilation. Yeah. I mean, the world divided into two rival power blocks, both of them bristling with nuclear missiles. I mean, it's whether you're anxious about climate change or AI or what Russia might do to our cables. I mean, these are all things to worry about, but it's not as existential as the anxieties that were present in the Cold War.

7:01And even if you argue, as people like the historian Neil Ferguson do, that we're in a new Cold War, either against the Chinese state or some alliance of autocracies called the Crinkley's China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. I can't take an alliance called the Crinklies. That's my, excuse me, that's my, that's my phrase. So we can take it. You can't diss my phrases on this podcast. No, I'm not dissing it, Amol. Look at the face on your mug. It's my face. It's my point. What I'm saying is that Crinklies is not as frightening as the Warsaw Pact. No, but the Crinklies works because they're aging autocracies.

7:32It's brilliant, but I'm just saying I don't think they're there as frightening. Thank you for that, Joel. This question is from Emily who messaged me on Instagram. Emily, thank you so much. Emily says to me, I'd be very interested to hear Tom's reflections on Trump's reign, quote unquote, in light of his understanding of the history of Christianity and the Roman Empire. Wow. That's a sweeping question. Well, I focus on the Roman Empire because it's often said that Trump is a Caesar. Emily should read your books. No, no, no. You've written brilliant books. However, the idea that a president is like a Caesar has been an absolute constant throughout my lifetime.

8:09I remember people saying it about George W. Bush. They said it about Reagan. They probably said it about Nixon. Because essentially this has been an anxiety in the American Republic since its founding. What is a Caesar? Well, so the American Republic is founded as a reaction against a king. And these are all very classically educated men. And they're all men, of course. and they look back to the annals of ancient Rome and the ancient Romans expelled a king and they founded a republic. And of course, republic is a Latin word. And this republic was a republic of citizen farmers. They loved turnips.

8:49They loved cold showers. They were heroic and noble and they were everything that the evil king hadn't been. And this is very much the vibe. This is very much the kind of the sense the Americans have of themselves in their founding fathers and so on. Um, however, if you were modeling yourself on the Roman Republic, if you were giving yourself a capital, if you're giving yourself a Senate, if you in your capital, you have columns that ape ancient Rome, you're going to live in the shadow of what happened to that Roman Republic, which is that in the end, it came under the thumb of a dynasty of autocrats who took the name of Caesar from the name Julia, from Julius Caesar, the guy who, who establishes himself as a dictator.

9:30And so that anxiety that the American Republic might follow the path of the Roman Republic has always been there. And when Benjamin Franklin came out, you know, and they'd been discussing what form of government the Americans should live under. And they said, you know, what's it going to be? And his reply is a republic if you can keep it. So right from the beginning, the anxiety that a potential Caesar might emerge has always been there. And so I would be relatively sanguine about the prospects for American democracy because I think that the anxieties around Trump are anxieties that have been there from the beginning.

10:11Is they worse now? I mean, is he more kingly than others? Is he not more kingly than Joe Biden and George Bush and Barack Obama? Sure, they had their courts, they had executive power, but... I think that, so again, it can be so tendentious to compare contemporary politics with the unfathomably different world of ancient history. But there was something that perhaps was inherent in the Republican system that the Americans adopted from the Romans, which is that policies obviously matter, but so do vibes. And in the Roman Republic, it was all about vibes. So there were essentially conservatives. There were people who look back to the traditional way of doing things.

10:58And there were people who were called populares. So populist is the perfect translation for that. People who identified themselves with the will of the people and the tastes of the people. both of them were aristocrats I mean you had to be rich to run for power in the Roman Republic as you do in the American Republic and Trump is really about vibes I think he's a brilliant populist because he can tap into things that people who perhaps have been ignored by the traditional elites he can express them But I think you could see that as being part of the kind of the ideological framework of the American Republic.

11:44And it doesn't, you know, his excesses, his extremes, his over the top language. I don't think it is so completely alien to pre-existing traditions. I mean, people said this about Lincoln, who is now remembered as the greatest president. I'm not saying that Trump is going to be remembered as a great president. But I think he'll be remembered as a certainly a president who's had a substantial impact on the course of American democracy. But I don't think it will be as a Caesar. But maybe, you know, I mean, laugh at me in a year's time when everyone's been locked up. Emily, thank you for a great question.

12:21What a wonderful answer you got. Next question comes from Joe. This is a voice note from Joe. Hi, Amol and Tom. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, especially the episodes with Jacob Dunn and Eliza Philby. My question, though, concerns the podcast title, Radical. I'm a linguistics researcher, and radical is for me a really interesting word. There are three common meanings. The first, etymologically it comes from the Latin radicalis, meaning pertaining to the root, so essential or fundamental. Second, somewhat different, it is used to denote a departure from the traditional. Extreme, far out even, especially in politics.

13:01Finally, originating in the 1970s among Californian surfers, there's its meaning of awesome or cool. So my question is in two parts. First, of these three definitions, essential, extreme or awesome, which do you most agree with? And secondly, which do you think best describes you and Amal, your podcast? I mean, the only thing I'd say, Joe, is it's so obvious that I'm cool that I'm surprised you need to. You are, Amal, you are. Why are you laughing? No, I'm not. Approving laughter. Joe, if I'm not mistaken, has a, I know where this came from. This comes from a brilliant, brilliant Substack. Substack's a blogging platform.

13:42Joe has a Substack which has ruminations on lots of words, not just radical. and I was looking at it the other day when she emailed me and I've got to say it's terrific. If you're interested in etymologies and the origins, histories of words, check out Joe's Substack. Anyway, I would say in terms of which describes me, obviously I would say cool. My answer to the question which do you most agree with, I think that the sense of the root has been somewhat lost. I don't think most people think of radical as coming from the essential or fundamental aspect of things. I don't think many people know about the etymology.

14:16So I would say that that kind of Californian surfer call, rad, man, it's rad, it's cool. That's a kind of, you know, that's a very particular thing you might get in America. I think most people think radical connotes departure from the traditional, unusual, brave, heretical. Yeah, I think it's the idea that you are pushing forwards to an end point that will be better than that that exists now. And that to do that, you have to reject something that is perceived as being hidebound or conservative or even reactionary. How radical are you? I'm not a radical at all. I kind of used to be but I've gone on this kind of classic trajectory which Byron excoriated in Wordsworth.

15:04Wordsworth was a great enthusiast for the French Revolution and ended up this massive reactionary and basically the older I get the more inherently conservative I realise I've always been because I realise I actually much prefer old things I like you know when I was a child I liked dinosaurs and my chief gripe against the world was that they weren't still dinosaurs. That's quite a good gripe to have. I'm so reactionary that I kind of wish we were in the Mesozoic. Yeah, well that's I'd take 1960s Jamaica over the Mesozoic. I should say Joe's magnificent subset is called Language Matters which is a pun that works and Joe is Joe Nolan.

15:44So Joe Nolan, thank you very much indeed. Language does matter and I'm very glad indeed to get your voice note on the origins of the word radical. Here's another question from David in Rutland. When are you going to score that first hundred for the authors, Tom? You've been to see us at Burley Park in the past and I always thought you might have done it at some point, but I'm interested to know when that would be and when do you think it would be? Well, do you know David in Rutland? Well, I've got to say that if David has seen me play cricket and is asking if I'm going to score a century, I think he must be even blinder than I am.

16:20I fear I'm never going to score a century. Unless you played at a kids match. If you played at my son. Yeah, but even them. I mean, because the famous time where we played together and we were playing a team of kids and I hit one of them for six. 12, 12. No, no, no, not an infant. I think he was maybe 15. Okay. But I mean, still very menacing. But even then, I mean, I only hit the six and then I got bowled. I don't think it's ever going to happen. I think I want people to know that you are also, well, were back then, 15 years ago, a hugely capable opening bowler. I mean, you were the demon bowler that chucked the new...

16:57Oh, thanks, Amal. Yeah, any time. Chucked the new ball by our captain, Charlie Campbell, great literary agent. He would chuck you the ball, and you were sort of coming off about 15 paces. Yeah, and the ball would drift slowly down like a shuttlecock. Oh, dear. We played together in a team called the... So we played together in a team called the Authors, which was set up in 2011, and it came out, it was originally over a century ago, set up by Arthur Conan Doyle. And the key thing about the modern authors is obviously, well, two key things. One is Tom Holland's Six, which is this fluke. Legendary.

17:34Fluke of nature. Even the laws of physics had to be expanded to accommodate what happened. But the other thing is that when the authors were reformed, the first wicket taken by the reformed authors. You took that, Amor? I can't think. God. I can't think. But it was a bowler. He's a good-looking Indian heritage guy. But anyway. Honestly, you asked me when this podcast is going to overtake the rest of its history. But we are never boasting in the way that you are boasting. We never boast. What, the rest is history? No, we're all about modesty. Do you think that's wrong, Gay Rule? I think that's something you could learn from, our incredible modesty.

18:12That's what you applied to David's question when you said, you're never going to score 100, whereas I would have said, I'll probably score one next week. That's a difference between us, isn't it? But you know, Amol, I went on this tour of Sri Lanka with the authors. I know. And I didn't take a single wicket. I didn't score a single run. I didn't take a single catch. Did you record any podcasts? No, nothing. I was before that. And I came back and I was so depressed. And I said, screw this. I'm giving up. And Matt Thacker, mutual friend who plays for the authors, sports publisher. And he said, look.

18:45He's got a brilliant publication called The Night Watchman, hasn't he? Yes. and Wisdom Cricket Monthly. He said, look, I'm going to pay you up with a professional sports psychologist and see if she can sort you out. And I said, ah, sports psychology, that's rubbish. It's like feng shui or something. It's absolute nonsense. And the first session, I thought, rubbish. And then the second session, suddenly something clicked. And I got three, five wicket hauls in the next five matches. And I've never had a run of form like it. And essentially, the essence of sports psychology is you have to behave like a massive cock.

19:15I mean that is basically it What happened to that humility? A minute ago he's talking about humility I got set up to meet a sports psychologist and I took a run of five wicket halls But that is the essence is that while I had a sports psychologist I suddenly thought yeah this is what it's like I'm just a massive swagger around saying how brilliant you are and everything and then that feeds into your performance on the pitch whereas if you're kind of apologetic and diffident and mock ironic then it won't work so okay that's probably just got to think i'm brilliant and i try and do that but it doesn't always work yeah yeah thank you very much indeed uh david i think we can safely say that tom will never score that hundred but he will continue to be to try thank you david from rutland let's have a final question from charlie hey amal hi tom big fan of both your works uh question for tom i'm sure you get this a lot but what's it like to play spider-man i can't believe you went there I cannot believe you went there If I did know that was coming I think I forgot about it That took me genuinely by surprise I mean the answer to that of course Is that I might be Spider-Man But if I was I couldn't reveal it Oh And do you know how many times I've given that answer Do you know It must be something quite annoying Yeah No it was very funny the first 7 ,000 times At least you're better looking Than the other Tom Holland Thank you And also more famous now And you know He would do anything to have a podcast as successful as yours.

20:45Charlie, I think you got an answer which other people might have heard, but it's an accurate one. Tom, thank you so much. Did you just, you enjoyed the, not just the radical experience, but the guest editing today. I loved guest editing the Today programme. It's a dream come true. I always wanted to do it. Yeah. It was brilliant. And you listened to it from your childhood in the 1960s and 70s, which we're going to read about. 1960s. For God's sake, Amol. I was one in the 1960s Then you had a childhood in the 1960s Yeah but I wasn't listening to the Today programme Bill and Ben or whatever it was Bill and Ben yeah Future one year olds we listen to the rest is history That's what we listen to in my house Tom thank you so much We hugely hugely hugely hugely appreciate your time It's been an absolute revelation I will be back on Thursday Speaking to the academic influencer Critical thinker Louisa Munch About why she thinks higher education should be free and so much more.

21:40Shall we answer your questions on next Monday's edition of Your Radical Questions? So please get your questions in. But for now, from me and from England's finest cricketer, it's goodbye. Bye-bye.

21:59Dominic, we got some very, very exciting news, haven't we? The Restless History is back on BBC Sounds. That is right, Tom. We literally could not be more excited. We are thrilled to say that you can get your fill of all things historical and indeed all things rest is history on BBC Sounds. So we kick off with Boudicca and the great high drama of Roman Britain. We have violence and chaos on the streets of Paris during the French Revolution. We have the rise of Richard Nixon. We have the assassination of Martin Luther King. We've basically got all the history, haven't we, Tom? We really have. So if you want to listen to that, just search for The Rest is History on BBC Sounds.

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