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PODCAST

The EI Podcast

Engelsberg Ideas

The EI Podcast brings you weekly conversations and audio essays from leading writers, thinkers and historians. Hosted by Alastair Benn and Paul Lay. Find the EI Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or search The EI Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

history books

All Episodes

16:11

How the Nazis weaponised Charlemagne

The EI Podcast ·

2025/08/14

Samuel Rubinstein explores how Nazi historiographers sought to present Adolf Hitler as the heir to Charlemagne. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A large Sèvres presentation plate celebrating Nazism's alleged debt to Charlemagne. Credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

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16:53

Why do we get the wrong leaders?

The EI Podcast ·

2025/08/07

James Vitali reflects on the profound importance of political judgement. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: The front door of Number 10 Downing street. Credit: GreatBritishStock.com / Alamy Stock Photo

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16:43

Why liberal democracies win total wars

The EI Podcast ·

2025/07/31

Journalist Duncan Weldon reveals how liberal capitalist economies adapt to total war. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Second World War-era British propaganda. Credit: Venimages / Alamy Stock Photo

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50:37

No more Napoleons: British grand strategy in the 19th...

The EI Podcast ·

2025/07/24

EI’s Paul Lay joins historian Andrew Lambert to discuss his book ‘No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One', Lambert's provocative new study of how Britain maximised its naval and diplomatic prestige to maintain a stable, post-Napoleonic Europe.Image: 'A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel' by Samuel Atkins (c. 1760-1810). Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd

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29:14

The rift that doomed the Confederacy

The EI Podcast ·

2025/07/17

Historian Katherine Bayford exposes the fractures and contradictions that doomed the Confederacy from within. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: The rift that doomed the Confederacy | Katherine Bayford Image: A statue of Alexander Stephens in the US Congress. Credit: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

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56:54

The Trial at 100: revisiting Kafka’s prophetic...

The EI Podcast ·

2025/07/10

This year marks the centenary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial - a seminal work that continues to captivate and unsettle its readers. EI’s Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Karolina Watroba, author of Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka, to discuss Josef K’s tragic entanglement with a suffocating bureaucracy.Image: Portrait of Franz Kafka. Credit: history_docu_photo / Alamy Stock Photo

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20:40

How the Knights Templars conquered Christendom

The EI Podcast ·

2025/07/03

Historian Nicholas Morton explores how a miracle of marketing brought the Knights Templars to prominence. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: The Knights Templars and the pursuit of Christendom | Nicholas Morton Image: A Victorian illustration of the Knights Templars. Credit: Glasshouse Images / Alamy Stock Photo

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24:25

The lost art of chorography

The EI Podcast ·

2025/06/26

The writer Josh Mcloughlin reflects on the art of chorography, one of English literature’s most eccentric and mercurial forms. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: The lost art of chorography | Josh Mcloughlin Image: Renaissance map of Europe showing England. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Phot

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18:45

1975, the year that made the modern world

The EI Podcast ·

2025/06/19

Historian Damian Valdez reflects on the meaning of 1975, a fateful year for the international order. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: 1975, the year that made the modern world | Damian Valdez Image: A helicopter is pushed off the overcrowded deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CV-19) off the coast of South Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

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42:09

How Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin fought Hitler –...

The EI Podcast ·

2025/06/12

EI’s Paul Lay joins historian Tim Bouverie to discuss ‘Allies at War’, his gripping new book on how Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin’s uneasy alliance led to the end of the Second World War – and reshaped the global order in ways that are still felt today.Image: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. Credit: Niday Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo

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18:51

What happened to the politician’s moustache?

The EI Podcast ·

2025/06/05

Writer Luka Ivan Jukic laments the all-but-total disappearance of facial hair from politics. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: What happened to the politician’s moustache? | Luka Ivan Jukic Image: A double portrait of Mozaffar al-Din Shah, the fifth Qajar shah of Iran. Credit: Penta Springs Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

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20:52

The strange death of squalor

The EI Podcast ·

2025/05/29

Journalist and author Jenny McCartney celebrates the magic of squalor, and explores how generations of artists have seen the sublime in slime. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING: On squalor | Jenny McCartney Image: Walter Sickert's Easter Monday. Credit: Logic Images / Alamy Stock Photo

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22:09

Why Finns joined the fight

The EI Podcast ·

2025/05/22

Geopolitical analyst Charly Salonius-Pasternak examines Finland's long journey to full membership of the Western alliance, and explores how the Nordic nation could play a leading role in its future.FURTHER READING: Why Finns joined the fight | Charly Salonius-Pasternak Image: During the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940) skiers of the Finnish army in white camouflage made lightning and effective attacks on units of the Red Army. Credit: World of Triss / Alamy Stock Photo

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13:37

The West’s lust for liberty

The EI Podcast ·

2025/05/15

The late Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics for almost 40 years, explains why, although the love of liberty is not unique to the West, the lust for liberty is. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING: The West’s lust for liberty | Christopher Coker Image: Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, 1814. Credit: Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo

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59:39

Christianity and the creation of England

The EI Podcast ·

2025/05/08

In this episode of The EI Podcast, the historian Bijan Omrani is joined by EI's Paul Lay to explore the indelible mark Christianity has left on England’s identity and culture.FURTHER READING: The tragic decline of Christian rituals | Bijan Omrani Image: South View of Salisbury Cathedral, JMW Turner. Credit: Penta Springs Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

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17:07

How the liberation of France shaped the modern world

The EI Podcast ·

2025/05/01

Agnès Poirier, journalist and broadcaster, examines how the liberation of France in 1944 opened the way for Paris to become a laboratory of ideas. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING: The liberation of France made the modern world | Agnès Poirier Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: Parisians gather around the Arc de Triomphe as Allied forces liberate the city. Credit: RBM Vintage Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

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62:38

China vs the WTO: The Inside Story

The EI Podcast ·

2025/04/24

EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Michael Sheridan, author of two books on China and a foreign correspondent for 40 years, to discuss China’s rise, its subsequent entry into the international trading system, and its contemporary status as the problem child of our globalised world.FURTHER READING: China and America, the great decoupling | Michael Sheridan Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. This episode of The EI Podcast

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18:26

Madame Bovary and the problem of desire

The EI Podcast ·

2025/04/17

Marie Daouda, lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Oxford, shows how the pursuit of apparently 'real' desires comes at the expense of collective truth. The consequences can be disastrous. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING: The truth shall set us free | Marie Daouda Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: Isabelle Huppert, Madame Bovary 1991. Credit: Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo

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16:22

EI Weekly Listen — Brendan Simms on the German key to...

The EI Podcast ·

2025/04/11

Germany today struggles to muster a serious military response to the Russian challenge. That should trouble keen observers of Europe's history. Read by Helen Lloyd.Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Napoleon watching the Tsar, the Emperor of Austria and King of Prussia dividing up Europe. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

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62:37

EI Talks... the making of Trump's worldview

The EI Podcast ·

2025/04/10

What are the deep roots of Trump's worldview? Can we learn to read Trump’s behaviour? And are there opportunities to be had for those who can?EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Charlie Laderman, Senior Lecturer in International History at King's College London, to discuss how to interpret the Trump White House. This episode was recorded on Monday 7th of April. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is hosted by

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