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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

19:35

The double agent who introduced Japan to the West

The EI Podcast ·

2025/11/13

Bill Emmott profiles Lafcadio Hearn, the Anglo-Irish-Greek foreign correspondent who made Japan his home. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Lafcadio Hearn photographed with his wife, Setsuko Koizumi, and their son. Credit: GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

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32:16

Andrew Ross Sorkin on lessons from the Wall Street Crash

The EI Podcast ·

2025/11/05

Bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin discusses his new book, 1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History, with EI's Iain Martin.Image: The Wall Street financial crash of 1929, with a city businessman speculator trying to sell his car for $100 cash, having lost all on the stock market. Credit: Alamy/ Shawshots.

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20:23

1821 and the invention of world order

The EI Podcast ·

2025/10/30

Historian Damian Valdez on international order's 19th-century origins. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Mexican general Agustín de Iturbide rides through a ceremonial arch to welcoming officials in Mexico City on September 27, 1821, after decisively winning independence for Mexico. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo

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22:39

The growing-pains of Graham Greene

The EI Podcast ·

2025/10/23

Critic Malcolm Forbes investigates Graham Greene's troubled childhood. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Graham Greene in 1940. Credit: Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

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26:29

The Slavic War according to Stalin

The EI Podcast ·

2025/10/16

Historian Luka Ivan Jukic explores how Stalin hijacked the Slavic cause to forge the Soviet Empire. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A poster celebrating Stalin at the Russian State Library, Moscow. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo

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13:53

A warning to the young: just say no to AI

The EI Podcast ·

2025/10/09

Aaron MacLean, host of the School of War podcast, on AI's threat to the life of the mind. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: The Library Hall of the Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences. Credit: Petr Svarc / Alamy Stock Photo

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14:33

The Slow Horses are Britain’s perfect spies

The EI Podcast ·

2025/10/02

Alastair Benn on the magic of Mick Herron’s Slough House series.Image: Still from Apple TV's Slow Horses. Credit: LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

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68:19

Stephen Kotkin on a new age of warfare

The EI Podcast ·

2025/09/25

EI's Paul Lay discusses a world order in flux with Stephen Kotkin, historian and biographer of Stalin.Image: A Canadian soldier during a NATO-led operation. Credit: Associated Press

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16:19

The Great French Songbook

The EI Podcast ·

2025/09/18

Why do people the world over enjoy listening to songs sung in French? Critic Muriel Zagha illuminates the living tradition of French chanson. Image: Juliette Gréco, the French actress and singer. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

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14:00

Our attention dilemma is age-old

The EI Podcast ·

2025/09/11

Alastair Benn explores an attention dilemma that has haunted western thought for centuries. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Detail from Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903. Credit: SuperStock / Alamy Stock Photo

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15:36

How the state can do more for less

The EI Podcast ·

2025/09/04

Historian David Cowan explains how radical reform can reshape the state. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A political caricature, 'Political Dreams, Visions of Peace, Perspective Horrors', by James Gillray of Pitt the Younger. Credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

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16:23

The espionage revolution

The EI Podcast ·

2025/08/28

David Omand, ex-head of GCHQ, the British government's world-renowned cyber agency, explores how intelligence officers exploit the latest technological advances.Image: Digital espionage is on the rise. Credit: Stu Gray / Alamy Stock Photo

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59:30

Graham Greene's Vietnam

The EI Podcast ·

2025/08/21

EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Jonathan Esty, of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to discuss Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, published 70 years ago, a gripping novel that captures the passing of the baton from the old colonial powers to the new masters in South-East Asia.Image: French paratroops at the beginning of the First Indochina War. Credit: Keystone Press

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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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138 results

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