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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

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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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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131 results

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