The EI Podcast

Epizodai

• China's bid for economic supremacy 04.06.2026 47min

  George Magnus speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about the geopolitical logic behind China’s economic strategy.Image: A container ship from China. Credit: Rudmer Zwerver
• A Jewish-American dream 01.06.2026 24min

  The largest Jewish community in the world is defined by its deep integration into America's national story, its liberal traditions and scepticism towards Israeli governments. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-jewish-american-dream/Image: A member of the American Jewish Congress participating in the 1965 Montgomery March, advocating for civil rights. Credit: Image Bank
• Muslims and Jews' shared inheritance 28.05.2026 42min

  Marc David Baer speaks to EI’s Paul Lay about his new book 'Children of Abraham: The Story of Jewish-Muslim Relations', and the deep historical connection between two faiths, bound by common roots.Image: Tiles at Ali Ben Youssef Medersa in Marrakech, Morocco. Credit: Stelios Michael.
• Finding Turkey in Narnia 26.05.2026 17min

  Re-reading CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Hannah Lucinda Smith discovers glimmers of the culture and history of the Turkic peoples in the author's work. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/finding-turkey-in-narnia/Image: Puffin paperback editions of the Narnia tales by author CS Lewis. Credit: NearTheCoast.com / Alamy Stock Photo
• The life and legacy of Steve Schapiro 21.05.2026 37min

  Filmmaker Maura Smith discusses Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere, her documentary on the photographer who captured modern America.Image: Steve Schapiro in the 1960s. Credit: Steve Schapiro
• Agent Zo, the spy who saved Poland 18.05.2026 13min

  Elżbieta Zawacka, who played a key role in the Home Army’s resistance efforts, was one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Clare Mulley assesses her legacy. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/agent-zo-the-spy-who-saved-poland/. Image: Monument to Agent Zo. Credit: Alamy
• Lewis and Clark’s American Odyssey 14.05.2026 1val

  Craig Fehrman speaks to EI’s Max Mitchell about his new book ‘This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark’, shedding light on one of America’s founding myths.Image: ‘America in the Making: Lewis and Clark’ by Newell Convers Wyeth (1938). Credit: Alamy
• Why powerful individuals are dominating politics 11.05.2026 17min

  From Xi Jinping in China to Narendra Modi in India and Donald Trump in the US, Nicholas Wright explores how powerful leaders are reshaping the rules of the global great game. Read by Leighton Pugh.Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/why-powerful-individuals-are-dominating-politics/.Image: Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’. Credit: incamerastock
• Weimar’s descent into darkness 07.05.2026 1val 3min

  How did Weimar, the town of Goethe and Schiller, become the crucible of Germany's moral collapse? Katja Hoyer, author of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, speaks to EI's Alastair Benn about the town's role in the rise of the Third Reich.Image: Adolf Hitler at the ‘Haus Elephant’ in Weimar, 1936. Credit: Alamy
• The civilising wonders of wine 05.05.2026 11min

  Amid the rise of individualistic technologies and weight-loss drugs, there has been a steady decline in alcohol consumption in Western societies. Yet, Henry Jeffreys argues that this is no good thing. Instead, it suggests a gradual weakening of a shared civilisational inheritance. This audio essay is read by Leighton Pugh.Read it here: https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-civilising-wonders-of-wine/.Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’. Credit: Maidun Collection
• Can Europe thrive in a multipolar world? 30.04.2026 53min

  Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about Europe’s place in a changing world order.Image: The EU flag in Siracusa, Sicily. Credit: Alamy
• The long shadow of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials 27.04.2026 27min

  In the courtrooms of Nuremberg and Tokyo, the victorious Allies declared that civilisation must not merely win wars but also judge them, leaving a legal and moral legacy that persists to this day. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: The defendants at the Nuremberg Trial in 1946. Credit: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive.
• Universities are at crisis point 23.04.2026 1val 1min

  Daisy Christodoulou and Nicholas Wright join EI’s Paul Lay to discuss the crisis in British universities and how to fix it.Image: Sightseers outside the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Credit: Alamy
• The anatomy of the spy novel 20.04.2026 14min

  From the gung-ho glamour of Ian Fleming’s James Bond to the decline and disorder of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, postwar spy novels have captured the shifting myths, legends and caricatures surrounding the secret world. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-anatomy-of-the-spy-novel/.Image: Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr No (1962). Credit: Alamy
• The roots of the West’s identity crisis 16.04.2026 51min

  Marie Kawthar Daouda, author of Not Your Victim: How our Obsession with Race Entraps and Divides Us, speaks to EI’s Alastair Benn about the historical illiteracy of attempts to ‘decolonise’ Western culture. Instead, she argues that the moral complexities of history must be accepted in order to develop a genuine appreciation of the Western tradition. Image: ‘Ruins with an Obelisk in the distance’ by Hubert Robert (1775). Credit: Alamy
• Iran’s strange Scottish obsession 13.04.2026 10min

  From placard-waving crowds in Yazd to troll farms on social media, the Islamic Republic has long tried to wield Scottish nationalism as a weapon against the UK. This audio essay is read by Leighton Pugh.Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/irans-strange-scottish-obsession/.Image: Royal Scots Guards military pipers. Credit: Alamy
• Washington’s return to Latin America 09.04.2026 55min

  Following the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, President Donald Trump has warned that Cuba is ‘next’. What exactly does he mean by that? Joseph Ledford, Fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about a new age of US interventionism in Latin America. Image: Protesters outside the White House following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, January 2026. Credit: Alamy
• The Houthis’ forever war 03.04.2026 50min

  Elisabeth Kendall speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about what motivates the Houthis. Following the outbreak of the war in Iran, the Yemeni militant group now has an outsized ability to disrupt global trade and threaten regional stability in the Middle East. But who are they and what do they really want?Image: A protester at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Sanaa, Yemen. Credit: Alamy
• Can epic poetry revive History? 30.03.2026 14min

  When combined, as the ancients knew, history and poetry offer an incomparable insight into the human condition. Michael Auslin laments the demise of poetry as a form for exploring great moments in history. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/can-epic-poetry-revive-history/.Image: Hector taking leave of Andromache. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
• The need for muscular liberalism 26.03.2026 49min

  Adrian Wooldridge speaks to EI’s Paul Lay about his new book, Centrists of the World Unite! The Lost Genius of Liberalism. He believes that the West can only overcome its current malaise by rediscovering and reviving the liberal tradition.Image: Engraving of the frontispiece from Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’ (1651). Credit: Alamy