The EI Podcast

Brendan Simms talks to EI’s Jack Dickens about a new age of geopolitical rivalry. Image: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Credit: Alamy

When it comes to nuclear weapons, the concerns that West Germany’s first chancellor wrestled with during the Cold War have not disappeared. In this audio essay, Marina E. Henke suggests that they have simply re-emerged in new forms. Read by Leighton Pugh.  Read it here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/germanys-new-old-nuclear-dilemma/ Image: A nuclear power plant in Bavaria, circa 1985. Credit:...

Paul Lay speaks to Phil Tinline , author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy , about the variety and violence of a country built on high ideals and low conspiracies. Image: The interior of the United States Capitol. Credit: Alamy

Russia is a Near Eastern country now subordinated to East Asia. But Stephen Kotkin argues that historically it has prospered most when tied closely to Europe. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/where-is-russias-place-in-the-world/ . Image: Map of Russia, 1562. Credit: Alamy

What does Christ’s Kingdom owe to the culture of the Roman Empire? Tim Whitmarsh speaks to EI’s Alastair Benn about his new book, Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity. Image: A statue of Augustus Caesar in Turin. Credit: Alamy

The filmmaker Jean Eustache’s interest in rural France and his sardonic scepticism about the May ’68 ideologues mark him out from his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/jean-eustache-the-outsider-who-reshaped-french-cinema/ .  Image: The film director Jean Eustache. Credit: Alamy

Margaret MacMillan speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about how wars – and attempts to bring about peace – have shaped every era of human history.  Image: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 1945. Credit: Alamy

The old media has failed to rise to the challenge of tech, but we'll miss it when it's gone. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/testament-to-doomed-media/ .  Image: Woman reading a newspaper. Credit: Alamy

Thomas de Waal joins EI’s Jack Dickens to discuss how the recent elections in Armenia could reshape geopolitics in the Caucasus and beyond. Image: Armenian flag with Mount Ararat in background. Credit: Alamy

The late Len Deighton produced novels that were packed with excitement and suspense but also infused with moral complexity and psychological insight. Read by Leighton Pugh.  Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/len-deightons-spycraft/ . Image: Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Credit: Allstar Picture Library Ltd 

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

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....

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.

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

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

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

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

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: incamerastoc...

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

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-o...

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

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.

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

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

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’...