The EI Podcast

We must rescue our cities from a culture of ugliness. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Sol House, Northampton. Credit: Paul Hanson / Alamy Stock Photo 

Paul Lay and Iskander Rehman discuss masters of early modern statecraft: the Duke of Sully, Cardinal Richelieu, and Cardinal Mazarin. Image: Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle. Credit: Niday Picture Library  /  Alamy Stock Photo

Even with all its data and technology, contemporary conflict fits uneasily with our definitions of modernity. Read by Leighton Pugh Image: Mosul's old city destroyed by bombing. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

Paul Lay and Alastair Benn are joined by Times columnist James Marriott to discuss whether Artificial Intelligence poses an existential threat to the arts. Image: Man as Industrial Palace, a poster commissioned by German physician and author Fritz Kahn in 1926. Credit: JJs / Alamy Stock Photo

Warfare made the early modern state. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Renaissance-era woodcut of King Louis IX of France and his army disembarking at Damietta, Egypt, in 1249. In a common anachronism, the army and fleet are equipped with cannons. Credit: Florilegius / Alamy Stock Photo

Paul Lay and Alastair Benn are joined by Alexander Lee, biographer of Niccolò Machiavelli, to discuss the Renaissance thinker's foundational contribution to the study of statecraft. Image: Niccolò Machiavelli. Credit:  GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

As China ramps up its military spending, the government in Beijing plays up its role in the Second World War. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Chinese poster from the Sino-Japanese War. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo

Paul Lay and Alastair Benn discuss the deep meaning of Cricket in light of the forthcoming Ashes series between England and Australia, and the recent wider changes the game has undergone. Image: The Ashes urn. Credit: David Bagnall / Alamy Stock Photo

Different perspectives and eye-witness accounts reveal historical fallacies and myths about the war. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Gustavus Adolphus II. Credit: Wiki Creative Commons

Paul Lay and Alastair Benn discuss the future of Classical music. Image: String quartet playing in the Saint Nicholas Shopping centre, London. Credit: RayArt Graphics / Alamy Stock Photo 

Paul Lay and Alastair Benn discuss the London Defence Conference and the return of strategic thinking to the Western alliance. Image: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks with the director of the London Defence Conference, Iain Martin. Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo 

For as long as there have been cities they have attracted admiration and fear. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Eighteenth century map of London. Credit: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo  

In the first episode of the Engelsberg Ideas editorial podcast, EI Talks..., Iain Martin, Paul Lay and Alastair Benn discuss Artificial Intelligence and how it might shape the future for better... or worse. Image: Programmable humanoid robot NAQ. Credit: Lilyana Vynogradova / Alamy Stock Photo.  

Alfred Thayer Mahan's writings on naval warfare have overshadowed his contributions to geopolitics. His theories, however, are clearly playing out today. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: A print of a First World War Imperial German Navy battlecruiser, the SMS Goeben. Credit: Troy GB images / Alamy Stock Photo

Isolationist thinking and exceptionalism is on the rise and our global culture is the poorer for it. Our civilisations thrive when in conversation with each other: ideas are exchanged and self-reflection is promoted. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: An American Mercantile Building in Yokohama, 1861. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

What are myths for? More than entertainment alone, these epic tales helped the Ancients follow current affairs. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Adam Boulton is joined by Paul Lay, Senior Editor of Engelsberg Ideas, Agnès Poirier, journalist and author, and Royal biographer Hugo Vickers, to reflect on the deep meaning and symbolism of Britain's Coronation. Image: King Charles III views a wooden carving at St. Laurence's Church in Ludlow, Shropshire. Credit: Michelle Jones / Alamy Stock Photo.

In war, we are, like the Duke of Wellington, still trying to guess what is on the other side of the hill, we just have more tools to help us do so. Read by Leighton Pugh Image: The Left Wing of the British army in Action at the Battle of Waterloo, June 18th 1815. Credit: Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Hitler's conviction that a new Eurasian order should be constructed with Germany at its zenith had its ideological roots in the early science of geopolitics. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: This map of Russia and surrounding countries highlights Hitler's campaign in Russia and how it went wrong. Credit: Bettmann

While no longer a state power, the Catholic Church remains a powerful political force in modern diplomacy. Read by Leighton Pugh.  Image:  Pope Francis with his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, in 2018. Credit: Massimo Wallichia / Getty Images.

Scholars of esotericism are often asked to justify their field of research and its place in modern society. However, esotericism provides fertile ground for radical thinking and is a useful means of considering the limitations of standard western thought. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image:The Flammarion Wood engraving. The image is often used as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or t...

Changing technology, climate change, and transformations in global finance mean another new era for cities is dawning: the fifth, or digital, age. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Ecological skyscraper in Milan. Credit: Paolo Bona / Alamy Stock Photo.

Central banks have held the financial world in their grip for much of the twentieth century, but is their reign coming to an end? In this episode of Worldview, Adam Boulton is joined by the former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, along with journalist and author Merryn Somerset Webb, Iain Martin, Editor-in-Chief of Engelsberg Ideas, and economic historian, Samuel Gregg. Image: Currenc...

The European Middle Ages have been deemed an era of regression but this couldn't be further from the truth. In this period, the foundations were laid to establish a liberal West centred around the rights of the individual. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Construction of highway, eighteenth century France Engineers on horseback inspecting the work, a painting Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1775. Credit: Lebre...

How can the lessons of history be applied to the present? What are the benefits of taking the long view?  In this episode of Worldview, Adam Boulton is joined by the scholars Robert Crowcroft, editor of Applied History and Contemporary Policymaking: School of Statecraft , Phillip Bobbitt of the University of Texas, Iskander Rehman, an Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Kissinger Center for Global Affair...