The EI Podcast

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

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:...

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

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

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

The Society of Aurelians brought butterflies out of their undeserved obscurity. Nigel Andrew’s audio essay sheds new light on Britain’s first entomological society. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-first-butterfly-collectors/ .  Image: Detail from ‘The Aurelian; a Natural History of English Moths and Butterflies’, published by Henry Bohn...

What is driving Donald Trump’s increasingly volatile foreign policy? Brendan Simms examines the US President and his ideological roots with EI’s Jack Dickens. Image: Donald Trump at the White House, July 2025. Credit: Alamy

In the early 1970s, the idea of a private life – that citizens ought to be left alone by the state – began to disappear. In this audio essay, Tiffany Jenkins argues that we should mourn its absence. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-strange-death-of-private-life/ . Image: 1930s poster for the London Underground. Credit: Alamy

Shiraz Maher examines how the fallout from the US-Iran conflict is reshaping the Gulf States and the wider Middle East, with EI’s Jack Dickens. Image: Close-up vintage map of the Middle East. Credit: Alamy

Mega-influencers shape the public imagination. Phillip Dolitsky and Luke Moon explore a world where narrative matters more than fact. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Still from a film version of George Orwell's 1984. Credit: Allstar Picture Library Limited

Gordon Corera contends that to truly understand Vladimir Putin, you have to understand the phenomenon of Chekism. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/putin-the-once-and-future-chekist/ .  Image: Vladimir Putin's East German Stasi identification card issued while he worked as a KGB agent in Dresden in 1985. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd

Christopher Harding on the birth of Tokyo. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/when-edo-became-tokyo/ .  Image: A woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige. From One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1856. Credit: incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo 

Emma Smith , Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, explores Hamlet and its rich critical history with EI’s Alastair Benn and Paul Lay . Image: Laurence Olivier plays Hamlet in 1948. Credit: Masheter Movie Archive

Rana Mitter explores Xi Jinping’s personal and ideological mindset in conversation with EI’s Jack Dickens . Image: Then Vice President Xi Jinping makes an address in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Credit: Imago

Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri on reading as an antidote to the restless spirit of the industrial age. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/nietzsches-manifesto-for-reading/ . Image: Edvard Munch's painting of Friedrich Nietzsche. Credit: Darling Archive / Alamy Stock Photo 

Jonathan Sumption surveys the last generation of spies before the creation of Europe's professional intelligence services. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/inside-the-world-of-medieval-espionage/ . Image: King Charles VI of France prepares for war. Credit: Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

EI's Jack Dickens is joined by Charlie Laderman , associate professor at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, to discuss how the United States’ hemispheric ambitions emerged from great-power competition – and why the Monroe Doctrine still matters. Image: A satirical cartoon lampooning the expansion of the Monroe Doctrine. Credit: Photo 12

Alastair Benn is joined by Leo Damrosch, author of Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson , to explore the life and legacy of the celebrated Scottish writer, including one of his most enduring literary achievements, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Image: 'Robert Louis Stevenson' by John Singer Sargent, 1885. Credit: IanDagnall Computing

EI's Paul Lay is joined by Helen Thompson to discuss US–China rivalry, the growing importance of the Western Hemisphere in geopolitics, and the inherent instability of a multipolar world. Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Victory Parade marking the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Credit: Associated Press

EI's Paul Lay is joined by neuroscientist Nicholas Wright to discuss how the brain shapes war, and how war shapes the brain. Image: The brain as a weapon of war. Credit: fStop Images GmbH

Graeme Thompson on the fall of a liberal world order. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-end-of-pax-britannica/ . Image: 'Taming the British Lion'. Puck magazine, 1888. Credit: Historical Images Archive

John Tasioulas examines how a classical conception of democracy – distinct from liberal democracy – may offer the resources needed to meet the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-classical-key-to-the-ai-revolution/ . Image: Rudolph Müller, View of the Acropolis from the Pynx (1863). Credit: Eraza C...

Gerald Warner on the origins of a 'black legend' designed to discredit the once-flourishing Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-risorgimento-myth/ .  Image: A painting displaying the splendour of the Neapolitan fleet. Credit: The Picture Art Collection

EI's Paul Lay is joined by technology analyst Dan Wang to discuss how China has engineered its way to global power status.  Image: New high-rise buildings in China. Credit: ton koene

Bill Emmott profiles Lafcadio Hearn, the Anglo-Irish-Greek foreign correspondent who made Japan his home. Read by Leighton Pugh. Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-double-agent-who-introduced-japan-to-the-west/ . Image: Lafcadio Hearn photographed with his wife, Setsuko Koizumi, and their son. Credit: GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo