The EI Podcast

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’...

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