The EI Podcast
408 episodes — Page 1 of 9
Napoleon’s nest of vipers
Russia’s war on Ukrainian science
Space and the new clash of civilisations
Reinventing Disraeli
The scramble for the Middle East
The novel in Britain: from cover to cover
Journeys in Europe’s grey zone
Machiavelli still matters
The entire history of cinema in one shot
America’s universal document: a curious history
The alien world of Homer’s Odyssey
How wine made the modern world
The struggle for Saudi Arabia’s buried past
The diplomats who defeated Hitler
The political power of knowing your enemy
The return of the Great Powers
Germany’s new old nuclear dilemma
250 years of the American experiment
Where is Russia’s place in the world?
Christianity’s debt to Rome
Jean Eustache: the outsider who reshaped French cinema
How to end a war
Testament to doomed media
Why Armenia’s elections matter
Len Deighton’s spycraft
China's bid for economic supremacy
A Jewish-American dream
Muslims and Jews' shared inheritance
Finding Turkey in Narnia
The life and legacy of Steve Schapiro
Agent Zo, the spy who saved Poland
Lewis and Clark’s American Odyssey
Why powerful individuals are dominating politics
Weimar’s descent into darkness
The civilising wonders of wine
Can Europe thrive in a multipolar world?
The long shadow of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials
Universities are at crisis point
The anatomy of the spy novel
The roots of the West’s identity crisis
Iran’s strange Scottish obsession
Washington’s return to Latin America
The Houthis’ forever war
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?
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. Image: Hector taking leave of Andromache. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
The need for muscular liberalism
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 first butterfly collectors
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.Image: Detail from ‘The Aurelian; a Natural History of English Moths and Butterflies’, published by Henry Bohn, London, 1840. Credit: Getty
Trump’s imperial worldview
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
The strange death of private life
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.Image: 1930s poster for the London Underground. Credit: Alamy
The Gulf’s Iran dilemma
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
The rise of the mega-influencer
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