The EI Podcast

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.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.Image: Rudolph Müller, View of the Acropolis from the Pynx (1863). Credit: Eraza Collection

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.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.Image: Lafcadio Hearn photographed with his wife, Setsuko Koizumi, and their son. Credit: GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin discusses his new book, 1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History, with EI's Iain Martin.Image: The Wall Street financial crash of 1929, with a city businessman speculator trying to sell his car for $100 cash, having lost all on the stock market. Credit: Alamy/ Shawshots.

Historian Damian Valdez on international order's 19th-century origins. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Mexican general Agustín de Iturbide rides through a ceremonial arch to welcoming officials in Mexico City on September 27, 1821, after decisively winning independence for Mexico. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo

Critic Malcolm Forbes investigates Graham Greene's troubled childhood. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Graham Greene in 1940. Credit: Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

Historian Luka Ivan Jukic explores how Stalin hijacked the Slavic cause to forge the Soviet Empire. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A poster celebrating Stalin at the Russian State Library, Moscow. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo

Aaron MacLean, host of the School of War podcast, on AI's threat to the life of the mind. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: The Library Hall of the Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences. Credit: Petr Svarc / Alamy Stock Photo

Alastair Benn on the magic of Mick Herron’s Slough House series.Image: Still from Apple TV's Slow Horses. Credit: LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

EI's Paul Lay discusses a world order in flux with Stephen Kotkin, historian and biographer of Stalin.Image: A Canadian soldier during a NATO-led operation. Credit: Associated Press

Why do people the world over enjoy listening to songs sung in French? Critic Muriel Zagha illuminates the living tradition of French chanson. Image: Juliette Gréco, the French actress and singer. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Alastair Benn explores an attention dilemma that has haunted western thought for centuries. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Detail from Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903. Credit: SuperStock / Alamy Stock Photo

Historian David Cowan explains how radical reform can reshape the state. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A political caricature, 'Political Dreams, Visions of Peace, Perspective Horrors', by James Gillray of Pitt the Younger. Credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

David Omand, ex-head of GCHQ, the British government's world-renowned cyber agency, explores how intelligence officers exploit the latest technological advances.Image: Digital espionage is on the rise. Credit: Stu Gray / Alamy Stock Photo

EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Jonathan Esty, of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to discuss Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, published 70 years ago, a gripping novel that captures the passing of the baton from the old colonial powers to the new masters in South-East Asia.Image: French paratroops at the beginning of the First Indochina War. Credit: Keystone Press

Samuel Rubinstein explores how Nazi historiographers sought to present Adolf Hitler as the heir to Charlemagne. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A large Sèvres presentation plate celebrating Nazism's alleged debt to Charlemagne. Credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

James Vitali reflects on the profound importance of political judgement. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: The front door of Number 10 Downing street. Credit: GreatBritishStock.com / Alamy Stock Photo

Journalist Duncan Weldon reveals how liberal capitalist economies adapt to total war. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Second World War-era British propaganda. Credit: Venimages / Alamy Stock Photo

EI’s Paul Lay joins historian Andrew Lambert to discuss his book ‘No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One', Lambert's provocative new study of how Britain maximised its naval and diplomatic prestige to maintain a stable, post-Napoleonic Europe.Image: 'A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel' by Samuel Atkins (c. 1760-1810). Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd

Historian Katherine Bayford exposes the fractures and contradictions that doomed the Confederacy from within. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:The rift that doomed the Confederacy | Katherine BayfordImage: A statue of Alexander Stephens in the US Congress. Credit: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

This year marks the centenary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial - a seminal work that continues to captivate and unsettle its readers. EI’s Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Karolina Watroba, author of Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka, to discuss Josef K’s tragic entanglement with a suffocating bureaucracy.Image: Portrait of Franz Kafka. Credit: history_docu_photo / Alamy Stock Photo

Historian Nicholas Morton explores how a miracle of marketing brought the Knights Templars to prominence. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:The Knights Templars and the pursuit of Christendom | Nicholas MortonImage: A Victorian illustration of the Knights Templars. Credit: Glasshouse Images / Alamy Stock Photo

The writer Josh Mcloughlin reflects on the art of chorography, one of English literature’s most eccentric and mercurial forms. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:The lost art of chorography | Josh McloughlinImage: Renaissance map of Europe showing England. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Phot

Historian Damian Valdez reflects on the meaning of 1975, a fateful year for the international order. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:1975, the year that made the modern world | Damian ValdezImage: A helicopter is pushed off the overcrowded deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CV-19) off the coast of South Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

EI’s Paul Lay joins historian Tim Bouverie to discuss ‘Allies at War’, his gripping new book on how Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin’s uneasy alliance led to the end of the Second World War – and reshaped the global order in ways that are still felt today.Image: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. Credit: Niday Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo

Writer Luka Ivan Jukic laments the all-but-total disappearance of facial hair from politics. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:What happened to the politician’s moustache? | Luka Ivan JukicImage: A double portrait of Mozaffar al-Din Shah, the fifth Qajar shah of Iran. Credit: Penta Springs Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

Journalist and author Jenny McCartney celebrates the magic of squalor, and explores how generations of artists have seen the sublime in slime. Read by Leighton Pugh.FURTHER READING:On squalor | Jenny McCartneyImage: Walter Sickert's Easter Monday. Credit: Logic Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Geopolitical analyst Charly Salonius-Pasternak examines Finland's long journey to full membership of the Western alliance, and explores how the Nordic nation could play a leading role in its future.FURTHER READING:Why Finns joined the fight | Charly Salonius-PasternakImage: During the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940) skiers of the Finnish army in white camouflage made lightning and effective attacks on units of the Red Army. Credit: World of Triss / Alamy Stock Photo

The late Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics for almost 40 years, explains why, although the love of liberty is not unique to the West, the lust for liberty is. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING: The West’s lust for liberty | Christopher CokerImage: Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, 1814. Credit: Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo

In this episode of The EI Podcast, the historian Bijan Omrani is joined by EI's Paul Lay to explore the indelible mark Christianity has left on England’s identity and culture.FURTHER READING:The tragic decline of Christian rituals | Bijan OmraniImage: South View of Salisbury Cathedral, JMW Turner. Credit: Penta Springs Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

Agnès Poirier, journalist and broadcaster, examines how the liberation of France in 1944 opened the way for Paris to become a laboratory of ideas. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:The liberation of France made the modern world | Agnès PoirierEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Parisians gather around the Arc de Triomphe as Allied forces liberate the city. Credit: RBM Vintage Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Michael Sheridan, author of two books on China and a foreign correspondent for 40 years, to discuss China’s rise, its subsequent entry into the international trading system, and its contemporary status as the problem child of our globalised world.FURTHER READING:China and America, the great decoupling | Michael SheridanEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. This episode of The EI Podcast was hosted by Paul Lay and Alastair Benn, and produced by Caitlin Brown. The sound engineer was Gareth Jones.Image: An electronics recycling facility in Shanghai, China. Credit: Cavan Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Marie Daouda, lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Oxford, shows how the pursuit of apparently 'real' desires comes at the expense of collective truth. The consequences can be disastrous. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:The truth shall set us free | Marie DaoudaEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Isabelle Huppert, Madame Bovary 1991. Credit: Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo

Brendan Simms, founder and Director of the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge, illustrates why contemporary Germany struggles to muster a serious military response to the Russian challenge. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:The German key to European liberty | Brendan SimmsEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Napoleon watching the Tsar, the Emperor of Austria and King of Prussia dividing up Europe. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

What are the deep roots of Trump's worldview? Can we learn to read Trump’s behaviour? And are there opportunities to be had for those who can?EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Charlie Laderman, Senior Lecturer in International History at King's College London, to discuss how to interpret the Trump White House.This episode was recorded on 7th April.FURTHER READING:How Iran’s Tanker War shaped Trump’s worldview | Charlie LadermanEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is hosted by Paul Lay and Alastair Benn, and produced by Caitlin Brown. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.Image: Donald Trump poses for photos above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after taking his Trump Plaza Casino public in New York on June 7, 1995. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

Iuliia Osmolovska, head of the GLOBSEC Kyiv Office, argues that Ukrainians are better placed than their Western partners to decode the Russian negotiating style. Read by Helen Lloyd.Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Street art in Tbilisi of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin playing chess. Credit: Georg Berg / Alamy Stock Photo

Juliet Samuel, columnist for The Times newspaper, highlights that a belief in liberty is not self-evident and its expansion is not inevitable. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:Liberty under attack from enemies within | Juliet SamuelEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Second world war propaganda poster. Credit: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo

What makes us laugh? And why should it matter?EI's Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by the critic Mathew Lyons to discuss the uses of comedy.FURTHER READING:The subtle art of English comedy | Alastair BennEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is hosted by Paul Lay and Alastair Benn, and produced by Caitlin Brown. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.Image: Eduard von Grützner's Falstaff, 1873. Credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

Roel Sterckx, the Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History, Science, and Civilization at Cambridge University, makes the case for studying China's centuries-long history. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:Gazing back to see China’s future | Roel SterckxEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: The Great Wall of China. Credit: nagelestock.com / Alamy Stock Photo

Alexander Lee, author of Machiavelli: His Life and Times, argues that liberty was central to the idea of Venice. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:Liberty and the myth of Venice | Alexander LeeEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Procession in Piazza San Marco by Gentile Bellini, 1496. Credit: Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo

Richard Miles, historian and archaeologist, profiles Spartacus, a figure who floats between history and allegory. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:Spartacus, history’s nowhere man | Richard MilesEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Promotional poster for the film, Spartacus. 1960. Credit: Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Mary Elise Sarotte, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, reflects that the choice to enlarge NATO was a justifiable response to the geopolitics of the 1990s. The problems came later. Read by Helen Lloyd.FURTHER READING:How a Second Cold War could have been averted | Mary Elise SarotteEngelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: The 'You are leaving The American Sector' sign at the Checkpoint Charlie crossing point, Berlin Wall. Credit: Greg Balfour Evans / Alamy Stock Photo

What makes Classical music special among the arts? And where did it come from? To reckon with the inexhaustible complexity of the western musical tradition, its long history and the roots of its contemporary crises, EI's Alastair Benn is joined by Richard Bratby, the chief classical music critic of The Spectator magazine, and Alexandra Wilson, musicologist and cultural historian.Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is hosted by Paul Lay and Alastair Benn, and produced by Caitlin Brown. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.Image: A string quartet. Credit: nsf / Alamy Stock Photo

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was slowed down because of determined, courageous resistance. That success also owed much to Western intelligence on the nature of the Russian attack. External support will remain crucial to the success of the Ukrainian war effort. Read by Helen Lloyd.Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Credit: The Motherland Monument in Kyiv. Credit: Ruslan Lytvyn / Alamy Stock Photo

Non-western elites are redefining freedom on their own terms, as sovereignty, state security and stability. But the world becoming a lot less free should concern us all. Read by Helen Lloyd.Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.Image: Eugène Delacroix's 'Painting of Liberty Leading the People'. Credit: Exotica.im 20 / Alamy Stock Photo