All Episodes
The EI Podcast — 377 episodes
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
Can epic poetry revive History?
The need for muscular liberalism
The first butterfly collectors
Trump’s imperial worldview
The strange death of private life
The Gulf’s Iran dilemma
The rise of the mega-influencer
Putin, the once and future Chekist
When Edo became Tokyo
Hamlet unravelled
The making of Xi Jinping's worldview
Nietzsche’s manifesto for reading
Inside the world of medieval espionage
The Monroe Doctrine: The United States’ hemispheric strategy explained
The strange case of Robert Louis Stevenson
The instability of a multipolar era
Why the brain is the ultimate weapon of war
The end of Pax Britannica
The classical key to the AI revolution
The Risorgimento myth
China's quest to engineer the future
The double agent who introduced Japan to the West
Lessons from the Wall Street Crash
1821 and the invention of world order
The growing-pains of Graham Greene
The Slavic War according to Stalin
A warning to the young: just say no to AI
The Slow Horses are Britain’s perfect spies
Stephen Kotkin on a new age of warfare
The Great French Songbook
Our attention dilemma is age-old
How the state can do more for less
The espionage revolution
Graham Greene's Vietnam
How the Nazis weaponised Charlemagne
Why do we get the wrong leaders?
Why liberal democracies win total wars
No more Napoleons: British grand strategy in the 19th century
The rift that doomed the Confederacy
The Trial at 100: revisiting Kafka’s prophetic masterpiece
How the Knights Templars conquered Christendom
The lost art of chorography
1975, the year that made the modern world
How Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin fought Hitler – and each other
What happened to the politician’s moustache?
The strange death of squalor
Why Finns joined the fight
The West’s lust for liberty
Christianity and the creation of England
How the liberation of France shaped the modern world
China vs the WTO: The Inside Story
Madame Bovary and the problem of desire
The German key to European liberty
The making of Trump's worldview
How Russia negotiates
Liberty under attack
The uses of comedy
Gazing back to see China’s future
The myth of Venice
Spartacus, history’s nowhere man
How a Second Cold War could have been averted
The case for Classical music
Ukraine's rich history of resistance
The global threat to liberty
The myth and magic of spy fiction
How the GDR fell in love with the West
Pittacus, the good tyrant
The power of shareholder democracy
The dawn of the post-literate society
Sergey Radchenko on what drives Vladimir Putin
Tim Marshall on Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, rocket man
Liberty in the shadow of Bonaparte
The case for Classics
How 1970s California created the modern world
Guittone d’Arezzo, Dante’s forgotten muse
The writer's right to speak freely
Fredrik Logevall on the Vietnam War
Kori Schake on the price of freedom
Paul Lay on Thomas Gage, a man of unintended consequences
David Butterfield on Epicurus, Lucretius, and the myth of mythlessness
The problem with VAR
Elisabeth Braw on the importance of understanding the West's adversaries
Andrew Roberts on Brendan Bracken, ‘more Churchillian than Churchill’
Kissinger's century with Thomas A. Schwartz
Henrik Meinander on Gustaf Mannerheim, leader of a free Finland
How to deter Russia with Kristjan Prikk and Eitvydas Bajarūnas
Rory Medcalf on the Australian way of war and peace
The making of the post-Wall world with Mary Elise Sarotte
Andreas Rödder on Konrad Adenauer and the German realignment
Maria Golia on Carl Akeley, early pioneer of wildlife photography
The lessons of the 1968 presidential election with Luke A. Nichter
Kenneth Payne asks: will machines make strategy?
Why Europe needs a grand strategy with Marina E. Henke
Alina Polyakova on Ukraine and the future of US global leadership
Adrian Wooldridge on Philippa Fawcett, wrangler extraordinaire
Philip Zelikow on the study of statecraft
How to win Cold War II with Dmitri Alperovitch
Kristin Ven Bruusgaard on the paradox of nuclear strategy
Graham Stewart on Joseph Galloway, the forgotten Founding Father
Benedetta Berti on the past, present and future of the transatlantic alliance
The attention dilemma
Fredrik Logevall on JFK's abiding legacy
Jessica Frazier on Akbar the Great, the ultimate Renaissance ruler
Kentaro Fujimoto on Japan's global future
The making of Xi Jinping with Michael Sheridan
Daisy Dunn on the pursuit of greatness
Rob Johnson on Basil Liddell Hart, alchemist of war
Kori Schake on US grand strategy
The search for a promised land with Rachel Cockerell
Sergey Radchenko on the past, present and future of Sino-Russian relations
Agnès Poirier on Anna de Noailles, bright star of the Belle Époque
Munira Mirza on how the British elite lost its way
What the Romans found funny with Orlando Gibbs
Ali Ansari on the secret to Cyrus the Great’s success
Andrew Wilton on Amanda McKittrick Ros, the Florence Foster Jenkins of the romantic novel
Lucy Ward on the invention of Catherine the Great
The atomic human with Neil D. Lawrence
Alexander Lee on why Machiavelli wrote The Prince
Rana Mitter on Tsiang Tingfu, pre-revolutionary China’s last bridge with the West
Francis J. Gavin on the terrible dilemmas of leadership in a thermonuclear world
Paris in the Belle Époque with Marie Kawthar Daouda
James Marriott on why human art matters in the age of AI
Lawrence Freedman on John McDonald, poker-playing popularizer of game theory
Bringing history to the public with Alice Loxton
Katja Hoyer on East Germany's battle for technology
How advertising consumed the counter-culture with Ian Leslie
Gudrun Persson on Russia’s forever war against Ukraine
Catherine Ostler on Maria Antonia of Bavaria, Electress of many talents
Ronald Reagan's grand strategy with William Inboden
Iskander Rehman on early modern information overload
Marketing Classical music with Richard Bratby
Julian Jackson on De Gaulle’s world in motion
John Law and financial crises with Kwasi Kwarteng
Laura Freeman on Helen Sutherland, brave cultivator of the beautiful
Josef Joffe on Germany, the engine that couldn't
Women of the ancient world with Daisy Dunn
Maurizio Viroli on how we can learn from history
James Barr on George McGhee, American father to Britain’s Suez Crisis
Philip Bobbitt on the decay and renewal of the US constitutional order
The history of democracy with Erica Benner
Lars Trägårdh on the origins of Swedish democracy
Dominic Sandbrook on Jesse Ventura, the wrestling governor who blazed a trail for Trump
Josef Joffe on the future of the European Union
The age of upheaval
Simon Mayall on the history of the modern Middle East
James Hardie on Heinrich Biber, composer of rapture and ravings
Lawrence James on the invention of jingoism
Caravaggio’s ‘last’ painting
Steven Grosby on the persistence of nationhood
Vanessa Harding on Nehemiah Wallington, Puritan chronicler who had far less fun than Pepys
Adrian Wooldridge on meritocracy
The Entente Cordiale with T.G. Otte
Mariano Sigman on how language has shaped human consciousness
Peter Frankopan on Anna Komnene, the princess who chronicled Byzantium’s changing fortunes
Nathan Shachar on ideology in science
The evolution of terrorist threat
Gregory Feifer on the mirage of Russian power
Gillian Clark on the many ways of seeing Saint Monica
Peter Heather on empire and development in first millennium Europe
Will AI revolutionise education?
Barry Strauss on Ancient Greek geopolitics
Jenny McCartney on Jean Denis, Comte Lanjuinais, fearless opponent of The Terror
Josef Joffe on the end of 'the end of history'
Werner Herzog
Michael Broers on how Napoleon built a continent
Aspasia of Miletus: queen of the Athenian salon
Norman Stone on the 1860s
Ukraine, two years on
David Frum on how empire-states are changing the game
Horace’s vast and complex legacy
Elisabeth Kendall on Jihadist poetry as propaganda
The Edwardians: the calm before the storm
Malise Ruthven on the appeal of ISIS
Can Israel win the peace?
Andrew Preston on the invention of American national security
The Soviet Union's bid for Africa
Charly Salonius-Pasternak on how Nordic and Baltic countries are preparing for war
The life and work of Mayazaki Hayao
Kimberly Kagan on the United States and the new way of war
A month that shook the world
Pascal Vennesson on the rise of transnational war-making
Rolf Ekéus on how to end wars
Philip Bobbitt on the new global disorder
Setting 2023 in perspective
Yu Jie on the deep historical roots of China's global ambition
A new world of intelligence
Andrew Monaghan on how the past shapes Russian grand strategy
The challenges of counter-insurgency
Pär Stenbäck on religion and politics in the Middle East
The promise and perils of declassifying intelligence
Wolfgang Palaver on the complex relationship between violence and religion
Recovering the women of Augustine's Confessions
Gary Lachman on the sources of mystical experience
The Beatles’ cultural legacy
Benedetta Berti on the legacy of the Arab Awakening of 2010
Tecumseh and the Shawnee Confederacy
Armin W. Geertz on the pre-historical roots of religious belief
A deep history of Gaza
David Goodhart on bridging the value divide
A new translation of the Iliad
Jonathan Fenby on the challenge for a totalitarian China
Israel’s harrowing week and the consequences for the Middle East
Kjell Nordström on the future of capitalism
The cultural resonances of Autumn
Maurizio Viroli on the city as a political order and urban space
The problems and perils of nuclear strategy
Gudrun Persson on rewriting Russian history
The conduct and practice of war
Fraser Nelson on the Intellectual Dark Web
Kennedy’s enduring status
Christopher Coker on the changing meaning of patriotism in war
A guide to Rugby Union
Remaking the moral case for capitalism by Iain Martin
Spoken history: the modern importance of indigenous cultures by John Hemming
EI Weekly Listen — Mark Plotkin on the price of deforestation
EI Weekly Listen — On the good society by David Goodhart
EI Weekly Listen — Time to regulate the development of AI by Maria Borelius
Mick Jagger at 80
What the Silicon Valley idealists got wrong
The future of tourism
Wealth and poverty in Renaissance Florence by Antony Molho
The uses and misuses of anger
The public realm and the language of architecture by John Simpson
Sully, Richelieu, and Mazarin
Can warfare ever be considered modern?
AI and the threat to the arts
War and statehood by Philip Bobbitt
Machiavelli's foundational contribution to the study of statecraft
Clashing histories and present-day tensions in East Asia by Rana Mitter
The deep meaning of Cricket
Do we know the truth about the Thirty Years’ War?
The problem with Classical music
Strategy, resilience and defence
Each Charter’d Street: Taking the long view on urban planning by Nicholas Boys Smith
The future of AI
The geopolitics and grand strategy of Alfred Thayer Mahan by John H. Maurer
The cultural conversation of mankind by Christopher Coker
Epic news
A Sacred Coronation for a Secular Nation
The other side of the hill
In search of Lebensraum
The crusader of goodwill
Where does esotericism belong in modern academia?
Welcome to the fifth age of the city
The power of central banks
How the individual invented the modern West
Worldview — The Return of Applied History
Katja Hoyer on East Germany
Bringing beauty back to the city
The future of the museum
Learning from Asian philosophies of rebirth by Jessica Frazier
Sarah Bakewell on Humanism
How to end a war
America’s return as the reluctant defender of the liberal order by Kori Schake
Worldview — People power: dealing with demography
The City of God: on Augustine’s vision of Empire
Worldview — The risks and the rewards of AI
Geopolitics never went away for the United States
On Civility by Erica Benner
Information war does not exist by Peter Pomerantsev
The ancient roots of the modern holy war by Tom Holland
From the Silk Road to the information superhighway by Peter Frankopan
Finding Garibaldi by Lucy Riall
What did it mean to belong to the Holy Roman Empire? by Peter Wilson
Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East by Brendan Simms
What is mistake theory and can it save the humanities? By Claire Lehmann
Worldview — Genome, the dangers and potential of gene editing
The Case of East Asia by Jonathan Fenby
Worldview — China and India: a new struggle for dominance
How to fix the future, Estonian style by Andrew Keen
Worldview — Revolution and evolution: the history of the book
Why the nation beat the empire in the battle of nineteenth century ideas by Jeremy Jennings
Worldview — Pressure on the power network
The joy of suffering by Candida Moss
Worldview — The nuclear threat today
The Revolt of the European Masses: the disintegration of accountability in supra-national politics by Janne Haaland Matlary
Worldview — The global struggle for microchip supremacy
Rethinking geopolitics by Jeremy Black
Why the idea of Carthage survived Roman conquest by Richard Miles
EI Weekly Listen — The end of history ends by Walter Russell Mead
The restless search for the fun wars by David J Betz
The impact of the First World War on strategy by Hew Strachan
The polymath in the age of specialisation by Peter Burke
Authority without knowledge by Erica Benner
Geopolitics and the Mongol Empire by Morris Rossabi
Fairy Tales of Statehood: the politics of sacred land and divine-kings by Jessica Frazier
Why War Again? by Lilia Shevtsova
Jihadist Media Strategies by Elisabeth Kendall
The Joint Intelligence Committee: Reading the Russian mindset by Michael Goodman
Democracy in crisis: Lessons from Ancient Athens by Erica Benner
Tribal bias from the wild to the laboratory by Cory J Clark
Love as Religion by Simon May
The Gospel of Thomas: casting a new light on Early Christianity by Elaine Pagels
Worldview — The battle for energy resources
Why 16 billion cortical neurons are not enough by Suzana Herculano-Houzel
Worldview — Leadership in war
Modern France and the ghosts of the past by Peter Ricketts
Lawrence of Arabia on war: How the past haunts the present by Rob Johnson
The importance of the individual in history by Vernon Bogdanor
Worldview — Conflict in space
Geopolitics, geoeconomics and Russian revisionism by Mikael Wigell
Worldview — The Battlefield
Worldview — The Russia Problem
Containing and deterring Russia: can Europe act strategically? by Janne Haaland Matlary
Worldview — The World Remade
The long peace and nuclear deterrence by Lawrence Freedman
Variety in Judaism by Martin Goodman
America's problem with unconventional warfare by Frederick Kagan
Suffering, the price of being alive: an Islamic perspective by Mona Siddiqui
Reassessing Christian history by Diarmaid Macculloch
The gods in love by Jessica Frazier
The story of the Jesuits: how the Society of Jesus charted the world by M.Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J.
The Portuguese: Pioneers of globalisation by Roger Crowley
Elements of seapower, past and present by Lincoln Paine
Making sense of the Yemen War by Elisabeth Kendall
The dark side to loving a group by Harvey Whitehouse
The fake history of civilisational states by Christopher Coker
The flag wars are here to stay by Tim Marshall
Disinformation in the information age by Gill Bennett
Roman geopolitics, an exercise in myth-making by Richard Miles
How US policy failure post-9/11 undermined international order by Emma Sky
Uruk and the origins of the sacred economy by Daniel T. Potts
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy revisited by Niall Ferguson
Cool war by Noah Feldman
Russia and geopolitics by Anna-Lena Laurén
Fantasy in Middle Eastern nation-making by Nathan Shachar
You are not as clever as you think by Mark Pagel
Adrian Wooldridge on the return of religion
Martina Winkelhofer-Thyri on whether Austria is a nation, state or an empire
Tom Holland on Æthelstan and the forging of a United Kingdom of England
Maurizio Viroli on the virtues of the city-state
Robin Lane Fox on nationalism in the classical world
Hew Strachan on the cost of the 1918-19 pandemic
Alexander Lee on Machiavelli and civil strife
Adrian Wooldridge on why the West needs Plato more than ever
Richard Whatmore on why revolutions are a disaster
36: Andrew Graham-Dixon on crisis and great art
35: Tom Holland on the empty metropolis
34: Donald Sassoon on a world of nations and states
33: Jonathan Fenby on China's great uncoupling
31: David Seedhouse: Covid-19 and the moral case for personal judgement
30: Matthew Goodwin: Meet the Zoomer generation
29: Tim Marshall: New Turkey's old politics
28: Graham Stewart on Thatcher's rescue from historical cliché
27: Mark Honigsbaum: Challenging the 'Great Reset' theory of pandemics
25: Clive Aslet: The changing fate of the English country house
23: Helen Thompson: Geopolitics of a pandemic
21: Philip Bobbitt: A government of laws
20: Vanessa Harding: Remembering London's last Great Plague
19: Johan Hakelius: John Hughes and the making and unmaking of the American Dream
18: Iskander Rehman: Why applied history matters
16: Gillian Clark: Survival lessons from Ancient Rome
15: Peter Frankopan: This crisis has the capacity to be apocalyptic
12: Can America lead again?
11: GCHQ – John Ferris on the official history
10: MI9 – Helen Fry on wartime escape
9: David Omand on what it takes to think like a secret agent
8: Fredrik Logevall on JFK
7: Covid and reform: can the West fix its governing systems?
6: Alexander Lee on Machiavelli
5: Asian Philosophies of Rebirth with Jessica Frazier
4: Can the West be revived?
3: Leadership in a Crisis with Andrew Roberts
2: The History of Quarantine with Lincoln Paine
Art, History and Pandemics with Tom Holland