EI Weekly Listen

Mar 06 2025 177 ep. 24 mins 6
EI Weekly Listen Podcast artwork

Weekly audio essays from leading experts. Read by Leighton Pugh.

  History  Arts  News
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EI Weekly Listen — Richard Miles on Spartacus, history’s nowhere man

Mar 06 2025 19 mins  
Spartacus is a figure who floats between history and allegory. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg 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 on how a Second Cold War could have been averted

Feb 28 2025 20 mins  
The choice to enlarge NATO was a justifiable response to the geopolitics of the 1990s. The problem was how it happened. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg 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

Rob Johnson on Ukraine's rich history of resistance

Feb 20 2025 31 mins  
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.

Peter Frankopan on the global threat to liberty

Feb 14 2025 19 mins  
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.

Katja Hoyer on how the GDR fell in love with the West

Feb 06 2025 18 mins  
Citizens of the GDR were exposed to an idealised version of western freedoms made up of luxury shopping, blue jeans and cowboy flicks. Read by Helen Lloyd.

EI Weekly Listen — Merryn Somerset Webb on the power of shareholder democracy

Jan 31 2025 16 mins  
The limited liability company remains the best vehicle for capitalistic endeavour. Read by Helen Lloyd.

Sergey Radchenko on what drives Vladimir Putin

Jan 23 2025 17 mins  
Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine uncannily reflect the motivations of one of Russian literature’s most famous antiheroes, Dostoevsky's Rodion Raskolnikov. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: Vladimir Putin at an EU-Russia summit in Brussels. Credit: Peter Cavanagh / Alamy Stoc

Jeremy Jennings on liberty in the shadow of Bonaparte

Jan 17 2025 18 mins  
Benjamin Constant’s considered response not only to the mass murder inflicted by the French Revolution, but to the attempt to reduce the whole French population to the condition of willing slaves under Bonaparte’s First Empire, provides a diagnosis of the character of many subsequent totalitarian regimes. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret

Francis J. Gavin on how 1970s California created the modern world

Jan 10 2025 21 mins  
What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and in large parts of the globe – for better or worse. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: 1970s commercial airline advert. Credit: ClassicStock / Alamy Sto

Alexander McCall Smith on the writer's right to speak freely

Dec 20 2024 17 mins  
While we may think we have moved beyond the censorship of the past, writers' artistic freedoms are still constrained. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial. Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo.