• Can Europe thrive in a multipolar world?
    Apr 30 2026

    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

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    54 mins
  • The long shadow of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials
    Apr 27 2026

    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.

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    27 mins
  • Universities are at crisis point
    Apr 23 2026

    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

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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • The anatomy of the spy novel
    Apr 20 2026

    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

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    14 mins
  • The roots of the West’s identity crisis
    Apr 16 2026

    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’ by Hubert Robert (1775). Credit: Alamy

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    52 mins
  • Iran’s strange Scottish obsession
    Apr 13 2026

    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

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    10 mins
  • Washington’s return to Latin America
    Apr 9 2026

    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: Alamy

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    56 mins
  • The Houthis’ forever war
    Apr 3 2026

    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

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    50 mins