The EI Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Read the essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/can-epic-poetry-revive-history/.

Image: Hector taking leave of Andromache. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

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 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.

Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-first-butterfly-collectors/. 

Image: Detail from ‘The Aurelian; a Natural History of English Moths and Butterflies’, published by Henry Bohn, London, 1840. Credit: Getty

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