
Engelsberg Ideas Podcasts
Government
Engelsberg Ideas podcasts bring together leading writers, thinkers and historians to discuss the biggest issues facing the world today. You’ll find calm conversations and thought-provoking analysis.
Location:
United States
Description:
Engelsberg Ideas podcasts bring together leading writers, thinkers and historians to discuss the biggest issues facing the world today. You’ll find calm conversations and thought-provoking analysis.
Language:
English
Episodes
EI Weekly Listen — Alexander Lee on the myth of Venice
3/14/2025
Liberty was central to the idea of Venice, but was remarkably fragile. The republic had to guard it fiercely and expound it as a tangible way of living for flawed human beings. Read by Helen Lloyd.
Engelsberg 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
Duración:00:22:27
EI Weekly Listen — Richard Miles on Spartacus, history’s nowhere man
3/7/2025
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
Duración:00:19:40
EI Weekly Listen — Mary Elise Sarotte on how a Second Cold War could have been averted
2/28/2025
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 Stock Photo
Duración:00:20:43
EI Talks... the case for Classical music
2/27/2025
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
Duración:00:56:41
EI Weekly Listen — Rob Johnson on Ukraine's rich history of resistance
2/21/2025
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
Duración:00:31:31
EI Weekly Listen — Peter Frankopan on the global threat to liberty
2/14/2025
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
Duración:00:19:11
EI Talks... the myth and magic of spy fiction
2/13/2025
Are we living through a golden age of espionage drama? And what do spy stories tell us about the true nature of the secret world?
EI's Alastair Benn is joined by David Omand, ex-head of GCHQ, the British government’s world-renowned cyber agency, and author of How Spies Think, Pauline Blistène, an expert on intelligence affairs and spy fiction, and Senior Editor Paul Lay to discuss the enduring popularity and legacy of the spy in fiction.
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: Gary Oldman in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Year, based on the novel of John le Carré. Credit: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:55:49
EI Weekly Listen — Katja Hoyer on how the GDR fell in love with the West
2/7/2025
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.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: Intershop in Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin. Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:18:54
EI Portraits — Daisy Dunn on Pittacus, the good tyrant
2/6/2025
After unpromising beginnings and innumerable controversies, Pittacus, seventh-century ruler of Mytilene on Lesbos, should be remembered as one of the great leaders of his age. Read by Sebastian Brown.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: An illustration of Pittacus. Credit: Historical image collection by Bildagentur-online / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:11:52
EI Weekly Listen — Merryn Somerset Webb on the power of shareholder democracy
1/31/2025
The limited liability company remains the best vehicle for capitalistic endeavour. Read by Helen Lloyd.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: Lloyd's coffee house in the City of London. Credit: CPA Media Pte Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:16:37
EI Talks... the dawn of the post-literate society
1/30/2025
Is the era of mass literacy over? And what might a post-literate society look like?
EI's Alastair Benn is joined by Times columnist James Marriott and Senior Editor Paul Lay to discuss the promise and peril of a culture defined by the audiovisual.
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: Painting of a woman reading by Carl Vilhelm Holsøe. Credit: Vidimages / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:46:32
EI Weekly Listen — Sergey Radchenko on what drives Vladimir Putin
1/24/2025
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 Stock Photo
Duración:00:17:38
EI Portraits — Tim Marshall on Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, rocket man
1/23/2025
The Russian recluse, a scientific self-starter who left school at 14, developed pioneering theories of space travel that anticipated the great feats of the Space Race fifty years later. Read by Sebastian Brown.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: Soviet poster featuring a portrait of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935). Credit: Alexeyev Filippov / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:13:50
EI Weekly Listen — Jeremy Jennings on liberty in the shadow of Bonaparte
1/17/2025
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 Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine were crowned Emperor and Empress of France on 2 December 1804. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:18:48
EI Talks... the case for Classics
1/16/2025
Is the study of Latin in peril? And what does the future hold for the ancient inheritance? EI's Alastair Benn is joined by Daisy Dunn, classicist and author, Armand D’Angour, Professor of Classics at Oxford University, and Paul Lay, EI’s Senior Editor, to discuss the value of ancient languages.
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: Giovanni Paolo Panini's painting from circa 1730, The Coliseum amongst Roman Ruins. Credit: incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:42:48
EI Weekly Listen — Francis J. Gavin on how 1970s California created the modern world
1/10/2025
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 Stock Photo
Duración:00:21:44
EI Portraits — Alexander Lee on Guittone d’Arezzo, Dante’s forgotten muse
1/9/2025
At a time of moral and political crisis, the medieval poet pioneered a daring and emotive vernacular style which inspired generations of Italian literature. Read by Sebastian Brown.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: A sketch of Guittone d'Arezzo from the nineteenth century. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Duración:00:18:18
EI Weekly Listen — Alexander McCall Smith on the writer's right to speak freely
12/20/2024
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.
Duración:00:17:46
EI Talks... the Vietnam War with Fredrik Logevall
12/19/2024
EI's Angus Reilly discusses the history and legacy of the Vietnam War with Fredrik Logevall, author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is produced by Alastair Benn. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: Photograph of American troops running towards a chopper during the Vietnam War. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:31:48
EI Weekly Listen — Kori Schake on the price of freedom
12/13/2024
The arc of history only bends towards justice when people of goodwill grab hold of it and wrench it in the direction of justice. Read by Helen Lloyd.
Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.
Image: The Freedom is Our Religion banner in Maidan Square, Kyiv. Credit: Ali Kerem Yucel / Alamy Stock Photo
Duración:00:17:33