The EI Podcast
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The EI Podcast brings you weekly conversations and audio essays from leading writers, thinkers and historians. Hosted by Alastair Benn and Paul Lay. Find the EI Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or search The EI Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
367 Episodes
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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. 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.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
In the early 1970s, the idea of a private life – that citizens ought to be left alone by the state – began to disappear. In this audio essay, Tiffany Jenkins argues that we should mourn its absence. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: 1930s poster for the London Underground. Credit: Alamy
Shiraz Maher examines how the fallout from the US-Iran conflict is reshaping the Gulf States and the wider Middle East, with EI’s Jack Dickens.Image: Close-up vintage map of the Middle East. Credit: Alamy
Mega-influencers shape the public imagination. Phillip Dolitsky and Luke Moon explore a world where narrative matters more than fact. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Still from a film version of George Orwell's 1984. Credit: Allstar Picture Library Limited
Gordon Corera contends that to truly understand Vladimir Putin, you have to understand the phenomenon of Chekism. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Vladimir Putin's East German Stasi identification card issued while he worked as a KGB agent in Dresden in 1985. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd
Christopher Harding on the birth of Tokyo. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: A woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige. From One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1856. Credit: incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo
Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, explores Hamlet and its rich critical history with EI’s Alastair Benn and Paul Lay.Image: Laurence Olivier plays Hamlet in 1948. Credit: Masheter Movie Archive
Rana Mitter explores Xi Jinping’s personal and ideological mindset in conversation with EI’s Jack Dickens.Image: Then Vice President Xi Jinping makes an address in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Credit: Imago
Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri on reading as an antidote to the restless spirit of the industrial age. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: Edvard Munch's painting of Friedrich Nietzsche. Credit: Darling Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Jonathan Sumption surveys the last generation of spies before the creation of Europe's professional intelligence services. Read by Leighton Pugh.Image: King Charles VI of France prepares for war. Credit: Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo
EI's Jack Dickens is joined by Charlie Laderman, associate professor at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, to discuss how the United States’ hemispheric ambitions emerged from great-power competition – and why the Monroe Doctrine still matters.Image: A satirical cartoon lampooning the expansion of the Monroe Doctrine. Credit: Photo 12
Alastair Benn is joined by Leo Damrosch, author of Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, to explore the life and legacy of the celebrated Scottish writer, including one of his most enduring literary achievements, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.Image: 'Robert Louis Stevenson' by John Singer Sargent, 1885. Credit: IanDagnall Computing
EI's Paul Lay is joined by Helen Thompson to discuss US–China rivalry, the growing importance of the Western Hemisphere in geopolitics, and the inherent instability of a multipolar world.
Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Victory Parade marking the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Credit: Associated Press
EI's Paul Lay is joined by neuroscientist Nicholas Wright to discuss how the brain shapes war, and how war shapes the brain.Image: The brain as a weapon of war. Credit: fStop Images GmbH
Graeme Thompson on the fall of a liberal world order. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: 'Taming the British Lion'. Puck magazine, 1888. Credit: Historical Images Archive
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A very interesting and thought provoking series of podcasts. I also enjoy the excellent narration.
why do Americans persist with the idea that their 2 months of incompetent input at the end of the great war is what defeated the Germans. just deluded and bizarre.
what an awful monologue. misuse of statistics. misinterpretation of speeches. select I've quoting. nothing at all to say on China. useless. make use of your time elsewhere than listening to that. take care.