Episodes
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EI's Alastair Benn discusses how technology is transforming the world of sport with Daisy Christodoulou, education expert and author of I Can't Stop Thinking About VAR, an eloquent examination of the use of the video assistant referee (VAR) system in football.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: Crystal Palace Fans hold up a banner to protest against VAR. Credit: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Angus Reilly discusses the life and legacy of Henry Kissinger with Thomas A. Schwartz, author of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography.
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: President Gerald Ford and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger conversing in the grounds of the White House in 1974. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo -
Missing episodes?
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EI's Paul Lay discusses how the Baltic states have survived, and thrived, in the shadow of Russian aggression, with Kristjan Prikk, Estonia's Ambassador to the United States and Eitvydas Bajarūnas, a former Lithuanian senior diplomat, who has served as the Ambassador to Sweden, Russia and the UK.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: A new Iron Curtain in Europe. Credit: aleksey Shirmanov / Alamy Stock Photo -
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 offered opportunities to reset relations between East and West. EI's Paul Lay discusses how these opportunities were squandered with Mary Elise Sarotte, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: The fall of the Berlin Wall. Credit: Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI’s Angus Reilly is joined by Luke A. Nichter, author of The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968, to discuss Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and the battle for the future of America in a year that offers notable parallels to the election of 2024.
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: Television presenter Frank Reynolds covering the 1968 election. Credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Alastair Benn is joined by Marina E. Henke, Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School, Berlin, to discuss how Europe can defend itself from the latest threats and thrive in a contested world.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: Conflict in Europe. Credit: Kirill Makarov / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Paul Lay is joined by Dmitri Alperovitch, leading geopolitical analyst, entrepreneur, and co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, to discuss the parallels between US-Soviet rivalry and that of the US and China.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: The US and Chinese flags on stacked containers. Credit: Christian Ohde / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Paul Lay and Alastair Benn discuss an attention dilemma that has haunted western thought for centuries.
READING LIST
Our attention dilemma is age-old | Alastair Benn
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium | Seneca
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: Detail from Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903. Credit: SuperStock / Alamy Stock Photo -
Michael Sheridan, author of The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China, joins EI's Angus Reilly to discuss the personal and ideological roots of one of the world's most powerful, and inscrutable, leaders.
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: Xi Jinping with the Chinese flag. Credit: JHG / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Alastair Benn speaks to Rachel Cockerell, author of Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land, a history of the quest for a Jewish homeland at the turn of the 19th century and beyond, weaving memoir, documentary, and literature.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: Theodor Herzl addresses the Sixth Zionist Organisation Congress in Basel, 1903. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Alastair Benn sits down with Orlando Gibbs to discuss what the Romans found funny, what we might find not so funny about ancient humour, and whether there is something universal about the comedic genre.
READING LIST
No Laughing Matter? What the Romans Found Funny | Antigone
Plautus punching up: a different class of comedy | Engelsberg Ideas
Mary Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (University of California Press, 2014)
Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York, Hill and Wang, 1963) -
Neil D. Lawrence, inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and author of The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI, joins the EI team to challenge received wisdom on our AI future.
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. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones.
Image: An illustration of artificial intelligence. Credit: lorenzo rossi / Alamy Stock Photo -
Marie Kawthar Daouda, author and a lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Oxford, joins EI's Alastair Benn to discuss how Belle Époque-era Paris continues to fascinate, with its burgeoning commercial culture, everyday beauty and glittering department stores.
Image: Jean Béraud's painting 'Paris, rue du Havre', c. 1882. Credit: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo -
The historian and broadcaster Alice Loxton joins the EI team to discuss her forthcoming book, Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, and her fight to bring serious history to a wider public.
Image: A jigsaw puzzle from the early nineteenth century, bearing representations of the Kings and Queens of England from William I to George IV. Credit: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Alastair Benn sits down with Ian Leslie, author of Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together, to discuss how the counterculture went mainstream.
Image: An advert on the Nike store at Oxford Circus. Credit: Matthew Chattle / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Angus Reilly discusses how Ronald Reagan put economic openness at the heart of the battle for ideas against Soviet Communism with William Inboden, author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.
Image: Ronald Reagan at the Durenberger Republican convention Rally, 1982. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Alastair Benn discusses the condition of Classical music today with Richard Bratby, chief Classical music critic of The Spectator.
Image: Music scores. Credit: Tim Gainey / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Iain Martin is joined by Kwasi Kwarteng, historian and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, to discuss the turbulent life of the 18th-century financial speculator John Law, whose innovative ideas were credited with bringing Ancien Régime France to the brink of ruin. There are echoes of what happened when the Truss government tried its own financial experiment, he acknowledges.
Image: A cartoon of John Law (1671–1729), the Scottish economist who was appointed Controller General of Finances of France under King Louis XV. Credit: PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo -
The leading classicist Daisy Dunn joins EI's Paul Lay to discuss her new book, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It.
Image: Nikolaos Gyzis, a 19th Century painter, depicts Sappho playing the lyre. Credit: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo -
Erica Benner applies ancient wisdom to modern problems in her new book Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. She shares her insights with EI's Deputy Editor, Alastair Benn.
Image: Gathering of the Areopagus, a deliberative court that met in the open air in ancient Athens. Credit: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo - Show more
