The EI Podcast

Why do we get the wrong leaders?

James Vitali reflects on the profound importance of political judgement. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: The front door of Number 10 Downing street. Credit: GreatBritishStock.com / Alamy Stock Photo

Why liberal democracies win total wars

Journalist Duncan Weldon reveals how liberal capitalist economies adapt to total war. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Second World War-era British propaganda. Credit: Venimages / Alamy Stock Photo 

No more Napoleons: British grand strategy in the 19th century

EI’s Paul Lay joins historian Andrew Lambert to discuss his book ‘No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One', Lambert's provocative new study of how Britain maximised its naval and diplomatic prestige to maintain a stable, post-Napoleonic Europe. Image: 'A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel' by Samuel Atkins (c. 1760-1810). Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd

The rift that doomed the Confederacy

Historian Katherine Bayford exposes the fractures and contradictions that doomed the Confederacy from within. Read by Leighton Pugh. FURTHER READING: The rift that doomed the Confederacy | Katherine Bayford Image: A statue of Alexander Stephens in the US Congress. Credit: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

The Trial at 100: revisiting Kafka’s prophetic masterpiece

This year marks the centenary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial - a seminal work that continues to captivate and unsettle its readers. EI’s Alastair Benn and Paul Lay are joined by Karolina Watroba, author of Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka, to discuss Josef K’s tragic entanglement with a suffocating bureaucracy. Image: Portrait of Franz Kafka. Credit: history_docu_photo / Alamy Stock Photo