Danube Institute Podcast

Will Russia listen to Donald Trump's 50-day ultimatum? What burdens transatlantic relations? Are the Hungarian government's arguments on Ukraine reasonable? What's the current political landscape in Poland?We asked Liliana Śmiech, Director General for International Affairs at the University of Public Service, Hungary, about the geopolitical challenges of Europe.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

What comes after the decline of the rule-based world order? What is the geopolitical weight of Europe? Is there any role for Christianity left in modern politics? We asked Timothy W. Burns, a professor of political science at Baylor University, about the crisis of Western civilization and the intellectual legacy of the West. The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

John O’Sullivan, the President of the Danube Institute, our leading thinkers and guest expert Michael Doran — Director and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East — discuss the prospects for lasting peace in the Middle East. The panel explores the region’s shifting alliances, the impact of Trump-era policies, and whether U.S. intervention can reshape the current conflict.Michael Doran offers critical insights into the strategic dimensions of American involvement and the broader geopolitical stakes.In Danube Special we discuss the most significant events shaping the fate of our world, together with our leading experts.

Is there a chance that Israeli casus belli (Iran was close to building nuclear weapons) was false? What's the purpose of military action: eliminating the nuclear threat or toppling the ayatollah regime? Is creating a peaceful Middle East a realistic idea? We spoke with Maya Kadosh, the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary, about the Israeli-Iranian war.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

Dr John Pang is Senior Fellow at The Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific. He's one of China's leading experts on Western political philosophy. In that sense, he sees Liberalism as the Chinese do: as a curiously Western product, with its own idiosyncrasies. Rather than how it is seen in the West: as the universal currency of political philosophy, a levelling force with an inevitability to its end-of-history telos. Pang was in Budapest recently for the Budapest Global Dialogue conference. Here, in conversation with the Danube Institute's own chief critic of liberalism, Philip Pilkington, he explains how the East has sought to take the best and bind it to its own traditions, while being innately suspicious of the hectoring format liberalism now takes in much Western discourse.

In January of 2023, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis announced six additions to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school in Sarasota. In a just world, this should not have been a story. But it was. Because, instead of appointing six liberal progressives, as had somehow seemed a constitutional duty for most colleges for most of the last 40 years, DeSantis instead appointed six conservatives. Who then swept through the place, tearing up the boards of progressive education, firing the leadership, and totally renovating the curriculum. He was, after all, an obvious man to call, if you were going to start a counter-revolution in academia. An Emeritus Professor of English, at Emory University, as far back as 1997 he was penning books like: Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. In 2008, he penned the only half joking: “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future”. In short, he sits in the lineage of both Alan Bloom and Harold Bloom. Raging against the closing of the American mind, and for the Western Canon. In this episode, Gavin Haynes talks to him about his hands-on experience in reversing the decline of culture – in the practice of long marching back through the institutions. Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute, a Budapest based think tank, bringing Hungarian conservatism to the Anglosphere and beyond.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has been at the forefront of trans-exclusionary women's rights for a decade. She is the founder of Let Women Speak, and, in 2018, began a poster campaign involving the slogan “Adult Human Female”. The seemingly innocuous definition of ‘a woman’ became a flashpoint for transgenderist activists in the UK. In 2021, she began a hugely controversial speaking tour of the Antipodes, which resulted in her being denounced by government ministers in Australia, and, in New Zealand, attacked by a mob of activists. On this special edition of Danube Politics, Danube Institute President John O’Sullivan talks to her about her recent victory in the UK Supreme Court — clarifying existing equalities legislation to agree with the ‘adult human female’ definition. And takes a broader sweep of a life of courage. Has the tide finally turned on women’s sex-based rights? And what of relations between the sexes? Is her brand of feminism the answer? Or is it only in a temporary alliance with the broader trunk of conservative thought? Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute’s podcast output, committed to bringing Hungarian Conservatism to the English-speaking world and beyond.

Metaphysics is back. That’s the word from Nathan Levine, author of the hugely popular Substack, The Upheaval, and a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute. Nathan is one of the most crisp thinkers in meta-politics today, and here he goes into depth with the DI’s Head of Research, Calum Nicholson. on what we can expect, as the old structures, the liberal order that has presided since 1945, begins to break down. As he points out, the fables we told ourselves about rule of law, human rights, central planning, neoliberalism, and the supremacy of the individual, are all beginning to warp and fold beneath the pressures of multiple simultaneous revolutions: in tech, in communications, and in the functioning of democracy itself. Yet what is  to come still has not quite been born. We are in an interregnum, between worlds. The technocratic age, the scientistic age, is fading away, and what comes after will have to rely more on ‘magic’, on the right-brain, the Gestalt understanding of who we are. But if we can no longer rely on plans and machines to fulfil our dreams, what even are we? Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute's podcast output. Subscribe and follow for more.

Can India become a similar global player to China one day? Can it be a power for counterbalancing China? In which sectors is India already a leading power? And is its neutrality on world conflicts and its political parallelism sustainable?We spoke with Dr. Saroj Bishoyi, a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, who delivered a lecture at the MCC Budapest Summit on Technology and Society.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

When Benjamin Netanyahu flew into Budapest in April 2025, he triggered a political earthquake.Wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza, the Israeli Prime Minister risked arrest in nearly every European capital. Yet here he was warmly welcomed: the red carpets rolled out, and within days, Hungary announced it would leave the ICC altogether, calling it a “political court.”Why does Hungary stand apart, not just from the EU, but from the entire liberal international order?In this episode of Danube Knowledge, host Adam LeBor takes the long view on Hungary’s embrace of Israel, and what it tells us about shifting alliances in the 21st century. He’s joined by Senior Researcher Peter Szitas, co-author of a landmark paper on Hungarian-Israeli relations, and by Researcher Daniel Farkas. Danube Knowledge is the research brand of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, specialising in Hungarian affairs, conservatism and geo-economics.