The EI Podcast

There is frequently no real reason why one person has more claim to live or even rule over a piece of land than another. A reason, however must be provided and it is often be found in a fantastical interpretation of history. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/fantasy-in-middle-eastern-nation-making/ Credit: Adobe Stock

Why do humans accumulate ideas, knowledge and technologies while other animals are seemingly stick doing the same thing over and over never getting better? Rather than being a question of raw intelligence, it is in fact largely down to luck, trial and error and copying others. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/you-are-not-as-clever-as-you-think/ Credit: Buyenlarge/Getty Images

Voltaire predicted that religion would be defunct in fifty year's time. Karl Marx called it the opium of the masses and Nietzsche declared that God is dead. Adrian Wooldridge is now saying that He's back. From the rise of Islamic extremism to American evangelism, the twenty-first century is seeing a religious renaissance. Read by Leighton Pugh. Credit: Tuul & Bruno Morandi via Getty Images

Studying the evolution of Austria in the 20th century offers deep insight into essential Western political categories. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/austria-nation-state-or-empire/ Credit: Adobe Stock

The story of how, over the course of three generations, the royal dynasty of Wessex went from near oblivion to fashioning a kingdom that still endures today is the most remarkable and momentous in the island's history. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/aethelstan-the-king-who-forged-a-united-kingdom-of-england/ Credit: Public domain

The early modern Italian republics are often portrayed as models of bad government. But the fusion of civic humanism and Christianity they championed endures to this day. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/in-defence-of-the-city-state/ Credit: Alinari Archives/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Nationalism is often thought of as a modern development - but its traces can be found in antiquity. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/did-nationalism-exist-in-the-classical-world/ Credit: Wiki Creative Commons

The influenza pandemic behaved much like the conflict itself - picking out the young and fit before their time. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/counting-the-cost-of-the-1918-19-pandemic/ Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Niccolo Machiavelli, Renaissance statesman and political theorist, saw factional politics as essential to the prosperity of the Roman Empire and his native Florence. Are today's partisan divisions as beneficial? Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/machiavelli-and-the-benefits-of-civil-strife/ Credit: Icom Images / Alamy Stock Photo

The Victorians saw Plato's Republic as an indispensable guide to reform of the public sphere - we should follow their lead. Read by Leighton Pugh. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/leadership-in-crisis-why-the-west-needs-plato-more-than-ever/ Credit: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images