The EI Podcast

Paul Lay speaks to Phil Tinline, author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy, about the variety and violence of a country built on high ideals and low conspiracies.
Image: The interior of the United States Capitol. Credit: Alamy

Russia is a Near Eastern country now subordinated to East Asia. But Stephen Kotkin argues that historically it has prospered most when tied closely to Europe.
Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/where-is-russias-place-in-the-world/.
Image: Map of Russia, 1562. Credit: Alamy

What does Christ’s Kingdom owe to the culture of the Roman Empire? Tim Whitmarsh speaks to EI’s Alastair Benn about his new book, Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity.

Image: A statue of Augustus Caesar in Turin. Credit: Alamy

The filmmaker Jean Eustache’s interest in rural France and his sardonic scepticism about the May ’68 ideologues mark him out from his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Read the original essay here: https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/jean-eustache-the-outsider-who-reshaped-french-cinema/. 
Image: The film director Jean Eustache. Credit: Alamy

Margaret MacMillan speaks to EI’s Jack Dickens about how wars – and attempts to bring about peace – have shaped every era of human history. 
Image: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 1945. Credit: Alamy