The EI Podcast (Engelsberg Ideas)

On this, the first episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus speaks to the historian Tom Holland about the relationship between reality and art in the age of a pandemic.

Hosted by Mattias Hessérus.
With Tom Holland.
Produced by Nick Hilton for Podot.

On this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus speaks to the maritime historian Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization, about the history of quarantine, how pandemics have affected trade and travel in the past, and whether globalisation can survive the current moment.

Hosted by Mattias Hessérus.
With Lincoln Paine.
Produced by Nick Hilton for Podot.

On this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus is joined by the historian and author Andrew Roberts to look through the careers of great figures like Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher (as well as some of history's great villains, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin) and see how they handled the pressure of a crisis.

History Lessons is an Engelsberg Ideas podcast.

Hosted by Mattias Hessérus.
With Andrew Roberts.
Produced by Nick Hilton for Podot.

How did the West land in, what we might politely call, a 'sub-optimal' condition? And is a revival of the West feasible? To discuss these questions Iain Martin is joined by Peter Frankopan and David Frum.

This is an Engeslberg Ideas podcast.

In this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hesserus and Jessica Frazier are in conversation about the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies of crisis. Is the desire for a return to ’normal’ inherently western? What can we learn from narratives of rebirth? And, was the global lockdown a mass-participation yogic experiment?

In this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hesserus is joined by Alexander Lee to discuss Machiavelli’s life and works. Was he always an adept politician?  Was he as immoral as is often claimed?

Iain Martin with guests Adrian Wooldridge and Vernon Bogdanor discusses the covid crisis and the long-term impact that it might have on the development of the West.

Over 40,000 books have been written on JFK since his assassination, yet none have succeeded in getting behind the myth of Camelot. Join Mattias Hessérus in discussion with Fredrik Logevall on the making of the man who enchanted America.

Mattias Hessérus is in conversation with Helen Fry on the ingenious exploits of MI9 – the secret service for escape and evasion.

Mattias Hessérus is in conversation with John Ferris, the historian 'behind the enigma' of Britain's signals intelligence agency.

Covid-19 heralds the end of our interconnected world. We'll need wise leaders to navigate what comes next. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/this-crisis-has-the-capacity-to-be-apocalyptic/

Credit: Getty Images

The Romans have so much to teach us about what it means to live in a society in crisis. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/survival-lessons-from-ancient-rome/

Credit: Thomas Cole / Public domain

Forget the seduction of grand theories and presentist moral judgments. To learn the lessons of the past, the great foreign policy analysts of our age must rediscover the art of historical discernment. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-case-for-applied-history/

Credit: BLM Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

The films of John Hughes updated the American Dream for a new generation, and his complex legacy helps us understand what went so wrong. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/john-hughes-and-the-making-and-unmaking-of-the-american-dream/

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London's response to its last plague epidemic involved close collaboration between crown, City and parish. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/living-with-the-great-plague-of-1665/

Credit: Culture Club / Getty Images

The constitutional order is changing as citizens become alienated and demand more say. Americans must take care that their habits of law are not swept away. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-government-of-laws/

Credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

The Covid-19 crisis has accentuated all the geopolitical fault lines of the past decade. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/geopolitics-pandemic-geopolitical-conflict/

Credit: Adobe Stock

Amid the tumult of the 1970s, it appeared the traditional country house had gone into irreversible decline - but it was too early to write it off. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/upstairs-downstairs-demolished-the-changing-fate-of-the-english-country-house/

Credit: The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images

Thucydides saw plague as an opportunity to improve the health of society. But history shows that pandemics have a way of disrupting medical and social progress. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/challenging-the-great-reset-theory-of-pandemics

Credit: Bettmann

To argue that Margaret Thatcher attacked the post-war dream is to caricature, not illuminate, her importance to British history. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/continuity-thatcher-rescuing-a-complex-leader-from-historical-cliche/

Credit: John Downing/Getty Images

As a result of President Erdogan's embrace of two interlinked geopolitical concepts, 'Strategic Depth' and 'Blue Homeland', Turkey faces international isolation. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/new-turkeys-old-politics/

Credit: Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This period of turbulence could turn today's twenty-somethings into the leaders of a new liberal revolution. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/meet-the-zoomer-generation/

Credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

The tension between independence and compliance is everywhere in society – but in medicine, reason must come before rules. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/covid-19-and-the-moral-case-for-personal-judgement/

Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images

Beijing wants to foster a world where Chinese standards replace those of the post-1945 US-led system. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/chinese-china-the-great-uncoupling/

Credit: Feng Li/Getty Images

Despite globalisation, the nation state retains its privileged position in world politics. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-world-of-nations-and-states-is-here-to-stay/

Credit: AMA/Corbis via Getty Images

Empty city London had its harbingers in literature and history. How will it emerge from its isolation? Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/pandemics-and-the-metropolis-city-lockdown-london/

Credit: 1000 Words / Shuttersotck

Social upheaval has often been a catalyst for artistic change - the Renaissance was no exception. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/crisis-and-the-creation-of-great-art/

Credit: Mauro Magliani for Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence/Alinari 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

Karl Marx was wrong about revolutions - in practice, they beget Caesars and Napoleons. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/history-shows-revolutions-are-a-disaster/

Credit: Andrew Maclear/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

As the largest country in the world, Russia's might past and present has an inherent link to its geopolitics. But since the decline of the Soviet Union, Moscow's eyes are constantly straying beyond the national borders. In Russia, expansion is often regarded as a means of self-defence.  

Credit: Tommy E Trenchard / Alamy Stock Photo

While the US remains the sole reigning super power, the rise of China adds complexity to the current world order. Geostrategic conflict is inevitable, but mutual economic interdependence can help manage that conflict and keep it from spiralling out of control.

 Credit: Christian Ohde / Alamy Stock Photo

While at one point in time the idea that socialist economies would ultimately prevail over capitalism was quite a widespread view the fate of socialist states over the past hundred years have demonstrated that they enjoy only two possible paths: authoritarianism or anarchy.

Credit: Shotshop GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Peering into the hearts and minds those living four thousand years ago is an impossible task. However, when it comes to the worship of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, it seems clear to be, quite literally, a labour of love and fear.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/uruk-and-the-origins-of-the-sacred-economy/

Credit: Print Collector via Getty Images

The US once enjoyed the esteemed position of being the 'city on the hill', a beacon of hope and an example to the rest of the world. Post-9/11, however, the superpower's conduct in the Middle East has left its reputation tarnished. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/how-us-policy-failure-post-9-11-undermined-international-order/

 Credit: James May/Alamy

Once established, Roman exceptionalism and empire needed to be justified and maintained. The practical application of mythology was one way in which this was achieved. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/roman-geopolitics-an-exercise-in-myth-making/

Credit: Fred de Noyelle via Getty

The line between disinformation, propaganda and fake news is often blurred. This is especially the case when it is unclear whether these untruths or half truths are being disseminated by the 'good' or 'bad' guys. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/disinformation-in-the-information-age/

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Flags have become synonymous with nationhood, character, spirit, and power. In an age of renewed nationalism, their power should not be underestimated.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-flag-wars-are-here-to-stay/

Credit: Anthony WALLACE / AFP via Getty Images

So-called civilisational states, including Russia, China and India, invoke fake histories to justify and buttress their contemporary political settlements. But those who cannot let go of the past are always at risk of finding themselves imprisoned by it. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-fake-history-of-civilisational-states/

Credit: PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty Images

Acts of extreme self-sacrifice – such as suicide bombing – are not aberrations. They tell us something about our deepest instincts for group loyalty. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-dark-side-to-loving-a-group/

 Credit: TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP via Getty Images

If a peace deal is not reached, all the key ingredients are present for Yemen to become a failed state. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/making-sense-of-the-yemen-war/

Credit: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images

Sea power derives from resources, a direct interest in sea-based trade, and pressure exerted by enemies. In the modern age, the importance of these factors in international affairs remains paramount. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Credit: Lev FedoseyevTASS via Getty Images

Portugal’s commercial dominance of large swathes of the world lasted little more than a century but the images, transmissions, and trades that it engendered left a significant and long-lasting influence. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Credit: Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma via Getty Images

As Jesuit missionaries spread further across the globe, the order’s founder wanted to ensure that its members remained connected. The result of this was an unparalleled network of knowledge which superseded religious tensions. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/jesuit/

Credit: Wikipedia Commons/ Bibliothèque Universtaire Moretus Plantin

The Hindu tradition of Radha and Krishna calls us to see passion as the kernel of all religion. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-gods-in-love/

Credit: Heritage Arts/Heritage Images via Getty Images

While Christianity may strive to sing in a single voice, no one modern denomination ought to claim a monopoly on the truth. The region's history is in fact far more eclectic. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/reassessing-christian-history/

Credit: Yogi Black / Alamy Stock Photo

Islam — unlike Christianity — may not have a central motif of pain, sin and suffering, but it reveals so much about what it means to live with adversity. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/suffering-the-price-of-being-alive-an-islamic-perspective/

Credit: Dmitrii Melnikov / Alamy Stock Photo

For more than thirty years, the US has sought to avoid deploying ground forces into protracted conflict. It has nevertheless done so in almost every single one of those years. Perhaps it is time to accept reality. Read by Leighton Pugh

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/americas-problem-with-unconventional-warfare/

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In a religious system which presupposed a covenant not just between God and the individual Jew, but between God and Israel as a nation, the sense of communal solidarity had an abiding impact, regardless of the differences between denominations. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Credit: Maraike Hofer / Alamy Stock Photo

For the past sixty years, the use of nuclear weapons has become unthinkable. But with every conflict there comes a point where the unthinkable becomes possible. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/can-nuclear-deterrence-preserve-the-long-peace-between-major-powers/

Credit: RBM Vintage Images / Alamy Stock Photo

The condemnation of the annexation of the Crimea was unified and strong, but the sanctions that followed lacked any real bite. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/containing-and-deterring-russia-can-europe-act-strategically/

Credit: Nikolay Vinokurov / Alamy Stock Photo

Traditional geopolitical solutions (accommodation or military containment) are unlikely to work with Putin’s Russia. Instead the West should pursue a unified geo-economic strategy. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-carrot-and-the-stick-geo-economics-and-russian-revisionism/

Credit: Klaus Oskar Bromberg / Alamy Stock Photo

Throughout the ages, oracles, journalists and political scientists have attempted to guess the course fate may take. But should they fail to take the specifics, particularly specific individuals, into account, they are doomed to fail. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-importance-of-the-individual-in-history/

Credit: CBW / Alamy Stock Photo

The Lawrence legend continues to win new devotees while his pragmatic contribution to warfare is neglected. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/lawrence-of-arabia-on-war-how-the-past-haunts-the-present/

Credit: Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

France, like all countries, is haunted by events and mistakes of times past. These ghosts will guide modern policy until they are overridden and laid to rest. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/modern-france-and-the-ghosts-of-the-past/

Credit: Guillaume Louyot / Alamy Stock Photo protests

Humanity has come quite some way in the past 200,000 years but are we really anything more than primates with a few million more neurons than our closest relatives? Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/why-16-billion-cortical-neurons-are-not-enough/

Credit: Martin Harvey via Getty Images

While there may have been striking similarities between the Gospel of Thomas and those of the four Evangelists, closer examination reveals a subtle yet crucially different perspective on salvation. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-gospel-of-thomas-casting-a-new-light-on-early-christianity/

Credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

Love has become widely seen as a democracy of salvation open to all. The reality is more complex. Is our religion of love doing more harm than good? Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/is-our-religion-of-love-doing-more-harm-than-good/

Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

It is not just politics that is beset by tribalism. The social sciences are also vulnerable to in-group bias. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/tribal-bias-from-the-wild-to-the-laboratory-5/

Credit: melita / Alamy Stock Photo

Demagogues thrive if moderate politicians flatter citizens into an unrealistic sense of their own greatness. Read by Leighton Pugh.
 
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/democratic-crisis-lessons-from-ancient-athens-4/

Credit: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

During the Cold War, the British Joint Intelligence Committee was charged with forecasting the actions of states behind the Iron Curtain and the rest of the world. Its record was patchy – the Brits were repeatedly taken by surprise throughout the 20th century. Read by Leighton Pugh.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-joint-intelligence-committee-reading-the-russian-mindset/

Credit: The Central Intelligence Agency via Wikipedia Commons

While the Islamic State’s savvy media presence may have overshadowed that of al-Qaeda over the past decade, the efforts of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operating in war-torn Yemen show the group remains a long-term threat.

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-war-for-hearts-and-minds-the-evolution-of-al-qaedas-media-strategy/

Credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

As hostilities with Russia increase, we must again ask ourselves what drives human beings to conflict, especially after an era of peace. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Credit: Eddie Gerald / Alamy Stock Photo

Land is the silent, steady, partner in the messy realm of politics and national divides between monarchs. Read by Leighton Pugh. You can find the essay featured in this episode here: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/spirit-lands-and-tyrant-kings-differing-tales-of-statehood/

Political and economic concerns were as critical as environmental and geographic factors in forging the unity of the Mongol Empire. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Genghis Khan in combat. Miniature from Jami' al-tawarikh, ca 1430. Found in the collection of Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Artist. Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The worst form of ignorance in politics is an inflated opinion of one’s own wisdom. In matters of moral judgement, authority-dependence carries grave risks. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: French painter David's The Death of Socrates. Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Crises of knowledge precipitate drives towards specialisation. In our digital age we still need polymaths. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: This chart is taken from the book 'Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae' which was published in 1646 by the Jesuit scientist and inventor, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). Credit: SSPL/Getty Images

The First World War fundamentally altered our understanding of strategy — we should heed the insights of the era's leading thinkers and generals. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: First World War Commanders looking at a battle plan. Painting by Francois Flameng (1856-1923), 1916. Army Museum, Paris. Credit: Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images

The West, more specifically the United States, with its major allies alongside it, has been chasing the 'fun wars' for forty years and serially coming up empty. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: British Prime Minister Tony Blair greets an ethnic Albanian by holding up his hand in central Pristina, Yugoslavia during a one-day visit Saturday July 31, 1999. It was Blair's first visit to Kosovo since NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. (Photo by David Brauchli)

The era in world history that began with the fall of the Soviet Union is drawing to its close. The post-Cold War Eurasian settlement that the United States and its allies imposed after 1990 has three big challengers - Russia, China and Iran. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: A symbol of American power, the National Capitol in Washington, DC. Credit: Christian Offenberg / Alamy Stock Photo.

The Romans burnt Carthage’s books and buildings – but ‘Punic’ identity remained influential throughout Antiquity. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Print of ancient Carthage. Source: Wiki Creative Commons

Geography and politics are closely intertwined, although that no more means that all geography is political than that all politics is geographical. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: An American map of the West Coast of Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas, 'including the colony of Liberia'. Credit: Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

With forces such as identity politics and supra-national bodies gaining traction across Europe, the concept of the nation state has never been more important. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: A painting of the Dutch envoy Adriaan Pauw entering Münster around 1646 for the peace negotiations, painted by Gerard ter Borch. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Stadtmuseum Münster

The crucifixion lodged suffering at the heart of Christianity: to suffer was to be like Christ. This reframing of suffering had far-reaching consequences for world history. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: Jesus Christ on the Cross with St. Mary and St John, painted by Albrecht Altdorfer, circa 1512. Credit: Niday Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo.

A history of the nineteenth century tells not just of newly-formed nations, but of newly-developing nationalism. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image: Carving Up The World A satirical cartoon by James Gillray, showing British Prime Minister William Pitt and the French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, carving up the world between them. Entitled 'The Plumb Pudding in Danger' - pub. 26th February 1805

Rather than protecting individual data privacy, the fate of democracy in our networked age might depend on establishing a new, radically transparent contract of trust between government and citizens. Estonia is leading the way. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Churches, other landmarks and old buildings at the Old Town in Tallinn, Estonia. Credit: Tuomas Lehtinen / Alamy Stock Photo

East Asia, especially China's, economic rise in the latter half of the twentieth century was sudden and impressive but now, growth is stalling. This, combined with the rivalry between the US and China and sovereignty disputes has destabilised the region. Read by Leighton Pugh.

This essay was first published in 2016.

High-rise buildings replace old residences in  Zhejiang, China. Credit: Charles O. Cecil / Alamy Stock Photo

While critical theory is not without its uses, it is time that we take a more constructive approach to social issues. ‘Mistake theory’ can offer a useful lens. Read by Leighton Pugh

Students graduating from Birmingham University, England. Credit: Malcolm McDougall Photography / Alamy Stock Photo.

Westphalia’s legacy of compromise and conditional sovereignty shows the way to peace in the Middle East. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 1648. Found in the collection of the National Gallery, London. Credit: Fine art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The Holy Roman Empire was neither a nation state nor indeed a conventional empire. Instead, its inhabitants were unified through a web of legal rights. Read by Leighton Pugh.

A miniature of the Treaty of Verdun, 843. Emperor Louis I (right) blessing the division of the Frankish Empire in 843 into West Francia, Middle Francia, and East Francia. Credit: Wikimedia commons.

Garibaldi’s retreat to his home in Caprera spawned a liberal-nationalist ideal of statesmanship that would live long in the European imagination. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) in his signature red shirt, gazing towards his beloved Italy from a cliff edge on the island of Caprera off the coast of Sicily. Illustration c1920. Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Globalisation may appear to be a cornerstone of modernity but humans have always both craved and feared connection, be it social, commercial, spiritual or scientific. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

A 15th Century illustration from a Turkish manuscript depicting a surgical operation. Medical understanding was an important element of the exchange of knowledge between the Islamic world and Europe. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The crusades, jihad, and wars in defence of intangible ideals all have their origins in a short-lived conflict in the 6th century BC. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Stone relief from the palace of Ashurbanipal, A detail from the battle of Til Tuba. Teumman the Elamite king is trying to escape but his chariot crashes. His horses panic, while he is trying to escape with an arrow in his back, supported by his son. Assyrian. Late Assyrian, c 645 BC. Nineveh, Assyria, Ancient Iraq. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

In the Cold War the Kremlin tried to convince foreign audiences its disinformation campaigns were real, today the aim seems to be different. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image description: Soviet poster of a tank on Red Square. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo.

Navigating politico-religious disagreements in a spirit of civility is nigh-on impossible in eras in which the meaning of civility itself is contested. How do we speak to each other civilly in a time of incivility? 

Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image description: Girolamo Savonarola's execution on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1498. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

For the United States, geopolitics has always been about national identity, even in an era of globalisation. Perhaps it always will be.

Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image description: The Marine Corps War Memorial, also known as Iwo Jima Memorial. Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images

Augustine’s seminal book was written in the context of the Roman Empire, but it remains ever-relevant. Read by Leighton Pugh. 

Image description: St Augustine / Wiki Public domain.

Is demography destiny? Shifting patterns in population have marked history, drive political change and sharpen cultural divides. 

In our latest episode of Worldview, host Adam Boulton is joined by Paul Morland, the UK's leading demographer, Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist and author of Japan's Far More Female Future, and Richard Assheton, the Times' and Sunday Times' West Africa correspondent.

Image description: A group of elderly women in Kyoto, Japan. Credit: Trevor Mogg / Alamy Stock Photo.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the worlds of art, manufacturing, medicine, even the language we use, at a bewildering speed. Should we fear or welcome it? What are its risks and rewards? And could it ever come to outpace the human mind? 

In our latest episode of Worldview, host Adam Boulton is joined by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis of New York University, and Susan Schneider, Director of the Centre for Future Mind, to discuss the profound cultural, philosophical and ethical implications of AI. Meanwhile, journalists Hugo Rifkind and Gaby Wood consider how AI will revolutionise the media and publishing industries. 

Image description: An auction at Sotheby's, London, selling AI art created by Mario Klingemann, March 2019. Credit: Malcolm Park/Alamy Live News.

It is now clear that genetically editing human beings is not only possible, but increasingly simple. The ethical considerations of this development on the other hand remain complex. To discuss the mapping and editing of the human genome, Adam Boulton is joined by Dr George Church, the 'father of genomics', and Kevin Davies, science author, journalist and the executive editor of the CRISPR journal.

Image description: Genetic editing and gene research in vitro. Credit: Brain light / Alamy Stock Photo.