Meritocracy Week

It’s Meritocracy Week on Engelsberg Ideas. Leading writers explore the global history of merit in culture and politics. Do meritocracies deliver on their promise? Is meritocracy working? Can the concept be fixed?

Podcast episodes

Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine were crowned Emperor and Empress of France on 2 December 1804.

EI Weekly Podcast: Episode 206

EI Weekly Listen — Jeremy Jennings on liberty in the shadow of Napoleon Bonaparte

Benjamin Constant’s considered response not only to the mass murder inflicted by the Frenc…

January 17, 2025

Giovanni Paolo Panini's painting from circa 1730, The Coliseum amongst Roman Ruins.

EI Talks… Podcast: Episode 59

EI Talks… the case for Classics

Is the study of Latin in peril? And what does the future hold for the ancient inheritance?…

January 16, 2025

1970s commercial airline advert.

EI Weekly Podcast: Episode 205

EI Weekly Listen — Francis J. Gavin on how 1970s California created the modern world

What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we …

January 10, 2025

Guittone

EI Portraits Podcast: Episode 22

EI Portraits — Alexander Lee on Guittone d’Arezzo, Dante’s forgotten muse

At a time of moral and political crisis, the medieval poet pioneered a daring and emotive …

January 10, 2025

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial. Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

EI Weekly Podcast: Episode 204

EI Weekly Listen — Alexander McCall Smith on the writer’s right to speak freely

While we may think we have moved beyond the censorship of the past, writers’ artistic free…

December 20, 2024

Photograph of American troops running towards a chopper during the Vietnam War.

EI Talks… Podcast: Episode 58

EI Talks… the Vietnam War with Fredrik Logevall

EI’s Angus Reilly discusses the history and legacy of the Vietnam War with Fredrik Logeval…

December 19, 2024