alastairbenn.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The quest for the age of the earth | Lizzie Hibbert engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-q...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Europe’s reckoning with history | Vladislav Zubok engelsbergideas.com/notebook/eur...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Goya in conversation with Cézanne | @mathewlyons.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/goya...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

How the state can do more for less | David Cowan engelsbergideas.com/essays/how-t...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I sat down with David Omand, Pauline Blistène and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss the myth and magic of spy fiction:

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Are we living through a golden age of espionage drama? 🗣️ @alastairbenn.bsky.social is joined by David Omand, Pauline Blistène and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss the enduring popularity of the spy in fiction. 🎙️The myth and magic of spy fiction | EI Podcasts audioboom.com/posts/865349...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

As Ukraine confronts its western partners' hesitations and appeasements, Israel offers the best lens for understanding the country's future geopolitics. Ukraine alone | @ccaryl.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ukr...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

What happened to the politician’s moustache? | @ljukic.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/what-...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Fascinating piece on US-Greenland relationship by James G. Wilson via @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-d...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Enjoyed this. engelsbergideas.com/essays/insid...

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

On squalor | Jenny McCartney engelsbergideas.com/essays/on-sq...

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Will Trump’s Golden Age be a Gilded one? | Michael Lind engelsbergideas.com/notebook/wil...

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

A 1945 land swap between Britain and the Soviet Union shows the enduring consequences for local populations and landscapes when leaders redraw the map. A great power carve up | @suzanneraine.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/a-g...

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

In which I look through a Deepseek lens to consider the dichotomous state of China's economy, and, indeed, the curious case of China’s innovation paradox engelsbergideas.com/notebook/chi...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

China’s innovation paradox | @george17.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/chi...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Like its Soviet predecessor, Russia’s nuclear energy industry is a tool of state power pursuing military and foreign policy goals with ruthless ambition. Russia’s global grip on nuclear energy | Paul Josephson engelsbergideas.com/notebook/rus...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Good explainer why it was more a hyperbole than a sputnik moment. engelsbergideas.com/notebook/chi... Also there’s more to ‘innovation’ than just a word to hawk around. Some is efficiency, scale and cost - chinas strength. Some is tech frontiers - America’s.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

The making of Oscar Wilde | Malcolm Forbes engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Concentration camp prisoners turned music into a powerful act of resistance against the Nazis. Music in Auschwitz | Benjamin Poore engelsbergideas.com/reviews/musi...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Is the era of mass literacy over? And what might a post-literate society look like? 🗣️ @alastairbenn.bsky.social is joined by James Marriott and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss literacy and its uses. 🎙️The dawn of the post-literate society | EI Podcasts podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Is the era of mass literacy over? And what might a post-literate society look like? 🗣️ @alastairbenn.bsky.social is joined by James Marriott and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss literacy and its uses. 🎙️The dawn of the post-literate society | EI Podcasts audioboom.com/posts/864485...

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

JMW Turner lived in an age of extraordinary mechanical advances. He was ever alive to the opportunities that new technologies afforded the arts. Turner’s genius for technology | Andrew Wilton engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tur...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

EI Talks... the case for Class–Engelsberg Ideas Podcasts – Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

Some thoughts from me on the Cuban Missile Crisis vs our own times.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

America’s retreat from free trade | Samuel Gregg engelsbergideas.com/reviews/amer...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

The use and abuse of the Cuban Missile Crisis | @radchenko.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-u...

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

The Italians and their cars: the history of a fatal obsession | @tobiasjones.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Mel Brooks described David Lynch as ‘Jimmy Stewart from Mars’. ‘In Lynch’s world both Bedford Falls and Pottersville, Oz and Kansas exist alongside one another, always capable of bleeding into each other,’ I wrote about Lynch for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Agnes Callard's study of the life of Socrates is a compelling and elegant manifesto for a mode of philosophy that is less an academic pursuit of abstract concepts than a shared inquiry into how we might navigate the world. How to think like Socrates | Guy Stagg engelsbergideas.com/reviews/how-...

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Israel’s elusive peace | @jackfdickens.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/isr...

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Germany’s present is not Germany’s past | Katja Hoyer engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ger...

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

The triumph and tragedy of Yukio Mishima | @drchrisharding.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-t...

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

In Lynch’s universe, both Bedford Falls and Pottersville, Oz and Kansas exist alongside one another, always capable of bleeding into each other. The upside-down world of David Lynch | @murielzagha.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

For several years, revisionist powers have challenged the post-Cold War order. Now, as the second Trump administration takes office, the United States and other status quo powers are counter-attacking. The status quo powers strike back | William Erich Ellison engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

This is a picture of Dylan as Goethe’s greatest wanderer, Chaucer’s man in the crowd, who sees everything and sets out to tell us all the condition of each one of us. Do read this (before seeing the excellent film) by @alastairbenn.bsky.social at the ever-more-essential @engelsbergideas.bsky.social

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

My own view of Dylan:

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

No other living artist has so successfully and for so long lit up the vastness of the American experiment as Bob Dylan, as an ambitious, knowing biopic reveals. My latest for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/reviews/bob-...

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

No other living artist has so successfully and for so long lit up the vastness of the American experiment as Bob Dylan, as an ambitious, knowing biopic reveals. Bob Dylan, the last of the best | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/bob-...

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Wonderful piece by Mathew here:

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Presidents need to be challenged—yet a top team composed entirely, or almost entirely, of staffers is the least likely to perform this function. Overruling their counsel is all too easy. Here, @kschake.bsky.social and I offer our thoughts on the phenomenon: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/a-t...

submitted 35 days ago • 8 comments

Listen to a thoughtful EI Talk: The case for Classics w/ @armanddangour.bsky.social & @daisydunn.bsky.social & @alastairbenn.bsky.social @paullay.bsky.social via @engelsbergideas.bsky.social 🏺 #AncientBluesky #Latin #Edusky #classics #Greek #education podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

submitted 38 days ago • 1 comment

Is the study of Latin in peril? And what does the future hold for the ancient inheritance? I sat down with @daisydunn.bsky.social, @armanddangour.bsky.social and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss the value of ancient languages: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

Is the study of Latin in peril? And what does the future hold for the ancient inheritance? 🗣️ @alastairbenn.bsky.social is joined by @daisydunn.bsky.social, @armanddangour.bsky.social, and @paullay.bsky.social to discuss the value of ancient languages. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

Inside the world of medieval espionage | Jonathan Sumption engelsbergideas.com/essays/insid...

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

in depth account of the roots of the democratic crisis in South Korea, and particularly in terms of those aspects of Yoon's personality and his past experience that led to the crisis engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-r...

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

Pablo Larraín’s biopic of the great diva Maria Callas asks whether the famous and the great get to write their own scripts. Maria Callas made her own myths | @amwilson.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/mari...

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

The public's appetite for intellectual stimulation is now being met by podcasts. The risks to the written word may prove existential. My latest for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/pod...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

The public's appetite for intellectual stimulation is now being met by podcasts. The risks to the written word may prove existential. Podcasts v the written word | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/pod...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

My thoughts on the continuing #SouthKorea crisis: both its origins and its repercussions both at home and abroad.

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments