Podcast appearances and mentions of William Dalrymple

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India's cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road' is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra Modi's new favourite author.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India's cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road' is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra Modi's new favourite author.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India's cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road' is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra Modi's new favourite author.

Building on his seminal lecture ‘The Shoah After Gaza' (LRB 21 March 2024) and his earlier books From the Ruins of Empire and The Age of Anger, novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra's latest work The World After Gaza (Fern Press) seeks to place the current crisis in Gaza and Palestine within the broader context of the troubled and tragic history of colonialism and anticolonialism. ‘A brilliant book,' writes William Dalrymple, ‘as thoughtful, scholarly and subtle as it is brave and original. The World After Gaza does what great writing is meant to do: to remind us of what it is to be human, to help us feel another's pain, to reach out and make connections across the trenches of race, colour and religion.'Mishra is in conversation with curator and producer Gareth Evans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Circumstance made him a legend of the quizzing world, but Siddhartha Basu is a man of many parts. He joins Amit Varma in episode 420 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about life, India, the art of asking questions and the answers he has found. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Siddhartha Basu on Wikipedia, Twitter, Instagram and IMDb. 2. Tree of Knowledge, DigiTok. 3. Quizzitok on YouTube. 4. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 5. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 6. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 7. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen featuring Ramachandra Guha: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 9. The Life and Times of KP Krishnan — Episode 355 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. The Life and Times of Vir Sanghvi — Episode 236 of The Seen and the Unseen. 11. Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity — Manu Pillai. 12. The Forces That Shaped Hinduism — Episode 405 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 13. How to Become a Tyrant -- Narrated by Peter Dinklage. 14. What Is Populism? -- Jan-Werner Müller. 15. The Populist Playbook -- Episode 42 of Everything is Everything. 16. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- Richard Fleischer. 17. The Hedgehog And The Fox — Isaiah Berlin. 18. Trees of Delhi : A Field Guide -- Pradip Krishen. 19. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 20. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 21. Stage.in. 22. Dance Like a Man -- Mahesh Dattani. 23. How Old Are You? -- Rosshan Andrrews. 24. The Mehta Boys -- Boman Irani. 25. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- James Joyce. 26. Massey Sahib -- Pradip Krishen. 27. Derek O'Brien talks to Siddhartha Basu -- Episode 6 of the Quizzitok Podcast. 28. Kwizzing with Kumar Varun. 29. Ivanhoe, Treasure Island and Black Beauty. 30. Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, TS Eliot and Vivekananda. 31. Ramayana and Mahabharata -- C Rajagopalachari. 32. Paradise Lost -- John Milton. 33. Morte d'Arthur -- Alfred Tennyson. 34. Death of a Salesman -- Arthur Miller. 35. Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Mukul Kesavan, Rukun Advani, Vikram Seth, Shashi Tharoor, Jhumpa Lahiri, I Allan Sealy, Arundhati Roy and William Dalrymple. 36. The Trotter-nama -- I Allan Sealy. 37. The Everest Hotel -- I Allan Sealy. 38. The Life and Times of Altu-Faltu -- Ranjit Lal. 39. Mr Beast on YouTube. 40. The Spectacular Life of Prahlad Kakar — Episode 414 of The Seen and the Unseen. 41. Ramki and the Ocean of Stories -- Episode 415 of The Seen and the Unseen. 42. Adolescence -- Created by Stephen Graham & Jack Thorne. 43. Anora -- Sean Baker. 44. Jerry Seinfeld on the results of the Seinfeld pilot. 45. Scam 1992 -- Hansal Mehta. 46. Dahaad -- Created by Reema Kagti & Zoya Akhtar. 47. The Delhi Walla -- Mayank Austen Soofi. 48. Flood of Fire -- Amitav Ghosh. 49. The Shadow Lines -- Amitav Ghosh. 50. The God of Small Things -- Arundhati Roy. 51. Shillong Chamber Choir. 52. The Waste Land -- TS Eliot. 53. Omkara, Maqbool and Haider -- Vishal Bhardwaj. 54. A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens. 55. William Shakespeare and Henry James. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Your Time Starts Now' by Simahina.

Historian and broadcaster William Dalrymple (“The Company Quartet“, “Empire“) joins the podcast to discuss his latest book “The Golden Road“. A survey covering from antiquity to the early medieval period, the book seeks to address India's far-reaching (and often forgotten) influence across the entirety of Eurasia, from tracking the spread of religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, investigating the growing evidence of Indo-Roman trade, and even down to the invention of “Arabic” numerals based on Indian scripts and mathematics. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2025/06/15/interview-the-golden-road-how-ancient-india-transformed-the-world-with-william-dalrymple/) William Dalrymple: https://williamdalrymple.com/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/golden-road-9781639734146/ https://x.com/DalrympleWill Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Patreon (https://patreon.com/TheHellenisticAgePodcast) Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Embark on an epic journey with Tristan Hughes and acclaimed author William Dalrymple as they unravel the enigma of the Kushan Empire, the ancient superpower of Central Asia. Together they tell the riveting stories behind the Empire's rise in Bactria (modern-day Afghanistan), their astonishing spread into Northern India, and the profound impact of Indian religious traditions on their culture.An unforgettable exploration of one of history's most fascinating yet overlooked empires.MOREThe Origins of Buddhismhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/52mGOQenJdnN8NvYDDYstiOrigins of the Silk Roadhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/5GBcXUsq6V54S2ywICDbM9Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

How is the unique narrative of the Ark of the Covenant deeply rooted in Ethiopian culture and tradition?Embark on a journey to the Kingdom of Aksum with host Tristan Hughes and archeologist Dil Singh Basanti, located in present-day northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. They discuss how fourth-century African merchants from Axum sailed from Eritrea to India, trading goods like ivory and gold for steel and spices. They uncover the secrets of Aksum's burial practices, including the monumental stele and the rituals that honoured the dead, and learn how the cosmopolitan port city of Adulis boomed with diverse religious influences, from Christianity to possible traces of Buddhism. This episode offers a captivating glimpse into daily life and the vast trade networks that made Aksum a powerful ancient empire.MOREThe Kingdom of Kushhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6QXTNyMH3Ov6UweDXEsf67The Romans and India with William Dalrymplehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/0RSacQ0ngYW2YjrE2UMeVFPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Tim Arstall, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

When the British left India in 1947, they decided to leave one lasting impression - divide the lands between two factions that had different views of the world. The partition of India and Pakistan had a large impact on the hills and valleys of Jammu and Kashmir. The most recent massacre in Pahalgam in Apr 2025 has left many of us wondering - why a conflict that began in 1947 still remains unresolved? I went back to the pages of Ramachandra Guha's 'India after Gandhi' to find answers to some of my questions. This episode is part 1 of 3, where I narrate the story of how this conflict began in 1947. Source material for my research1. 'India after Gandhi' by Ramachandra Guha2. Sarah Paine's lectures on the 'War for India'3. William Dalrymple's piece 'The Great Divide'4. Article in Awaz the Voice by Saquib Salim 'When brothers were pitted against each other'5. Tarekh Fatah's 'The Bloody Partition seen through a Pakistani's eyes'Read other pieces by Sangeetha on the 'Lighter Side' on Substack.Drop your questions or comments via email to hello@wsnt.in

William Dalrymple is a bestselling historian, award-winning broadcaster, and one of the world's most dynamic voices on colonial history. In this episode, Ami chats with the legendary India-based Scottish writer about his latest book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, which argues that India's intellectual and spiritual contributions have been foundational to the global world we live in today—and yet remain widely unacknowledged in the West.With warmth, humor, and piercing insight, William shares what it was like growing up the youngest of four brothers in an eccentric aristocratic family, how his radical Scottish nanny shaped his worldview, and why he believes India's greatest export isn't Bollywood or curry—but the number zero. Ami and William discuss how Indian ideas influenced everything from mathematics to religion, why Western education omits these facts, and how colonization played a role in that erasure.From buffets in Delhi to dancing in Goa, DJing at farmhouse parties to dinner with Aamir Khan, this episode blends deep history with cultural stories and unforgettable banter. From Shrubs to Shrines: William recounts a surreal night in Dallas giving a lecture at a house decorated with statues of Reagan, Thatcher, and Churchill. (2:52)Growing Up the Youngest: Why being the “love-bombed” youngest of four shaped William's personality—and how he finally made peace with his brother who beat him up. (5:27)Nerd Forever: William describes his lifelong love of history, how he made a career from a teenage obsession, and the unusual accessories he wore to study ancient churches. (10:17)History Through Two Lenses: The surprising influence of William's radical nanny and how it fueled his nuanced take on colonialism and the British Empire. (14:00)Why The Golden Road Matters: A crash course on how Indian mathematics, philosophy, and spirituality transformed Eurasia—and why Westerners still don't know it. (18:15)India's PR Problem: On WhatsApp uncles, Hindu helicopters, and why ancient India's brilliance was downplayed for colonial reasons (and cringed at by younger generations). (24:34)Religion Without Conquest: William explains how Hinduism and Buddhism spread across Asia through persuasion, not power. (28:46)Tuckered Out and Booked Out: Why William is more exhausted than ever thanks to his podcast Empire, his book tour, and a lifelong habit of overworking in gardens. (37:42) Connect with William Dalrymple:WebsiteInstagramFacebookX Let's talk Connect:Instagram This podcast is produced by Ginni Media.

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In light of the latest conflict between India and Pakistan, today's episode focuses on two books that examine India's ancient and recent history. First, ancient India was home to the exchange of goods and ideas that transformed the world, including the number system, heliocentrism, and Buddhism. In his book The Golden Road, historian William Dalrymple makes the case for India's centrality to the story of human civilization. In today's episode, the author speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about why this history isn't a larger part of our popular imagination. Then, we hear from Zara Chowdhary about The Lucky Ones, her first-person account of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat. In today's episode, she speaks with Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes about the aftermath of the Godhra train burning, Prime Minister Modi's role in the incident, and the dangers of releasing her book in this political moment.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today's episode of Bookwaves/Artwaves is preempted by special programming for KPFA's 2025 Spring Fund Drive. Mitch Jeserich speaks with historian and author William Dalrymple about his book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. His earlier books include The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. To support our mission and receive William Dalrymple's books as thank-you gifts, please donate here or call (800) 439-5732 (800-HEY-KPFA).   The post Special Spring Fund Drive Programming: How Ancient India Changed The World appeared first on KPFA.

The traditional notion of western civilization is premised on the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Other less Eurocentric historians, like the Silk Road author Peter Frankopan, point to the role of China in shaping classical Europe. But, in The Golden Road, the Scottish-Indian historian William Dalrymple, challenges this "Silk Road" narrative, arguing India was Rome's primary trading partner and spread its culture peacefully throughout Asia. Dalrymple, who has lived in India for the last 40 years, explains how ancient Indian mathematical innovations like the concept of zero and our number system radically transformed the world. In a far ranging conversation, the astonishingly erudite Dalrymple also discusses his meteoric career as a non-academic historian and podcaster, India's resurgence as a global power, and offers his take on the current tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Five Key Takeaways* Ancient India was a civilization equal to Greece, Egypt, and China, contributing pivotal mathematical innovations including zero, the numerical system we use today, and advanced astronomical calculations like determining the Earth's circumference and heliocentric universe model—all developed long before the West.* The popular "Silk Road" narrative is largely a modern myth created in the 1870s. In reality, Rome and India were major trading partners, not Rome and China, with extensive sea trade rather than overland routes.* India's historical global influence was achieved peacefully through "soft power" – spreading Buddhism, Hinduism, science, mathematics, and culture across Asia through merchants and monks rather than military conquest.* Despite being a British historian writing about a former British colony, Dalrymple has found remarkable success in India, becoming a bestselling author who has chosen to focus on writing accessible, well-researched histories rather than pursuing a traditional academic career.* The current India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir represents a dangerous flashpoint between nuclear powers that could escalate without diplomatic intervention, reflecting ongoing tensions that date back to 1947.William Dalrymple FRSL, FRGS, FRAS (born William Hamilton-Dalrymple on 20 March 1965) is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński and the Wolfson Prizes. He has been four times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World is the new book by the celebrated historian William Dalrymple. For listeners of Grand Tamasha, Dalrymple surely needs no introduction. He is the bestselling author of nine books, including The Last Mughal, The Anarchy, and City of Djinns. He is cofounder of the Jaipur Literature Festival and cohost of the wildly popular podcast, “Empire,” with Anita Anand.His new book, The Golden Road, highlights India's often forgotten role as a crucial economic fulcrum, and civilizational engine, at the heart of the ancient and early medieval worlds. It tells the story of the forgotten Indosphere and its multiple legacies.To talk more about his new book, William joins Milan from our studio in Washington, D.C. They discuss the reasons the Indosphere has been obscured from history, the alluring narrative of the Sinocentric “Silk Road,” and Buddhism's extraordinary journey around the world. Plus, the two discuss the deep penetration of the Hindu epics into Asia, India's scientific and mathematical discoveries, and whether an Indian mindset of cultural absorption and synthesis can be recovered.Episode notes:1. Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, “The Golden Road by William Dalrymple review – the rational case for ancient India's ingenuity,” The Guardian, September 15, 2024.2. William Dalrymple, “‘In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant': the hidden story of how ancient India shaped the west,” The Guardian, September 1, 2024.3. Willaim Dalrymple, “Vibrant, Cacophonous Buddhism,” New York Review of Books, September 21, 2023.

Fred and Herald are joined by the esteemed historian William Dalrymple for a fascinating discussion on India's role in economic history, from trade dominance in ancient times to mathematical breakthroughs and the birth of the modern number system. Disclaimer: https://www.research.hsbc.com/R/101/RlhtpSd. Stay connected and access free to view reports and videos from HSBC Global Research follow us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/hsbcresearch/ or click here: https://www.gbm.hsbc.com/insights/global-research.

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. In The Golden Road (Bloomsbury. 2025), William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. In The Golden Road (Bloomsbury. 2025), William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. In The Golden Road (Bloomsbury. 2025), William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Anita Anand, Historian and William Dalrymple, Historian

Tariffs—taxes on imports—have long been a powerful tool in economic policy, shaping global trade for centuries. But are they always harmful, or can they serve a strategic purpose?In this episode, we trace the history of tariffs from the British East India Company to modern trade disputes between the U.S., China, India, and Europe. William Dalrymple, in The Anarchy, writes about how Britain used tariffs to cripple India's textile industry while strengthening its own, showing how trade policy can be a tool of both economic growth and exploitation.The debate is complex: tariffs can protect domestic industries and address unfair trade practices, but they can also raise consumer prices, stifle innovation, and provoke retaliation. Are there cases where tariffs have strengthened national economies, or do they always come at a cost?Join us as we explore the pros and cons of tariffs, their historical impact, and whether they still have a place in today's interconnected world.

William Dalrymple's "The Anarchy" is a historical account of the rise of the East India Company in India. The book explores how the EIC's ruthless pursuit of power and wealth led to the downfall of the Mughal Empire. In this episode, William shares some interesting stories about the East India Company with some lesser known facts about this corporation that grew powerful. Tune in for a wonderful episode on Indian and British history. Resource List - The Company Quartet, by William Dalrymple - https://amzn.in/d/eiBRXBy William Dalrymple Website - https://williamdalrymple.com/ Mongol Invasions of India - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_India Read more about the Red Dragon ship - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dragon_(1595) Charles II and Catherine of Braganza - https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/charles-ii-and-catherine-of-braganza-a-loveless-marriage/ Read more about the First Carnatic War - https://www.pw.live/exams/ssc/first-carnatic-war/ Who were the Jagat Seths? - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/meet-jagat-seths-an-indian-family-so-rich-they-lent-money-to-the-british/articleshow/102916190.cms?from=mdr Read more about the Battle of Plassey - https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Plassey Read more about the Battle of Buxar - https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Buxar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Buxar https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/6264/1/thedailystar.net-The%20battle%20of%20plassey%20A%20Tale%20of%20Triumph%20and%20Betrayal.pdf What are Sepoys? - https://www.worldhistory.org/Sepoy/ About SparX by Mukesh Bansal SparX is a podcast where we delve into cutting-edge scientific research, stories from impact-makers and tools for unlocking the secrets to human potential and growth. We believe that entrepreneurship, fitness and the science of productivity is at the forefront of the India Story; the country is at the cusp of greatness and at SparX, we wish to make these tools accessible for every generation of Indians to be able to make the most of the opportunities around us. In a new episode every Sunday, our host Mukesh Bansal (Founder Myntra and Cult.fit) will talk to guests from all walks of life and also break down everything he's learnt about the science of impact over the course of his 20-year long career. This is the India Century, and we're enthusiastic to start this journey with you. Follow us on Instagram: / sparxbymukeshbansal Website: https://www.sparxbymukeshbansal.com You can also listen to SparX on all audio platforms Fasion | Outbreak | Courtesy EpidemicSound.com

From threatening to annex Greenland to blaming California Democrats for the state’s deadly wildfires, the Trump circus is back in town – and he’s not even president yet. On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Alice Grundy discuss Trump’s empire pantomime, the devastating California fires and the death of Jimmy Carter. This discussion was recorded on Monday 13 January 2025 and things may have changed since recording. Get your tickets for the Australia Institute’s Climate Integrity Summit 2025 now. Order What's the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website. Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis Host: Alice Grundy, Managing Editor, Australia Institute Press, the Australia Institute // @alicektg Show notes: ‘Australia leases US firebombing aircraft in the northern winter. So what happens when LA burns in January?’ by Mike Foley, The Sydney Morning Herald (January 2025) The American Empire, Empire with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.Support After America: https://nb.australiainstitute.org.au/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is so much of India's rich heritage and past that is yet to be discovered. But we have great historians like William Dalrymple who spend years researching on India's history to bring us the most interesting and captivating stories about the country. In today's episode, William Dalrymple discusses the stories and contents from his book "The Golden Road" which explores India's 1,500-year history as a hub of cultural and intellectual exchange. Resource List - William Dalrymple Website - https://williamdalrymple.com/ Empire Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/0sBh58hSTReUQiK4axYUVx?si=388684fdbe8f49a5 The Rest is History Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/7Cvsbcjhtur7nplC148TWy?si=09f97df360c1418e What are frescoes? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresco More about the Silk Road - https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/silk-road/ Who was Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Richthofen#:~:text=Ferdinand%20Freiherr%20von%20Richthofen%20 The travels of Marco Polo - https://silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo Read about the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea - https://www.worldhistory.org/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea/ What is the Muziris Papyrus? - https://historicalleys.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-muziris-papyrus.html Read about the Suvarnabhumi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvarnabhumi What is the Mes Aynak - https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/afghanistan/en/a-propos/ainak Who was Xuanzang? - https://asiasociety.org/xuanzang-monk-who-brought-buddhism-east https://artsandculture.google.com/story/travels-of-xuanzang-629-645-ce-xuanzang-memorial-nava-nalanda-mahavihara/9gVR3GyICUOmKg?hl=en China's only female empress, Wu Zetian - https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-first-and-only-woman-emperor-of-china/PQWR-NRltC6QFA?hl=en More about Angkor Wat - https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/668/ What was the Islamic Golden Age? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age Al-Khwarizmi's book on Algebra - https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666184/ What is the Fibonacci sequence? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence

Explore the fascinating history of the "Golden Road," as William Dalrymple reveals how ancient India shaped global civilization. From dominating Indo-Roman trade and spreading Buddhism across Asia to influencing Southeast Asian art, Chinese poetry, and Baghdad's observatories, India’s rich legacy in trade, mathematics, and culture left a lasting mark. Discover the rise of Indian influence through the Silk Route, the origins of zero, and the transformative power of ideas that reached Europe by the 13th century. Inspired by Angkor Wat, Dalrymple's book chronicles India's profound impact on Eurasia from 250 BC to 1200 AD.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every simple story about it is wrong: Hinduism contains multitudes. And it went into the directions it did for specific reasons. Manu Pillai joins Amit Varma in episode 405 of The Seen and the Unseen to describe the role of history in the shaping of Hinduism -- and Hindu nationalism. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Manu Pillai on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Amazon and his own website. 2. Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity -- Manu Pillai. 3. The Deccan Before Shivaji — Episode 98 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 4. Our Colorful Past — Episode 127 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 5. Kerala and the Ivory Throne — Episode 156 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 6. The Multitudes of Our Maharajahs -- Episode 244 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 7. Jeff Bezos on The Lex Fridman Podcast. 8. The Changing Forms of Creativity -- Episode 72 of Everything is Everything. 9. Hardcore History — Dan Carlin. 10. Devdutt Pattanaik and the Stories That Shape Us -- Episode 404 of The Seen and the Unseen. 11. Fixing the Knowledge Society -- Episode 24 of Everything is Everything. 12. Robert Sapolsky's biology lectures on YouTube. 13. William Dalrymple kicking off a controversy. 14. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 15. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 16. Tony Joseph's episode on The Seen and the Unseen. 17. The Evolution of Everything — Matt Ridley. 18. The Evolution of Everything — Episode 96 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Matt Ridley). 19. Merchants of Virtue -- Divya Cherian. 20. The Logic of Collective Action — Mancur Olson. 21. Caged Tiger — Subhashish Bhadra. 22. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State — Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Much Maligned Monsters -- Partha Mitter. 24. Literotica. 25. Genealogy of the South-Indian Gods -- Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg. 26. The Big Questions -- Steven Landsburg. 27. State, Politics, and Cultures in Modern South India: Honour, Authority, and Morality -- Pamela Price. 28. The Broken Script — Swapna Liddle. 29. Swapna Liddle and the Many Shades of Delhi — Episode 367 of The Seen and the Unseen. 30. The History of British India -- James Mill. 31. Vindication of the Hindoos -- Charles Stuart. 32. Tuḥfat al-Muwaḥḥidīn -- Ram Mohan Roy. 33. Devangshu Datta Traded His Corduroy Pants — Episode 348 of The Seen and the Unseen. 34. Satyarth Prakash -- Dayanand Saraswati. 35. Gulamgiri -- Jyotirao Phule. 36. How the BJP Wins — Prashant Jha. 37. The BJP's Magic Formula — Episode 45 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Prashant Jha). 38. Three Statesmen -- BR Nanda's biographies of GK Gokhale, MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. 39. Essentials of Hindutva -- Vinayak Savarkar. 40. Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva -- Vaibhav Purandhare. 41. Hindutva and Violence: VD Savarkar and the Politics of History — Vinayak Chaturvedi. 42. Vinayak Calling Vinayak -- Episode 385 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinayak Chaturvedi). 43. The Savarkar Boxset -- Vikram Sampath. 44. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva -- Janaki Bakhle. 45. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha Is the Impartial Spectator -- Episode 388 of The Seen and the Unseen. 46. Anne with an E -- Moira Walley-Beckett. 47. Arcane -- Christian Linke and Alex Yee. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Open-Source Religion' by Simahina.

William Dalrymple, Britian's greatest living historian and multi-award-winning author joined Philip Clark on Nightlife

In this very special 100th edition of Willy Willy Harry Stee, Charlie Higson looks at a huge and hugely important topic in all our histories, The British Empire, and who better to join Charlie, on this special occasion, than historian and host of the Empire podcast, William Dalrymple. If you've ever wondered what the British Empire was all about, start here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"I'm that lucky guy who found his hobby and was able to turn it into a job." William Dalrymple is a multi-award winning and bestselling historian. Growing up on the Dalrymple family estate in North Berwick, with an almost Edwardian childhood, William was sent off to Ampleforth College at just eight years old. It was there that his passion for history grew and he spent his free time on archaeological digs and getting lost in history books. William has gone on to turn that childhood fascination into an incredible career. He has written numerous bestselling books including White Mughals and The Last Mughals. His latest book The Golden Road is out now.

The Silk Road has dominated the way we imagine the trading relationship between Europe and Asia to have worked in antiquity. In his new book, The Golden Road, William Dalrymple busts that myth. He sat down with Ash to talk about the origins of algebra, Indian gems in Anglo-Saxon Britain and why Genghis Khan was […]

The best-selling historian William Dalrymple presents India as the great superpower of ancient times in The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. He argues that for more than a millennium India art, religions, technology, astronomy, music and mathematics spread far and wide from the Red Sea to the Pacific, and its influence was unprecedented, but now largely forgotten.China's significance has long been celebrated and understood, with reference to the ancient trading routes linking the east and west. The historian Susan Whitfield is an expert on the Silk Roads. She talks to Adam Rutherford about the extraordinary discovery of manuscripts in a cave in Dunhuang, in Northern China, which provide a detailed picture of the vibrant religious and cultural life of the town. An exhibition of the manuscripts, A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang, runs at the British Library until 23rd February 2025.But what of India's cultural and artistic influence and expression in modern times? Shanay Jhaveri is the new Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican and curator of their new exhibition, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 (October 2024 until January 2025). This landmark group show explores the way artists have responded to a period of significant political and social change in India in the 20th century.Producer: Katy Hickman

One of the UK's greatest historians, William Dalrymple is no stranger to researching the treasures of India. Dalrymple sits down with Georgina Godwin to discuss his latest work, “The Golden Road”, which outlines ancient Indian cultures, ideas and inventions and how they influenced the western world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,' Mehdi unpacks Israel's “violent and reckless” assault on Lebanon and the false propaganda behind it. “The Israeli government wants you to believe that this is all about security, about protecting ordinary Israelis at the Northern border. And that this war isn't against Lebanon or the people of Lebanon, but only against Hezbollah,” Mehdi explains. “The problem is that, like with Gaza, their ministers can't stop sounding genocidal in public when they talk about Lebanon.”American University of Beirut professor Karim Makdisi joins the show to discuss Israel's latest attacks on Lebanon – including Israel's explosive pager attacks – and how Israel's offensive is only increasing Lebanese support for Hezbollah. “It is a pure act of terrorism,” Makdisi tells Mehdi. “They didn't even want to kill. They wanted to maim and blind people, you know, several thousand people… and these are the kinds of things, ironically, where those that deeply oppose Hezbollah in Lebanon become a lot more sympathetic.” Watch the monologue and panel interview – which also features the Center for International Policy's Matt Duss, former Bernie Sanders foreign policy advisor – to hear more about the humanitarian toll in Lebanon, how likely it is that Iran will get involved, and how another war could impact the US presidential election. Also on the show, Mehdi is joined by renowned author and historian William Dalrymple to discuss his latest book, ‘The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World'. The book makes the case that, for over a millennia, India was an international powerhouse that shaped civilizations around it – it was ‘the heart of ancient Eurasia' – and that its advances and influence have been erased. The two also discuss Israel's war in Gaza and why William has been so outspoken while other authors and historians have remained silent. “I have the freedom to speak out,” he tells Mehdi. “If, as an author, you know something to be untrue and you know a great injustice is going on, it's your duty to do this.”Be sure to watch this week's episode above and tell us what you think about Mehdi's monologue, the discussion on Lebanon and William Dalrymple. We love hearing from you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zeteo.com/subscribe

From the Roman economy and Angkor Wat to the spread of Buddhism and the numerical system we use today, ancient India was one of the great seedbeds of human civilisation. Indian art, religion, technology and ideas were exported across a vast territory, influencing several Eurasian cultures. Speaking to Danny Bird, bestselling historian William Dalrymple discusses his latest book, The Golden Road, which highlights India's profound impact on global history and uncovers its forgotten role at the heart of the ancient world. (Ad) William Dalrymple is the author of The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed/dp/140886441X/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ancient India was the single greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. For centuries, Indian sailors navigated the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to bring goods, ideas and religious beliefs to the Greco-Roman ports based on the Egyptian coast. But how did this lucrative trade begin? And what sorts of goods passed along it?In today's episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by William Dalrymple to explore 'The Golden Road' - one of the great trade routes of ancient history - and discover how India became the beating heart of the ancient world.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS'. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.

How did the Mughal empire – which then generated just under half the world's wealth – come to be replaced by the first global corporate power – the East India Company? And how does the legacy of British imperialism continue to shape life and culture in Britain today? Bringing together Empireland and Empireworld author and Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera and bestselling award-winning historian William Dalrymple, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast will tell a story that is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums but is critically important to who we are as a nation in the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In dieser Episode tauchen wir in die Geschichte des Koh-i-noor ein, einem der berühmtesten und mit 106 Karat größten Edelsteine der Welt. Unsere Reise beginnt in Indien, wo er im 19. Jahrhundert nach blutigen Machtkämpfen schließlich zum Symbol des blühenden Sikh-Reiches von Ranjit Singh wird. Selbst die übermächtige britische Ostindienkompanie ist gegen Singhs geeintes Reich machtlos. Doch als der Herrscher stirbt, bricht ein blutiger Kampf um sein Erbe und damit auch um den Koh-i-Noor aus. Heute ist der Diamant in der Krone von Queen Mother Elizabeth eingesetzt und im Tower of London ausgestellt… ........Das Folgenbild zeigt Queen Victoria, die den Koh-i-Noor als Brosche trägt (Gemälde von Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1856; das Bild wurde mittels KI erweitert).........WERBUNGDu willst dir die Rabatte unserer Werbepartner sichern? Hier geht's zu den Angeboten!.......Jetzt His2Go unterstützen für tolle Vorteile, über Acast+ oder Steady.Werde His2Go Hero oder His2Go Legend: https://plus.acast.com/s/his2go-geschichte-podcast.Werde auch ohne Kreditkarte His2Go Hero oder His2Go Legend: steadyhq.com/his2go..........LITERATURDalrymple, William und Anita Anand: Koh-i-Noor. The Story of the World's Most Infamous Diamond. Bloomsbury, London 2017.William Dalrymple und Anita Anand bei einer Buchbesprechung in Kolkata im Jahr 2017 (Indien): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgZf9c6MTQ..........UNTERSTÜTZUNGFolgt und bewertet uns bei Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podimo oder über eure Lieblings-Podcastplattformen.Wir freuen uns über euer Feedback, Input und Vorschläge zum Podcast, die ihr uns über das Kontaktformular auf der Website, Instagram und unsere Feedback E-Mail: kontakt@his2go.de schicken könnt. An dieser Stelle nochmals vielen Dank an jede einzelne Rückmeldung, die uns bisher erreicht hat und uns sehr motiviert..........COPYRIGHTMusic from https://filmmusic.io: “Sneaky Snitch” by Kevin MacLeod and "Plain Loafer" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY !Neu! Jetzt hier His2Go unterstützen, Themen mitbestimmen und Quiz2Go mit Moderatorin Chiara erleben! https://plus.acast.com/s/his2go-geschichte-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of this bonus series, we hear about Timur's devastating raid of northern India, and then follow his descendant Babur through his adventurous early years.  For this episode, I found the following publications particularly useful: William Dalrymple, The Anarchy. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal. John F. Richard, The Mughal Empire. Bamber Gascoigne, The Great Moghuls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest: William Dalrymple is the author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. The Anti-Colonial Pack $475 Includes: A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe The Rebel's Clinic by Adam Shatz The Wretched of the Earth  (60th Anniversary Edition) by Frantz Fanon The Anarchy by William Dalrymple       The post KPFA Special – The Corporate Origins of Colonialism: The East India Company appeared first on KPFA.

At the end of the show a question from Maggie Rankin Recommendations: Eamonn Greyhound Tom Hanks stars as a longtime Navy veteran who, as a first-time captain, is tasked with protecting a convoy of 37 ships carrying thousands of soldiers and much-needed supplies across the treacherous waters of the Atlantic during WWII. For five days with no air cover, the captain and his small force of three escort ships must make their way through an area of the ocean known as “the Black Pit,” battling Nazi U-boats while protecting their invaluable ships and soldiers. https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/greyhound/umc.cmc.o5z5ztufuu3uv8lx7m0jcega  Stephen The Empire Podcast How do empires rise? Why do they fall? And how have they shaped the world around us today? William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the stories, personalities and events of empire over the course of history. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921  Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar This thrilling biography of Stalin and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader and Russian tsar. https://www.waterstones.com/book/stalin/simon-sebag-montefiore/9781474614818 Stuart Licking Hitler BBC, 1978. Kate Nelligan, Bill Paterson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbsR7S60hRA 

Post-independence India had a big problem–about 40% of its land wasn't, well, India. Instead, this land was in the hands of the princely states: Rulers who had signed agreements accepting the rule of the British Empire, while getting a relatively free hand to rule their local jurisdictions. And these weren't small states. Hyderabad–whose ruler made noises about independence, at least initially–had a larger income than Belgium, and was bigger than all but twenty UN member countries. But the power of the princes was so eroded over time that, by 1971, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could remove one of the last remaining public privileges of the prince. How did India (and its neighbor Pakistan) win the battle against the princes? John Zubrzycki in his book Dethroned: The Downfall of India's Princely States (Hurst, 2024) explains how New Delhi persuaded, encouraged–and browbeat–the princes to accept a future with India. In this interview, John and I talk about the major players in these negotiations, like Viceroy Montbatten and Sardar Patel, how they “encouraged” the princely states to join India, and whether any of these princes could really go it alone. John Zubrzycki has worked in India as a foreign correspondent and diplomat. His other books are The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India s Most Glamorous Royal Family (Juggernaut: 2020); and Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic (Oxford University Press: 2018), chosen by William Dalrymple as a Book of the Year. He is also the author of The Shortest History of India. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Dethroned. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Post-independence India had a big problem–about 40% of its land wasn't, well, India. Instead, this land was in the hands of the princely states: Rulers who had signed agreements accepting the rule of the British Empire, while getting a relatively free hand to rule their local jurisdictions. And these weren't small states. Hyderabad–whose ruler made noises about independence, at least initially–had a larger income than Belgium, and was bigger than all but twenty UN member countries. But the power of the princes was so eroded over time that, by 1971, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could remove one of the last remaining public privileges of the prince. How did India (and its neighbor Pakistan) win the battle against the princes? John Zubrzycki in his book Dethroned: The Downfall of India's Princely States (Hurst, 2024) explains how New Delhi persuaded, encouraged–and browbeat–the princes to accept a future with India. In this interview, John and I talk about the major players in these negotiations, like Viceroy Montbatten and Sardar Patel, how they “encouraged” the princely states to join India, and whether any of these princes could really go it alone. John Zubrzycki has worked in India as a foreign correspondent and diplomat. His other books are The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India s Most Glamorous Royal Family (Juggernaut: 2020); and Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic (Oxford University Press: 2018), chosen by William Dalrymple as a Book of the Year. He is also the author of The Shortest History of India. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Dethroned. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Post-independence India had a big problem–about 40% of its land wasn't, well, India. Instead, this land was in the hands of the princely states: Rulers who had signed agreements accepting the rule of the British Empire, while getting a relatively free hand to rule their local jurisdictions. And these weren't small states. Hyderabad–whose ruler made noises about independence, at least initially–had a larger income than Belgium, and was bigger than all but twenty UN member countries. But the power of the princes was so eroded over time that, by 1971, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could remove one of the last remaining public privileges of the prince. How did India (and its neighbor Pakistan) win the battle against the princes? John Zubrzycki in his book Dethroned: The Downfall of India's Princely States (Hurst, 2024) explains how New Delhi persuaded, encouraged–and browbeat–the princes to accept a future with India. In this interview, John and I talk about the major players in these negotiations, like Viceroy Montbatten and Sardar Patel, how they “encouraged” the princely states to join India, and whether any of these princes could really go it alone. John Zubrzycki has worked in India as a foreign correspondent and diplomat. His other books are The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India s Most Glamorous Royal Family (Juggernaut: 2020); and Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic (Oxford University Press: 2018), chosen by William Dalrymple as a Book of the Year. He is also the author of The Shortest History of India. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Dethroned. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host of the excellent China Global South Podcast and China in Africa Podcast. This show is unedited to preserve the live feel!Recommendations: Jeremy: Empire podcast William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, about how empires rise, fall, and shape the world around usMaria: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan ThrallEric: Eat Bitter, a documentary by Ningyi Sun, a filmmaker from China, and Pascale Appora Gnekindy, from the Central African RepublicKaiser: Wellness, an ambitious novel by Nathan Hill about a Gen X couple in Wicker Park, Chicago; and the NOVA documentary Inside China's Tech Boom, of which Kaiser is correspondent, narrator, and co-producer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ever wonder how museums go shopping for art? What does a curator see when they look at a picture? What makes something special enough to spend a fortune on? Join me in this first mini-sode featuring Laura Weinstein, Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as she gives us a ‘behind the scenes' look at two recent acquisitions for the museum's collection. We chat about Indian art under the British, William Dalrymple, and adorable squirrels!Hear our chat now on your favorite podcast app, Spotify or iTunes and please take a second to rate us wherever you're listening so the voices of these inspiring women can be heard all over the world!P.S. Laura was previously my guest on Ep. 18, so do catch her whole story there if you missed it, and let me know what you think of this shorter format focused on a single topic @theindianeditpodcast on instagram!SHOWNOTES FOR MINI-EDIT 1:Hear Laura's story on Episode 18 of the podcast hereForgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India CompanyEmpire Podcast on iTunesQuestions? Comments? Get in touch @theindianeditpodcast on Instagram !Special thanks to Sudipta Biswas, Aman Moroney, and the team @ Boon Castle / Flying Carpet Productions for audio post-production engineering!

1. William Dalrymple, “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji review – charming, genre-defying study,” The Guardian, July 3, 2023.2. Rana Mitter, “Shadows at Noon — Joya Chatterji exposes the beating heart of south Asia,” Financial Times, August 11, 2023.3. “Ramachandra Guha Revisits India After Gandhi,” Grand Tamasha, April 19, 2023. 

Amey returns to the Browncast to do a "bro caste" on genetics in Sri Lanka, casteism in America and India and the new legislation in California, talk about his immigration odyssey and how it's stacked against Indians, and finally, how William Dalrymple gives Marathas short shrift.

Simon and Dan come up with their dumbest idea yet. Also we hear your takes on Barbenheimer! The Anarchy by William Dalrymple: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Anarchy-by-William-Dalrymple/9781635573954 Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast - Elizabeth Barrett Browning episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/elizabeth-barrett-browning/id1508123116?i=1000623124974 Elizabeth Barrett Browning - How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43): https://poets.org/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43 Eddy Burback - I ate at every Rainforest Cafe in the Country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-bjpKvIw8 Eddy Burback - I ate at every Margaritaville in the Country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsb9T1g5nlE  Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thewikicast -------- Email us at: spongyelectric@gmail.com Follow us on X/Threads: @DanielJMaw @simonoxfphys This week's article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossipore  Fan discord channel: https://discord.gg/SZu6e2F This episode was edited by the wonderful Fergus Hall! https://www.fergushallmusic.com/ 

The abolition movement is growing in Britain, at its helm are two men. William Wilberforce leads the campaign in parliament and Thomas Clarkson powers it from the grassroots. Their combined might will win a great victory in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Listen as William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by Michael Taylor to tell this story. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WE'RE BACK! And coming to you from an estate outside Delhi, where Sean met author and historian William Dalrymple to talk (finally) about the early pirates, privateers and downright gangsters of the East India Company—a band of barely-legal spice merchants that wound up being just about the richest people on the planet, and owners—yes, owners—of an entire continent. We also dig into the life and times of Robert Clive, a brooding, violent man who would become one of the world's richest non-royals, and whose marauding exploits on the Indian subcontinent have made him a lightning rod for the cultures of Britain and modern India. War, loot, organized crime and weirdly enough, a Sliding Doors story for the mayflower. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices