Intelligence Squared

In the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, award-winning journalist John Sweeney reported from Kiev, drawing on his decades of experience covering stories ranging from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya. His new book, Killer in the Kremlin, compiles that expertise and new analysis of the life story of Russia's leader in order to try and understand Putin's psyche and where the current war is headed. Joining John in conversation is Carl Miller, Research Director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at the think tank Demos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Robin Dunbar has been hailed as one of the most insightful and creative evolutionary thinkers of our time, famed for his work on human networks and communities (he came up with the Dunbar number, the idea that humans can have no more than 150 meaningful relationships). Now he turns his attention to religion, the subject of his recent book, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures. Joining Robin in conversation on the podcast is Stuart Ritchie, Psychologist at King's College London, and author of Science Fictions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this archive listen from 2013, we explore the global political impact of a leader whose legacy and influence is still being questioned today: Angela Merkel. As with any leader, a legacy isn't set in stone and as the dust settles on Merkel’s chancellorship, which spanned from 2005 to 2021, questions are being asked about decisions she made during her time in power. Most pertinent today, with the arrival of war in Ukraine, is Germany's accommodating trade relationship with Russia. But there were dissenting voices on Merkel’s leadership back in 2013. Amid the fallout of the financial crisis, Germany found itself as the key central player holding the fates of less buoyant European economies such as Greece and Portugal in its hands. Many in those countries felt that Merkel's hardline approach to fiscal measures, essentially holding the purse strings for much of Europe, was crippling their own nations. So we debated the motion: Angela Merkel is Destroying Europe. Hosting the the debate was former BBC World News

During the Second World War, Rudolph Vrba was one of the very few people to escape the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He did so along with fellow escapee, Alfred Wetzler, in April 1944. Vrba is the subject of columnist and author Jonathan Freedland's new book, The Escape Artist. He joins journalist and broadcaster Manveen Rana to discuss Vrba's incredible story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trolling, conspiracy theories, racist algorithms, cyberwarfare – every day our headlines are ablaze with negative stories about the internet. The problem? The unaccountable power of the big tech companies. That’s the view of bestselling author and barrister Jamie Susskind. His new book is The Digital Republic, which sets out his vision for a different type of society in which humans can take power back and reshape the digital world into a space where we can all flourish. Joining Jamie in conversation is another writer and strategic advisor working where culture and technology meet, Nina Schick, author of Deep Fakes and the Infocalypse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Activist, academic and author Ibram X. Kendi joins us for a discussion on his new book, How to Raise an Antiracist. It follows his Intelligence Squared talk that took place in 2019 outlining how to implement strategies for tackling racism throughout society as detailed in his National Book Award winning publication from that year, How to Be an Antiracist. The new book takes the conversation further, exploring the lessons that can be taught to younger generations as we try to build a future society that is free from prejudice. Joining Ibram in conversation once more is BBC News journalist and visiting journalism professor at Princeton, Razia Iqbal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This event was recorded on the 10th of July 2018 in London SPEAKERS FOR THE MOTION: Mark Cocker - Author and naturalist and George Monbiot - Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet. AGAINST THE MOTION: Minette Batters - President of the National Farmers' Union and Rory Stewart Former Conservative government minister, whose new book is Politics On the Edge: A Memoir from Within CHAIR: Jonathan Dimbleby - Broadcaster, documentary maker and author Imagine if swathes of the British countryside were allowed to be wild once again, if trees and rare plants could flourish and beavers, boars and white-tailed eagles could retake their place in the ecosystem. That’s the goal of the growing numbers of nature-lovers who support the idea of rewilding Britain’s uplands. We tend to think of these uplands as ‘wild’ and ‘natural’. But in fact, as the rewilders point out, they are entirely man-made, the result of clearances by man to make way for milli

What do bees sense in flowers? What do songbirds hear in each others’ tunes? And what’s that smell sending your dog running up the street? These questions and many more are the basis of science communicator Ed Yong's book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine and his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He's also the recipient of the George Polk Award for Science Reporting and the author of I Contain Multitudes, his previous book, which became a bestseller. Speaking with Ed on the podcast is Chrissie Giles, Global Health Editor at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we define value? How has this changed over time? And who decides what is deemed valuable? For centuries, society has seen value mainly through an economic lens: one takes a job because of its monetary benefits; marriage is a financially beneficial relationship that enables stability; and the true test of a business is its profit at the end of the year. But is this changing? In recent years, factors such as climate change, social justice and the pandemic have forced us to reconsider how we define value. We are in the era of the Value Revolution. In this episode, recorded on July 5 at Y TREE's second live event in the Futureverse series, three experts discuss and debate some of the most pressing issues that have arisen as a result of this critical turning point: Will private equity transform the financial industry? Can capitalism really adapt so that things other than monetary value are considered important in business, including fairness and environmental impact? And are we finally seeing a growing awar

Oxford University economist Kate Raworth has been described by the author and environmentalist George Monbiot as, "The John Maynard Keynes of the 21st century." In 2018, she came to Intelligence Squared to talk through the set of ideas that has seen her influential book, Donut Economics, find fans in audiences ranging from members of the UN General Assembly to Pope Francis and Extinction Rebellion. Hosting the discussion was Matthew Taylor, at the time of the interview Chief Executive of the RSA and latterly Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Created in partnership with Sotheby's, in a debate that spans the centuries, Peabody Award-winning spoken word performer George the Poet and Booker Prize-winning author Howard Jacobson go head-to-head over which form of cultural expression best resonates now and forever. Does hip-hop and slam poetry speak more to society than historical texts that require background knowledge to be fully understood? Or does the lasting appeal of Shakespeare and other great figures from the canon show that some works have a universal value that stands the test of time? This event was recorded on the 9th of June 2022, at Sotheby's in London and produced by Executive Producer Hannah Kaye and Audience Development Producer Yosola Olorunshola — We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be about. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us at @intelligence2.  At Intelligence Squared we’ve

What is it like to treat some of the most troubled men and women in society? Dr Ben Cave is a forensic psychiatrist whose 35-year career has been spent helping those with mental health conditions ranging from delusional disorders to schizophrenia, steroid abuse, drug dependency, depression and more. His new book, What We Fear Most, explores what can be learnt from these often misunderstood illnesses, the people who suffer from them and those, like Ben, who treat them. Our host for this episode is Poppy Damon, senior producer for Blanchard House. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special programme following the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK, we hear from columnist, author and former foreign correspondent Jonathan Freedland, and journalist, author and former editor of The Evening Standard and The Times Simon Jenkins, about where the country is headed next. Our host for the discussion is award-winning journalist and broadcaster Manveen Rana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr Ruja Ignatova, an Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptocurrency guru, promised her followers a financial revolution through her project: OneCoin. Then, in October 2017, she disappeared. But not before she had duped investors around the world, some of whom are the poorest people in society, into buying up more than $4 billion-worth of OneCoin. Ignatova has been in hiding ever since and was recently added to Europol's most wanted list. Jamie Bartlett is an expert on the politics of the internet and has put the story into a podcast series and now a new book, too: The Missing Cryptoqueen. To talk about it all, he joins our host Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, and Layla Begum, a business development executive who was one of the many victims of the OneCoin scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Language is expressive, a way of opening doors or a tool for creating new dialogue. But a tool so powerful can also take us to unforeseen or unintended places. It can create narratives that become fixed, unhelpful, or exclusionary. Kübra Gümüsay is a writer and activist focusing on social justice and public discourse. Her new book is Speaking and Being, which looks at the power of words, asking whether language creates freeing new spaces or plays a part in walling them off. Our host for the discussion is Danielle Sands, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway University in London, where she works across disciplines bridging philosophy, literary studies and critical theory.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today's world, we're often encouraged to think that sex is no longer a subject burdened with shame or repressed feelings. Rather, it is pleasurable, exciting and even empowering – as long as all parties are consenting. But do women really have the same sexual freedom as men, or are they still living in a man's world, conforming to male heterosexual desires and tastes? How do young women who’ve grown up in a sexually celebratory and supposedly shame-free society navigate sex? To discuss it, our host, the cultural historian and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, is joined by the authors of two books taking differing approaches to the debate: Christine Emba, columnist for The Washington Post and author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, and Dossie Easton, therapist and co-author of The Ethical Slut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Across Britain, it’s no secret that the people who make up the country's elected government have gone through the same familiar educational pipeline. Eton, Oxford, Westminster. Born into families of privilege, it’s unsurprising that these men, and it is largely men, have risen to the top in a country obsessed with social class. But while it’s clear how they got there, we should ask how does this affect the way that they run the country today? To help answer these questions and understand the tiny world of the uber elite, Simon Kuper, FT columnist and author of Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, joins us on the podcast. Our host for this episode is Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall Editor for The Sunday Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In recent years China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur ethnic group in the northwestern region of Xinjiang province. Nury Turkel was born in a re-education camp in Kashgar, Xinjiang in 1970. In 1995 he had the opportunity to leave China as a student and was never to return to his home and family. Nury has since dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of Uyghurs – he is Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, specialising in national security and foreign policy. His new book is No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs. Turkel is joined in conversation by our host for this discussion, Yasmeen Serhan, staff writer at The Atlantic, where she focuses on populism and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Christopher Blattman is an economist, political scientist and Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago. His new book is Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, which explores why societies turn to violence and how poverty and oppression often go hand in hand with conflict. Chris's work has taken him from studying poverty in Uganda to street gangs in Medellin, investigating the likes of dictators, monarchs, mobs and football hooligans along the way. Joining him to discuss the book is our host, Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Northern Ireland Protocol – agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union in 2019 – has been a source of tension since it came into force at the start of 2021. The protocol, which creates a special trading arrangement for goods coming in and out of Northern Ireland (the only part of the UK with a land border with the EU), was supposed to protect the integrity of the EU single market, maintain the peace on the island of Ireland and provide Boris Johnson with a way to finally get Brexit done.  But fast-forward to today and the protocol is as contentious as ever. Unionists in Northern Ireland say the protocol is undermining the region’s place within the UK. Brexiteers say it is hampering Britain’s ability to make trade deals with the rest of the world. And the Government has now proposed a bill to make unilateral changes to the protocol which they say will preserve the Good Friday Agreement, changes which EU leaders say they will resist with legal action.  How do we make sense of this thorny iss