Intelligence Squared

In business, there are some jobs that are talked about more opaquely in public discourse than others. Think Military Drone Operator or Industrial Slaughterhouse Manager, for example. These are roles that can raise ethical questions that might take longer than a lunch break to explain. Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality, is the new book from American journalist Eyal Press, which explores the nature of some of those harder to justify jobs, which Eyal says are perceived as 'dirty work' by the rest of society. Eyal is joined by Rosamund Urwin, journalist for the Sunday Times, to talk about the book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With proposed new legislation in the UK currently making its way through Parliament designed to protect internet users from harmful content, for this week's Intelligence Squared Sunday Debate we ask: can the internet be made safe? Joining us to discuss it is tech writer and podcaster Jamie Bartlett, MP Margaret Hodge and online safety campaigner David Babbs. Our chair for the debate is the investigative reporter and broadcaster, Manveen Rana. This episode contains strong language and themes that some listeners may find distressing. Listener discretion is advised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andrea Elliott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and New York Times investigative reporter who spent nearly a decade following the journey of one family living on the poverty line in Brooklyn. Elliott's book, Invisible Child, tells that story, focusing on Dasani Coates, a child moving from homeless shelter to homeless shelter with her tight-knit family. A reflection on the extremities of America's wealth gap between rich and poor and also how racism threads through the country's approach to welfare, the book is also a study on how Dasani has managed to shine while growing up surrounded by adversity. Joining Andrea to discuss the book is novelist Alex Preston, author of In Love and War and As Kingfishers Catch Fire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Traditional conflict – fought with guns, bombs, and drones – has become almost too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. So nations have innovated. Russia wages hybrid warfare on Ukraine. The US threatens Iran with further sanctions. China spends billions buying political influence abroad. The world seems to be heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared and unending. Mark Galeotti is Honorary Professor at UCL and a specialist in politics, criminology, security studies, international relations and anthropology. His recent book, The Weaponisation of Everything, is a ground-breaking survey of this new way of war. Joining Mark to discuss the book and his work is Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mark Zuckerberg may have gone all-in on the concept of the metaverse recently but he's actually a bit late to the conversation. Herman Narula is CEO and co-founder of Improbable, who since 2012 have created the frameworks for building virtual worlds for clients ranging from video-game studios to governments. He joins Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, to discuss how the metaverse could change the ways we do business in future and why virtual worlds require as much careful consideration as our physical one.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 2022 Winter Olympics have just opened in Beijing. Not for the first time in Olympic history, the Games will begin amid controversy over the host nation. China is regularly criticised over its record on human rights, most recently over its systematic oppression of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority. Nations such as the US, Canada, Australia and the UK are undertaking a diplomatic boycott of the event, but do boycotts in sports work? Joining us to discuss it is Laura McAllister, Professor of Public Policy at Cardiff University. Laura is Board Director at the Football Association of Wales Trust, Deputy Chair of UEFA's Women's Football Committee and former captain of the national women’s football team of Wales. Joining Laura is Fred Frommer, sports historian, author and writer, who regularly focuses on the intersection of sports and politics for publications including The Washington Post and The New York Times. Hosting the discussion is Andrew Mueller, journalist and foreign affairs specialist, whose own book, Ca

Megan Nolan’s debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was hailed as a masterpiece by the literary world when it was published in 2021. Searingly honest and darkly amusing, it tells the story of an obsessive relationship. Written in glimmering prose, it charts a young woman’s elation as she falls in love and the obsession, anxiety and self-doubt that ensue. Nolan is also an acclaimed journalist and essayist whose writing appears in The New Statesman, The Guardian and The New York Times. She's joined by fellow journalist and author of the dark satire, How To Kill Your Family, Bella Mackie, to discuss her work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis in 2020 provoked a moment of cultural reckoning in the US and a wave of outrage across the globe. Amid those scenes, author and activist Kimberly Jones filmed a video on the streets of Atlanta in which she distilled 450 years of social and economic oppression of black communities in the US into a seven-minute viral speech named How Can We Win. It's now inspired the similarly named book, How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged, which expands on those ideas. Kimberly joins author, broadcaster and financial educator Alvin Hall to discuss the book and the future of civil rights in the US. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Naomi Stanford is an expert in creating models to make organisations work better. Having begun in her career creating organisation design for large multinational companies such as British Airways and Marks and Spencer, she has gone on to help shape workflow in the public sector for both the US and UK governments. She is the author of several books, the latest of which is a revised edition of Designing Organisations: Why It Matters and Ways to Do it Well, published in collaboration with The Economist. She speaks to broadcaster, author and specialist in economic policy, Linda Yueh, about how to design businesses better.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since the hardline militant group recaptured the Afghan capital Kabul in August 2021, the question of how Western powers should deal with the Taliban has become one with no easy answers. The Taliban is a fundamentalist movement, whose ideology has spawned violence and terrorism both inside and outside of Afghanistan. However, the country it now governs is one in need of urgent aid, where the plights of women and minority groups abandoned in a hasty retreat by the West mean that a refusal to engage by Western powers could become a disastrous long-term foreign policy error. For this debate, we ask: should the West work with the Taliban? Our guests are Shabnam Nasimi, Policy Advisor to the Minister of Afghan Resettlement in the UK. She is also Director of Afghan Witness, a platform dedicated to Human Rights reporting from Afghanistan. Joining Shabnam is Christina Lamb OBE, Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times, Global Fellow for the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and author of books including Fa

Art historian, printmaker and writer Dr Amy Jeffs is joined in conversation by author and journalist Charlotte Higgins to discuss how ancient myths and legends are constantly retold and reimagined by new storytellers. Amy Jeffs' book, Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain, is a retelling of 30 medieval myths and legends. Charlotte Higgins' book, Greek Myths: A New Retelling, provides a refreshed narrative by focusing on the perspective of women in the stories of Ancient Greece, with illustrations from Turner Prize-winning artist Chris Ofili. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Foreign policy and national security expert Fiona Hill is a go-to voice in Washington for understanding the longstanding tensions between the US and Russia. Her latest book, There Is Nothing For You Here, is part memoir, part reflection on how factors ranging from deindustrialisation to disenfranchisement over the course of decades have left a swathe of voters in nations such as the US, UK and Russia, open to populist policies and strongman leaders.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr Christian Busch has spent his career studying chance, serendipity, and how to maximise opportunity. He is director of the Center for Global Affairs' Global Economy Program at New York University and his new book, Connect the Dots, analyses the art and science of creating good luck. He joins journalist Rosamund Urwin to talk about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the new film, Munich – The Edge of War, hits Netflix screens starring Jeremy Irons as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiating on the brink of World War Two in 1938, we revisit an archive debate discussing that pivotal moment in history. Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum is joined by a collection of celebrated historians to debate whether Chamberlain did the right thing in an impossible situation or appeased a dictator, leading to the disastrous years of conflict that followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roopa Farooki is a doctor, author and creative-writing lecturer, whose new book, Everything Is True, tells the story of her first 40 days treating patients during the pandemic in the UK. She speaks with paediatrician and broadcaster Dr Guddi Singh about the reality of working in medicine during a global health crisis and the challenges of capturing the full scope of that experience in words on the page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Natalie Livingstone’s recently published book, The Women of Rothschild, tells the lesser known stories of the women who have played pivotal roles in one of the world’s most storied family dynasties throughout history. She joins journalist, author and former Editor-in-Chief of Tatler, Catherine Ostler, to discuss the book and its protagonists, who range from hostesses and diplomats to political movers and shakers influencing the likes of Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Queen Victoria and Albert Einstein along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zillah Byng-Thorne is CEO of Future, the UK’s biggest magazine publishing group. With a stable of over 160 titles across print and online including recent acquisitions such as Wallpaper and The Week, Future is a truly multifaceted business and its CEO has also returned the group to record profits in recent years. She talks to Jeremy Leslie, Creative Director of the site, design consultancy and shop covering all things magazines: magCulture, to discuss how to keep a major publishing business moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether we call it Facebook or the recently coined Meta, the Silicon Valley tech giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg has rarely been out of the headlines since its inception over a decade ago and rarely have those headlines been good news. From Cambridge Analytica to the United States Capitol attack, the company's utopian ideals of connecting up society seem to often have the opposite effect. However, millions of people use it to lead their daily lives, from staying in touch with each other to building businesses on its networks. Is it time to break up Facebook? To find out, economist and broadcaster Linda Yueh is joined by Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, and Sinan Aral, Professor of Management, IT, Marketing and Data Science at MIT, and author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and Our Health – and How We Must Adapt. Learn more about your ad choic

Lea Ypi grew up in Albania during the 1980s and 1990s, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe. Almost impossible to visit and nearly impossible to leave, during that era it was a place of queuing and scarcity, political executions and secret police. But to Ypi, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. She joins award-winning foreign correspondent and author Luke Harding to discuss her memoir, Free, and growing up in a country on the brink of a huge transformation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today's highly polarised political landscape, Liberalism, somewhere in the middle, often comes under attack from both right and left. Joshua L Cherniss is Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University and his new book, Liberalism in Dark Times, looks at why moderate, centre-ground voices are having to think smarter and talk louder to be heard. He joins journalist and broadcaster Georgina Godwin to discuss both the history and the potential future of Liberalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices