Shows / Intelligence Squared
Intelligence Squared
Ideas shape the world. Intelligence Squared brings you the conversations that explain them. In every episode, we bring together leading thinkers, writers, scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs, to challenge assumptions, test ideas and debate the questions shaping our future. If you want to think more clearly about the world and where it's heading, you're in the right place. If you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free…
Episodes
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: The West Should Seek a Compromise with Russia Over Ukraine
As Russia amasses tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s northern and eastern border fears are mounting that President Putin plans to invade the country. The…
- Intelligence Squared
The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb
Justin Webb is a familiar voice to many radio listeners. He has been co-presenting the BBC’s flagship morning current-affairs show, The Today programme, for…
- Intelligence Squared
Exploring the Senses, with Guy Leschziner
Professor Guy Leschziner's new book, The Man Who Tasted Words, seeks to shed light on our experiences of the different senses. In the book, Guy meets…
- Intelligence Squared
Business Weekly: the Jobs We Don’t Talk About, with Eyal Press
In business, there are some jobs that are talked about more opaquely in public discourse than others. Think Military Drone Operator or Industrial…
- Intelligence Squared
The Sunday Debate: Can the Internet be made Safe?
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
Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott
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…
Intelligence SquaredAdapting to the New World of War, with Mark Galeotti
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…
- Intelligence Squared
Business Weekly: Into the Metaverse, with Herman Narula
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…
- Intelligence Squared
The Sunday Debate: Sports Boycotts Help No One
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…
Intelligence SquaredMegan Nolan on Acts of Desperation
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…
Intelligence SquaredHow We Can Win: Kimberly Jones and Alvin Hall in conversation
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…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: How to design a company, with Dr Naomi Stanford
Dr. Naomi Stanford is an expert in creating models to make organisations work better. Having begun in her career creating organisation design for large…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: The West Should Work With the Taliban
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…
Intelligence SquaredMyth and Legend Reimagined: Charlotte Higgins and Dr Amy Jeffs in conversation
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…
Intelligence SquaredStandoff in Ukraine: Fiona Hill on the politics that led to a crisis
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…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch
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…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: Neville Chamberlain Did The Right Thing
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…
Intelligence SquaredThe Pandemic on the Page, with Roopa Farooki
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…
Intelligence SquaredThe Untold Story of the Rothschild Women, with Natalie Livingstone
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…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: The Future of publishing
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…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: It's Time to Break Up Facebook
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…
Intelligence SquaredComing of Age at the End of History, with Lea Ypi
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…
Intelligence SquaredLiberalism in Dark Times
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…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: How influencers break the internet
Olivia Yallop is a strategist, creative and trend analyser, whose new book Break the Internet lifts the lid on how the influencer economy works. She speaks…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: Verdi vs Wagner
Verdi created some of the most beloved operas of all time. Wagner’s music is in an altogether more intellectual sphere. Back in 2013, Stephen Fry hosted a…
Intelligence SquaredMartin Wolf on the World in 2022
2022 looks set to be another seismic year. A new Covid-19 variant threatens to prolong the pandemic. A diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics looks…
Intelligence SquaredPoles Apart: Why We Turn Against Each Other
In their recent book, Poles Apart, behavioural scientist Alex Chesterfield, public affairs specialist Laura Osborne and political advisor Ali Goldsworthy look…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Damian Bradfield, Co-founder of WeTransfer
Damian Bradfield is a tech leader who as co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of WeTransfer steers an essential tool for creatives plus the site's burgeoning…
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The Sunday Debate: Austen vs Brontë
Jane Austen created the definitive picture of Georgian England. No writer matches Austen’s sensitive ear for the hypocrisy and irony lurking beneath the…
Intelligence SquaredGloria Estefan on the Latin American Dream
Gloria Estefan is one of the most successful female singers ever. With more than 120 million records sold worldwide, three Grammy Awards, and a career spanning…
Intelligence SquaredSatire in an age of absurdity with Armando Iannucci, Jess Phillips and Jan Ravens
Though no laughing matter, the extremes of the Donald Trump presidency made comedians' jobs a little trickier: was the reality more absurd than satire created…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Michael Lewis On How Behavioural Economics Changed The World
Michael Lewis is one of the most successful non-fiction authors alive. In a series of titles that have sold 9 million copies worldwide, he has lifted the lid…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: Shakespeare vs Milton
Nearly four centuries after his death, no writer has matched William Shakespeare’s influence across drama, theatre and poetry but a few have come close. John…
Intelligence SquaredHow I Found My Voice: Yotam Ottolenghi
Samira Ahmed speaks to the chef Yotam Ottolenghi about his life and career, from discovering his love of food in Jerusalem to his professional partnership with…
Intelligence SquaredHistory vs Herstory
We hear from a panel of historians, authors and broadcasters – Hallie Rubenhold, Natalie Livingstone, Dan Jones and chair Saul David – about how women's…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Steering a tech giant with Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella is one of the world’s most inspirational business leaders; as much a humanist as a technologist and executive. In September 2017, he came to the…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: Rembrandt vs Vermeer
We compare the works of two of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt and Vermeer. Making the case for Rembrandt van Rijn in this debate was…
Intelligence SquaredEnd of days or a new world order? With Peter Frankopan
Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University and author of two seminal recent books on the shifting geopolitics of the world: The Silk…
Intelligence SquaredHow I Found My Voice: Fatima Bhutto
Samira Ahmed speaks to the author Fatima Bhutto about the power of writing fiction, growing up in one of Pakistan’s most famous political dynasties and why she…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: How To Reconstruct The Economy After Covid
Former governor of the Bank of England Lord King, global economist Dr Dambisa Moyo and businessman Ian Livingstone join Senior Editor at the Economist Anne…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: It's time to bring Russia in from the cold: Rapprochement is in the West's best interests
This week, we’re going back to 2017, with our debate "It's time to bring Russia in from the cold: Rapprochement is in the West's best interests". For this…
Intelligence SquaredKeeping the faith in the Middle East with Janine di Giovanni
Journalist and author Janine di Giovanni's over the past 30 years has seen her report from the frontlines of some of the most complex and turbulent stories of…
Intelligence SquaredThe Genetic Lottery: DNA demystified with Kathryn Paige Harden
The subject of genetic inheritance provokes passionate debate but behavioural geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden believes both sides are getting it wrong. It’s…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Scaling up success
Andrew Chen is a specialist in growing tech businesses and for his new book, The Cold Start Problem, he has spoken to the founders of companies such as…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: Assisted Dying Should Be Legalised
Autonomy, dignity and compassion. We wish to experience these things in our lives, so why shouldn’t we experience them in our deaths? That’s the argument made…
Intelligence SquaredWole Soyinka on writing, politics and the power of a novel
It’s been almost 50 years since Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, last published a novel. Chronicles From the Land of…
Intelligence SquaredNationalism and the Battle for India’s Soul, with Shashi Tharoor
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP party came to power in 2014, India has seen an increase in Hindu nationalism and a rise in hostility towards the…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: The Race for a Vaccine
Kate Bingham is the former Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce and she's also a shrewd business mind, having been a successful venture capitalist in sectors such…
Intelligence SquaredCOP26: Success or Failure for the World?
What now for the world? Governments have reached a climate deal which gets us closer to holding temperatures rises to 1.5C. But a last-ditch effort from India…
Intelligence SquaredHuma Abedin on Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner and a Life in Politics
Huma Abedin was Hillary Clinton’s most trusted aide and adviser for many years. Her recently published book, Both/And, reveals the details of that relationship…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sweet Spot: why pain can be a pleasure
We go to movies that make us cry, scream or gag we poke at sores, eat spicy foods and run marathons. Some of us even seek out discomfort and humiliation for…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: How To Lead A Sustainable Business – COP26 special with Alannah Weston and Henry Dimbleby
Today's episode comes from the How To Lead a Sustainable Business podcast, brought to you by Selfridges Group and Intelligence Squared. In the podcast, Alannah…
Intelligence SquaredWill electric vehicles make our roads green and clean?
This episode is part of our Energised series made in partnership with Iberdrola. To hear more search Energised, wherever you get your podcasts. Transport…
Intelligence SquaredConstitutional Rights and Wrongs, with Linda Colley
Linda Colley is the Shelby MC Davis 1958 professor of history at Princeton University and one of the most acclaimed historians of her generation. Her latest…
Intelligence SquaredBlack British Lives Matter, with Marcus Ryder MBE
Black British Lives Matter is a new anthology of writing and conversations collecting the experiences of thought leaders in the UK including novelist Kit de…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Nudge Theory and How to Change Behaviours with Richard Thaler
Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the word that served as the title of the ground-breaking book has entered the vocabulary of…
Intelligence SquaredThe Sunday Debate: It’s Time to Treat China Like an Adversary not a Partner
We are in a second Cold War with China. That’s the conclusion many experts have come to as they observe China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour beyond its…
Intelligence SquaredCOP26: What is Ecocide?
In summer 2021, a global panel of legal scholars and activists drew up a new definition of ecocide: unlawful or wanton acts that could cause widespread or…
Intelligence SquaredHow Power Changes Us, with Brian Klaas
Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? It’s a question that runs through the heart of the work of Brian Klaas, professor of global politics…
Intelligence SquaredBusiness Weekly: Energy, Inflation and the Markets with Joshua Mahony
In this special bonus episode, brought to you in partnership with online trading platform IG, Joshua Mahony, Senior Markets analyst at IG, speaks again to…