Intelligence Squared
Intelligence Squared is the home of lively debate and deep-dive discussion. Follow Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy four regular episodes per week taking you to the heart of the issues that matter in the company of the world’s great minds. 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. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.
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The Sunday Debate: Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism
For this week's episode of The Sunday Debate, we revisit our debate "Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism" from 2019.
Is there a country in the world that attracts so much criticism as Israel? Studies consistently show Israel to be one of the...
64 min
727
Is Mass Migration Making the World a Better Place?
To some, the very word ‘migration’ generates fear, suspicion and even hatred. But according to Felix Marquardt, author of the acclaimed The New Nomads, we need to look afresh at our notions of the mass movement of people around the world. Far from bein...
56 min
728
The Truth about Fake News, with Marcus Gilroy-W...
We are supposed to have more information at our disposal now than at any time in history. So why, in a world of rising sea levels, populist leaders and a global pandemic, do so many people believe bizarre and untrue things?
In this week's episod...
42 min
729
The Ever-Changing Brain with David Eagleman and...
What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart? Why is the enemy of memory not time, but other memories? How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? Why did many people in the 1980s mi...
54 min
730
Race and Guns in a Divided America, with Carol ...
Throughout history, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has protected the right to bear arms. For Black Americans, this has come with the understanding that the moment they exercise this right (or the moment that they don...
34 min
731
The Sunday Debate: The Catholic Church is a For...
The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the western world and has had a pivotal influence on western civilisation, ranging from matters of state to cultural life and from personal morals to social values and ethics. Increasingly, though,...
46 min
732
Albums that Changed My Life, with Tom Gatti, Da...
Our favourite albums are our most faithful companions. We listen to them over and over, we know them far better than any novel or film. These records don’t just soundtrack our lives – they work their way deep inside us, shaping our outlook and identity...
49 min
733
Emma Dabiri and Alex Renton on Race, Reckoning ...
Emma Dabiri, Irish-Nigerian academic and broadcaster, and Alex Renton, British-Canadian investigative journalist, have established themselves as important voices in the current debates taking place around race, class and identity. And in this week...
58 min
734
The Devil You Know, with Dr Gwen Adshead and Li...
Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain's leading forensic psychiatrists, and has spent thirty years providing therapy inside secure hospitals and prisons. Whatever her patient's crime she aims to help them to better know their minds by helping the...
35 min
735
Surviving Disaster, with Max Brooks and Carl Mi...
In this week's podcast we're joined by Max Brooks, global bestselling novelist of cult classic 'World War Z' and Hollywood screenwriter. He speaks to Carl Miller about his most recent book 'Devolution' which is a ...
31 min
736
While Justice Sleeps, with Stacey Abrams and Ta...
Stacey Abrams is widely considered one of the most prominent political power broker in the United States. She was the first African-American woman to become the House Minority leader in her home state of Georgia and the first African-American woman to ...
47 min
737
Debate: We Must Stop Big Data's Pandemic Power ...
In this week's podcast Nani Jansen Reventlow goes up against Rowena Luk to debate whether bringing big tech closer into our lives during the pandemic has been a welcome innovation or a dangerous power grab. The debate was staged by Intell...
51 min
738
Is Meritocracy a Myth? With Adrian Wooldridge a...
Join the debate and discuss this episode with fellow listeners on our Multytude conversation here: https://multytudelink.page.link/2u9nK2SP7SH7DCyU7
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Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather th...
39 min
739
Gillian Tett on a New Way To Understand Busines...
To explain the power of anthropology to help us better understand the modern world, Financial Times journalist and bestselling author Gillian Tett joined us in this week's episode. Tett has a PhD in anthropology...
58 min
740
Framing: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century
An industrialist looks at a rain forest and sees trees to cut down and sell, while an environmentalist sees the ‘lungs of the planet’. To one person, complying with a mandate to wear a face mask in public during a pandemic is an act of communal respons...
54 min
741
Ed Miliband on How To Build a Better World
Is the pandemic a wake-up call to build a better world? Ed Miliband, politician and host of the award-winning Reasons to Be Cheerful podcast, thinks so.
And in June 2021 he came to Intelligence Squared to discuss the ideas in his new book Go Big. Thi...
56 min
742
Salman Rushdie on Truth, Language and the Power...
Salman Rushdie, internationally bestselling author and ‘Best of the Booker’ winner, is a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating truths about our society and culture through his dazzling prose. Best known as a novelist, he is also a com...
52 min
743
Carlo Rovelli and Philip Pullman on the Science...
Carlo Rovelli is the internationally bestselling theoretical physicist whose many fans include Benedict Cumberbatch, Antony Gormley, Neil Gaiman and Lily Cole. In May 2021 he came to Intelligence Squared to talk about the themes of hi...
52 min
744
Music in the Age of COVID-19, with David Gray a...
In this week's episode acclaimed singer/songwriter David Gray speaks to Rosamund Urwin about how music and the arts have fared throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. David had originally planned to spend 202...
33 min
745
The New Space Race, with Nicholas Schmidle and ...
When Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, the goal was simple: to offer civilian space travel by the end of the decade. Seventeen years, a dozen delays and one catastrophic rocket crash later, we are on the verge of space tourism becoming a...
55 min
746
Common Ground: How to Democratise Nature
Spending a mere two hours a week outside is scientifically proven to lower blood pressure, enhance the immune system and reduce anxiety. Yet, for many communities, nature and the countryside are inaccessible with many city-dwellers struggling to find g...
55 min
747
Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran a...
Many of us felt it before but 2020 was the year it became undeniable: the status quo is not working. Political discontent is widespread – and for good reason. So what can we do now to change course? In this week's episode award-winning po...
49 min
748
The Hidden Language of Trees with Suzanne Simard
Trees have memories. They have wisdom. They cooperate in communities of immense complexity, communicating underground through a huge web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and...
52 min
749
Niall Ferguson on the Politics of Catastrophe
Why was the response of the UK and US to the coronavirus pandemic so bungled? How can we be better prepared when the next disaster strikes? These are the questions that historian Niall Ferguson discussed with Rana Mitter in this week's episode. Dr...
56 min
750
Joe Biden: Moderate or Radical? With Evan Osnos...
As we pass Joe Biden's first one hundred days in office as President of the United States, we're joined by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos author of the biography Joe Biden: American Dreamer to discuss who...
56 min