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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1351
Be afraid, be very afraid: the robots are comin...
They are coming to an office near you: job-gobbling robots that can do your work better and more cheaply than you can. One in three jobs could be taken over by a computer or a robot in the next 20 years. Most at risk are less skilled workers such as ma...
58 min
1352
Rembrandt Vs Vermeer: The Titans of Dutch Painting
Rembrandt van Rijn is the best known of all the Dutch masters. His range was vast, from landscapes to portraits to Biblical scenes; he revolutionised every medium he handled, from oil paintings to etchings and drawings. His vision encompassed every ele...
60 min
1353
Money can grow on trees: what's good for nature...
Capitalists don’t care about the environment. Industry, agriculture and commerce have long exploited nature’s resources. The pursuit of profit pays scant regard to the underlying cost of using up the planet’s capital.That’s the familiar story that we...
60 min
1354
Keep 'em off the streets and behind bars: tough...
Lock them up. That’s the way we’ve always dealt with offenders. Criminals deserve to be put away for their crimes. Prison works because it keeps those criminals out of circulation, and acts as society’s most effective deterrent. Rehabilitation is all w...
60 min
1355
Magna Carta: Myth and Meaning
June 2015 will see the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter’ which was signed at Runnymede by King John to resolve a political crisis he faced with his barons. Buried within its 69 clauses is one of immeasurable importance. This is the ...
60 min
1356
Art must be beautiful
In May 2011, Intelligence Squared Asia presented four leading voices in the arts to argue the motion "Art must be beautiful". Can aesthetic standards of the day dictate the long-term value of art? Who defines taste? Do parameters of instituti...
58 min
1357
An evening with Britain's best poets
Love. Sorrow. Anger. Death. Laughter. God. Sex. Hell. Home.
Only one profession can get to the heart of that lot – the poets. And not any old poets but amongst Britain's very best: Wendy Cope, Andrew Motion and Don Paterson – plus Clive James who...
84 min
1358
The High Street is dead, long live the High Street
A screen, an image, a click. Proceed to checkout. Sign for it the next day. We are the first generation to enjoy the thrill and convenience of online shopping. No queuing, no frustration at going home empty-handed, because we can always find what we’re...
89 min
1359
The War on Terror was the right response to 9/11
Have the West’s efforts to eradicate Al-Qaeda around the world simply been fuelling the flames of hatred and violence? Or would we have suffered even more atrocities if we’d left the militants to plot in their hiding places? Is the US right to be purs...
47 min
1360
Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Libyan intervention a...
Bernard-Henri Lévy is France’s best-known public intellectual, passionately committed to the causes he believes to be just. A writer, journalist, and film-maker, he has the status of a rock star in France where he is known simply as BHL, and has repea...
80 min
1361
Beware of the dragon: Africa should not look to...
We all know that the Chinese are the neo-colonialists of Africa. They've plundered the continent of its natural resources, tossing aside any concern for human rights and doing deals with some of the world's most unsavoury regimes. The relentl...
98 min
1362
Umberto Eco In Conversation With Paul Holdengräber
The persistence of conspiracies. Grasping the infinity of lists. Writing fiction about the real. The future of books.
These are some of the topics Umberto Eco discussed with Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE at the New York Public Library, when he c...
91 min
1363
Brian Cox & Alice Roberts on the Incredible Unl...
Who are we? Why are we here? Are we alone in the universe? How did we become the creatures that we are? How might we further evolve?
These are some of the big questions that Brian Cox and Alice Roberts tackled when they came to the Intelligence Square...
87 min
1364
P.J. O'Rourke: The Funniest Man in America
P.J. O'Rourke is America's premier political satirist and has more citations in The Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations than any other living writer. In this live appearance for Intelligence Squared in 2010, he discussed his new book, ...
90 min
1365
I'd rather Be a Roundhead than a Cavalier
In the 1640s England was devastated by a civil war that divided the nation into two tribes – Roundheads and Cavaliers. Counties, towns, even families and friends were rent apart as the nation pledged its allegiance either to King Charles I (supported b...
88 min
1366
David Grossman in conversation with Linda Grant
One of Israel’s most acclaimed writers, David Grossman is the author of numerous pieces of fiction, nonfiction and children's literature. His work has dealt with Jewish history, the occupation of the West Bank, the cost of war and the dramas of fa...
86 min
1367
Psychiatrists & the pharma industry are to blam...
Drug pushers. We tend to associate them with the bleak underworld of criminality. But some would argue that there’s another class of drug pushers, just as unscrupulous, who work in the highly respectable fields of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical indu...
92 min
1368
William Gibson on 'Zero History' with Cory Doct...
On 5th October 2010, Intelligence Squared paired author William Gibson with popular blogger and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow in a wide-ranging conversation that gives a fascinating insight into the mind of the man heralded as the "architec...
76 min
1369
Stop Bashing Christians! Britain has become an ...
Are Christians victims of a hateful animus, or are they demanding special treatment in a secular state which in fact applies the law equally to all? Peter Hitchens fears that without Christianity, we might end up undermining the whole foundation of law...
108 min
1370
Is London too rich to be interesting?
It used to be so easy. You left university, came to London and got yourself a flatshare in one of the cheaper areas: Notting Hill, Maida Vale or Highgate. Living was cheap and if it took you a while to find out what you really wanted to do with your li...
86 min
1371
Karen Armstrong on Religion and the History of ...
Karen Armstrong has written over 16 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how our faiths have shaped world history and drive current events.
She came to the Intelligence Squared stage...
83 min
1372
Napoleon The Great?
How should we remember Napoleon, the man of obscure Corsican birth who rose to become emperor of the French and briefly master of Europe?
As the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo approaches in 2015, Intelligence Squared brought together two ...
85 min
1373
Steven Pinker on Good Writing with Ian McEwan
Steven Pinker is one of the world’s leading authorities on language, mind and human nature. A professor of psychology at Harvard, he is the bestselling author of eight books and regularly appears in lists of the world’s top 100 thinkers.On September ...
78 min
1374
Francis Fukuyama in Conversation with David Run...
Professor Francis Fukuyama came to the Intelligence Squared stage in September, to square up with one of Britain’s most brilliant political thinkers, David Runciman, to assess how democracy is faring in 2014. We certainly haven’t attained the rosy futu...
83 min
1375
Marina Abramović on art, performance, time and ...
Marina Abramović is the most celebrated performance artist in the world. Over a career spanning four decades she has pioneered performance as an art form and accumulated a devoted following that includes Jay-Z and Lady Gaga.Using her body as both sub...
82 min