To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

Too often historians have told the history of Africa through the prism of colonialism. But what picture of the continent emerges when we do away with making the story of Africa so anchored in European colonialism? Award-winning broadcaster Zeinab Badawi came to the Intelligence Squared stage recently to tell a new history of Africa – in all its shades and complexities – without the stifling gaze of Europe. Drawing on the themes of her latest book, An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, she describes the origins of humankind, the emergence of ancient civilisations and empires, and the joys and thrills of Independence. Badawi was in conversation with historian and broadcaster Kate Williams.

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To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

The deep connections between food, memory, love and life.

The foods we turn to behind closed doors are deeply personal, saturated in memories and topped with a healthy dollop of guilty pleasure. In Comfort Eating, Grace Dent throws open her kitchen cupboards to reveal why we hold these secret snacks, naughty nibbles and hand-me-down recipes so dear to our hearts. We were joined by the author, critic and broadcaster – and one of our best loved writers on food – live at Union Chapel in October 2024 to discuss the deep connections between food, memory, love and life.

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To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

Jordan Stephens’ life during his teenage years and his twenties was a whirlwind. As one half of the hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, his days were full of success, fame and adulation as Rizzle Kicks’ debut sold over 1 million singles and 600,000 albums in 2012. But for Jordan, success brought pain in its wake: a hidden pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive ideas of masculinity, and heartbreak. Diagnosed with ADHD, he was always chasing the elusive feeling of love and continually found himself distracted and derailed by drugs, drink, sex and chaos. After his world imploded, Jordan chose to step away from his previous life completely and allowed himself to finally explore the pain he’d repressed his entire life. 

His new memoir Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak & Dogs unsparingly digs into the fear, tenderness and trauma he carried. And it examines the confusing assumptions and contradictions about what a man should be that Jordan – and increasing numbers of young men today – struggle with. Jordan came to the Intelligence Squared stage in August 2024 where, in conversation with comedian, satirist, actor and Instagram sensation Munya Chawawa, he reflected on his own life experiences as he explores how we can encourage men to have a healthier and more loving conception of masculinity.

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To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

In the 20th century most autocrats were brutal dictators whose main goal was to control a domestic population. But in the 21st century autocracy has become much more sophisticated and ambitious in its scope. States like Russia have developed sophisticated cross-border networks of kleptocratic financial structures, innovative security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. Propagandists from one country can promote and finance extremists and propaganda in another – pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of the West. 

In September 2024 Anne Applebaum came to Intelligence Squared to provide a radical new framework for understanding autocracy in the 21st century. Applebaum argued that autocracies today are best viewed like an agglomeration of companies or what she calls Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one thing: The destruction of democratic challengers. Applebaum was in conversation with BBC broadcaster Jonny Dymond to discuss how to understand and thwart this new evolved form of autocracy.

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To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

Bestselling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has dedicated his career to speaking truth and wisdom in some of the most challenging spaces – communities polarised by politics and religion and university campuses mired in culture wars. Now he turns his attention to what he sees as a perfect storm of factors that are causing a collapse in mental health among teenagers today. According to the American College Health Association, since 2010 anxiety among American college students has increased by 134%, depression by 106%, bipolar disorder by 57%, and anorexia by 100%. 

Haidt came to the Intelligence Squared stage where in conversation with BBC presenter Sarah Montague he drew on his new book The Anxious Generation, which has shot to No 1 in the Sunday Times bestsellers. He argues that the decline of free play in childhood and the rise of smartphone use among adolescents are the twin sources of increased mental distress among teenagers. But with traditional wisdom, cutting-edge research and practical advice – parents, teachers and teenagers can find new ways to mitigate tech's impact on mental health.

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To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

Platinum-certified singer-songwriter MARINA, formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds, has been an integral part of the U.K music scene over the last decade. Amassing over 3 billion streams worldwide, her music — which includes hit songs Primadonna and Bubblegum B*tch — has connected with fans for their unique electro-pop sound and powerful lyrics.

On October 22, MARINA came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss the themes of her debut poetry collection Eat The World. Her talent for evocative song lyrics has found a new outlet in poetry. MARINA will touch on themes of trauma, youth, and the highs and lows of relationships in these autobiographical poems, which retain the same energy and emotive power of her music.

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Many liberals believe that in recent years we have seen an erosion of the right to air unpopular opinions without the risk of being cancelled. We are in an ever-intensifying shutting down of conversation, they maintain, with constituencies on both the left and the right demanding that opinions they don’t like be declared out of bounds, socially, morally or legally. But some argue otherwise: that the so-called free speech crisis is completely a fiction. What we’re really seeing is a rebalance of power in elite institutions where privileged groups are being held to account for their words by others who have been historically excluded and marginalised. Intelligence Squared’s new book series THINK AGAIN, published in partnership with The Bodley Head invites two authors to debate the way forward. For the release of the first book, Is Free Speech Under Threat? Our authors are CEO of PEN America Suzanne Nossel and historian Charlotte Lydia Riley. The two recently joined Intelligence Squared live onstage in London to debate the issue. Chairing the discussion was BBC News presenter and Royal Correspondent, Jonny Dymond.

If you'd like to read our panelists' thoughts in the new Intelligence Squared book, Is Free Speech Under Threat? Head to one of the following retailers to pick up your copy.

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‘This has been the scariest, weirdest and certainly the most important work of my life. It’s been an investigation where lives were, at times, literally on the line, and one that has profoundly altered many of the people who were a part of it’. Carl Miller

The final minutes of the first episode of Carl Miller’s new Wondery and Novel podcast on stumbling across a secret online ‘kill list’ will stop you in your tracks. It’s a remarkable moment of storytelling and reporting – where Carl is forced to cold call innocent members of the public to tell them that someone wants them dead. From that moment the story just keeps getting more dramatic.

The podcast series, which has already reached number 1 in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland Apple podcast charts, is an astonishing five-year investigation into the targeting of hundreds of innocent people on a murder-for-hire website. When the police are slow to investigate, Carl has to take it upon himself in a race against time to try and save innocent lives – potentially putting himself and others in danger.

In December 2024, Carl Miller and the show’s producers Caroline Thornham and Tom Wright brought Kill List live to the Intelligence Squared stage in London. Using audio clips, outtakes and sharing previously untold backstories about the making of the series they told this almost unbelievable story, revealed new twists and answered audience questions in a live Q&A.

This event was in partnership with Wondery and Novel.

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‘This has been the scariest, weirdest and certainly the most important work of my life. It’s been an investigation where lives were, at times, literally on the line, and one that has profoundly altered many of the people who were a part of it’. Carl Miller

The final minutes of the first episode of Carl Miller’s new Wondery and Novel podcast on stumbling across a secret online ‘kill list’ will stop you in your tracks. It’s a remarkable moment of storytelling and reporting – where Carl is forced to cold call innocent members of the public to tell them that someone wants them dead. From that moment the story just keeps getting more dramatic.

The podcast series, which has already reached number 1 in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland Apple podcast charts, is an astonishing five-year investigation into the targeting of hundreds of innocent people on a murder-for-hire website. When the police are slow to investigate, Carl has to take it upon himself in a race against time to try and save innocent lives – potentially putting himself and others in danger.

In December 2024, Carl Miller and the show’s producers Caroline Thornham and Tom Wright brought Kill List live to the Intelligence Squared stage in London. Using audio clips, outtakes and sharing previously untold backstories about the making of the series they told this almost unbelievable story, revealed new twists and answered audience questions in a live Q&A.

This event is in partnership with Wondery and Novel

This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.

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This event was supported by Guinness Global Investors.

For the final instalment of the Intelligence Squared Economic Outlook series for 2024, Financial Times columnist Tim Harford joined us to interrogate what the numbers are really telling us about the economy – and what those numbers tell us about what lies ahead. As the FT’s Undercover Economist, Harford demonstrates a remarkable ability to explain and communicate complex economic data in ways that are compelling and entertaining.

This episode was recorded at The Tabernacle in London on Tuesday November 26, as Harford put our current economic challenges and opportunities into historical perspective and sought to map out the economic landscape we can expect in 2025. 

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