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Intelligence Squared is the world’s leading forum for debate and intelligent discussion. Live and online we take you to the heart of the issues that matter, in the company of some of the world’s sharpest minds and most exciting orators. Join the debate at www.intelligencesquared.com and download our weekly podcast every Friday.

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From Bridgerton to Peaky Bl...

04.09.2021

In this week's episode international heritage charity World Monuments Fund Britain draws back the curtain to reveal the fascinating work involved when turning historic houses into fictitious screen locations. WMF Britain Executive Director John Darlington talks to actress Nell Hudson ...

Intelligence Squared episodes:

04.09.2021 From Bridgerton to Peaky Blinders; Historic Houses in Film & TV with World Monuments Fund Britain In this week's episode international heritage charity World Monuments Fund Britain draws back the curtain to reveal the fascinating work involved when turning historic houses into fictitious screen locations. WMF Britain Executive Director John Darlington talks to actress Nell Hudson ...
04.06.2021 The Handshake: A Gripping History, with Ella Al-Shamahi and Helen Czerski Friends do it, strangers do it and so do chimpanzees - and it's not just deeply embedded in our history and culture, it may even be written in our DNA. The humble handshake, it turns out, has a rich and ...
04.02.2021 Debate: Is The West Fundamentally Racist? The West is rich because the rest is poor. Capitalism is racism. So argues Kehinde Andrews, academic and self-described Black radical, who came to Intelligence Squared on March 29 to set out the ideas in his latest book, The New ...
03.30.2021 Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher? With Julian Baggini and Mark Mardell Even if we don't believe that Jesus was the son of God, we tend to think he was a great moral teacher. But was he? And how closely do idealised values such as our love of the family, helping the ...
03.26.2021 Debate: The Time Is Right for Scottish Independence Should Scotland be independent? In this week's podcast Alex Massie and Lesley Riddoch go head to head on the question of whether the time has come to break up Britain and for Scotland to go it alone. The debate was ...
03.23.2021 A New Vision for Capitalism, with Anne Case, Angus Deaton and Francine Lacqua Each year hundreds of thousands of Americans die as a result of drug abuse, alcoholism or suicide – and the numbers are rising. This has contributed to a fall in life expectancy in the past three years, reversing a trend ...
03.19.2021 NFT's and Why Blockchain Means Business, with Sheila Warren and Carl Miller In this week's episode we discuss the explosive rise of NFT's as well as the long terms trends in blockchain that will change how we do business and live our lives. The interview is taken from our new podcast Intelligence ...
03.16.2021 The Science of Friendship, with Robin Dunbar and Helen Czerski Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbar’s number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In this week's episode he explains why friends matter to us – more than we think. ...
03.12.2021 The Accidental President, with James Fletcher and Mark Mardell In 2016, almost anyone you asked, or any poll you consulted, pointed you to a Hillary Clinton landslide. The Accidental President is a balanced feature documentary that is seeking to answer one question - How the hell did Donald Trump ...
03.11.2021 Intelligence Squared Recommends – Climate Solutions: Is COVID-19 good or bad for the climate? We have a special bonus episode for you today - we wanted to introduce you to a podcast we think you'll really enjoy, called Climate Solutions, from our partners, the European Investment Bank. What would you give up to solve ...
03.08.2021 BONUS: International Women's Day Special with Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Rose McGowan and more For International Women's Day we bring to you a special bonus episode of our award-winning podcast, How I Found My Voice presented by the BBC journalist Samira Ahmed. This episode features clips from some of our favourite female interviewees including ...
03.05.2021 Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail In this week's episode BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel takes us behind the scenes of perhaps the most extraordinary election campaign ever in American politics – when a global pandemic threw the country into turmoil and threatened not just ...
03.04.2021 Intelligence Squared Recommends – Change Makers, with Yanis Varoufakis We have a special bonus episode for you today – we wanted to introduce you to a podcast we think you'll really enjoy, called Change Makers. Change Makers presents fresh ideas and inspirational life stories from people with a passion ...
03.02.2021 The Cyber Weapons Arms Race, with Nicole Perlroth and Josh Glancy Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, ...
02.28.2021 BONUS: Kate Winslet on Titanic, Hollywood and Finding Her Voice This bonus podcast features an episode from another Intelligence Squared podcast called How I Found My Voice. In this episode Hollywood star Kate Winslet speaks to the BBC journalist Samira Ahmed. They speak about her life and career, from discovering ...
02.26.2021 Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller In this week's episode Marietje Schaake International Director of Policy at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Centre speaks to Carl Miller about Facebook's recent legal battle with Australia, Trump's deplatforming from Twitter and how we can preserve democracy and civil liberties ...
02.23.2021 The New Climate War, with Michael Mann and Clover Hogan In this week's episode renowned climate scientist Michael Mann speaks to Clover Hogan about the thirty-year war to deflect blame and delay action on climate change. They discuss the new tactics and psychological battle to confront the causes of climate ...
02.19.2021 Debate: Big Tech was Right to Deplatform Trump Shortly after a pro Trump mob stormed the Capitol on January 6th - Big Tech unplugged the President. For years he’d used social media to communicate directly with his supporters. Even on the day, as lawmakers in the Capitol scurried ...
02.16.2021 No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, with Sarah Frier and Linda Yueh In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured look more beautiful. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, ...
02.12.2021 Britain Alone: From Suez to Brexit, with Philip Stephens and Mark Mardell In this week's episode Philip Stephens the Financial Times chief political commentator speaks to Mark Mardell about why Britain is a nation struggling to reconcile its waning power with past glory. Drawing on his new book 'Britain Alone' Stephens argues ...
02.09.2021 The Last Untamed Frontier, with Ian Urbina and Helen Czerski There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality ...
02.05.2021 Bellingcat Founder Eliot Higgins on Navalny, Syria and Skripal In this week's episode Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, tells the dramatic story of how he went from college dropout to pioneering a new category of reporting that has cracked some of the biggest cases in the world. Drawing from ...
02.02.2021 The Great Decoupling, with Nigel Inkster and Linda Yueh In this week's episode Nigel Inkster argues that growing tension between the USA and China could result in the two superpowers decoupling their technology—with significant consequences for humanity’s future. The episode was hosted by economist and broadcaster Linda Yueh. To ...
01.29.2021 Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics Why does physics matter? What can the study of energy and force, of matter and its motion and behaviour through space and time teach us about the universe and the nature of reality itself? According to Jim Al-Khalili, the renowned ...
01.26.2021 How to Save The Planet, with Mike Berners Lee and Jenny Kleeman Climate change, feeding the world, biodiversity, plastics – the list of environmental concerns seems endless. But which of these is the most pressing and, given the global nature of the challenges we face, what can any of us do as ...
01.22.2021 The Power of Ethics, with Susan Liautaud and Josh Lowe In this week's episode ethics expert Susan Liautaud speaks to journalist and writer about how we can make sense of ethical dilemmas and be more attuned to the ethical dimension of our actions. Drawing on her new book 'The Power ...
01.19.2021 Can Joe Biden Heal America? On January 20 Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. But as the storming of the Capitol on January 6 by supporters of Donald Trump showed, those 50 states are far from united. ...
01.15.2021 Populista! The Rise of Latin America's Strongman, with Will Grant and Mark Mardell For more than six decades, Fidel Castro's words have echoed through the politics of Latin America. His towering political influence still looms over the region today. The swing to the Left in Latin America, known as the 'Pink Tide', was ...
01.13.2021 Intelligence Squared Recommends – Power: The Maxwells For today's episode we have something a little different for you. We wanted to introduce you to a new podcast we think you’ll love called Power: The Maxwells. Everyone’s heard of Ghislaine Maxwell (Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged partner in crime). But ...
01.12.2021 David Epstein On Why Generalists Are More Successful Than Specialists Studying the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors and scientists, David Epstein demonstrates why in most fields – especially those that are complex and unpredictable – generalists, not specialists are primed to excel. No matter what you do, where ...
01.08.2021 Trump, Brexit and the Direction of 2021, with Will Davies and Matt Goodwin 2021 is already set to be a monumental year. On January 1 Britain finally Brexited with a deal. On January 20 Joe Biden will become President of the United States. And as we move towards the summer months more and ...
01.05.2021 How to Make the World Add Up, with Tim Harford This episode was recorded in September 2020. 'The undercover economist' and Numbers and economics guru Tim Harford takes a deep dive into the world of statistics. Drawing on the ideas in his new book, How to Make the World Add ...
01.01.2021 Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia, with Madawi Al-Rasheed and Jeremy Bowen In 2018 journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the world and drawing widespread condemnation. Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s young crown prince, denied any involvement in the killing but his reputation as a moderniser was tarnished. ...
12.29.2020 Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness In November 2020 author and podcaster Otegha Uwagba came to Intelligence Squared to discuss her new book, Whites: On Race and Other Falsehoods. Containing reflections on racism, whiteness, and the mental labour required of Black people to navigate relationships with ...
12.24.2020 Christmas Special: Dan Goleman on Emotional Intelligence with Manveen Rana No speaker in the history of Intelligence Squared has generated as many YouTube views as Daniel Goleman. His 2013 talk for us has been viewed 3.2 million times. Goleman returned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his number one, multi-million ...
12.22.2020 The Art of Rest, with Claudia Hammond and Helen Czerski The pandemic of 2020 has turned our lives upside down. Home working and homeschooling have become the norm for millions of us. And while you might think that the absence of long commutes, live entertainment and late-night socialising means we ...
12.18.2020 Alicia Garza on Creating Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag when Alicia Garza wrote what she calls ‘a love letter to Black people’ on Facebook, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in 2013. In this ...
12.17.2020 Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the workplace cool. In episode one of Intelligence Squared Business Reeves Wiedeman tells the story of how WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in ...
12.15.2020 Philosophy in the Age of Covid-19, with Eric Weiner and Danielle Sands In this week's episode Eric Weiner speaks to Danielle Sands about what philosophy can teach us in the age of COVID-19. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Simone de Beauvoir and twentieth-century Paris they discuss philosophers and places that provide ...
12.11.2020 Debate: Cats vs Dogs, with John Gray and Will Self It’s the issue that’s more divisive than Brexit, more polarising than politics. The world is full of animal lovers but we can’t agree on which pet is more worthy of our love – the loyal, obedient dog, or the inscrutable, ...
12.08.2020 COVID-19 and The Vaccine: A Shot of Hope and A Return to Normal? The world had been waiting for the news and on November 9 it finally came: a vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech had proved to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in clinical trials. And then just a ...
12.04.2020 Debate: It’s Time for the West to Get Tough with China In December 2020 we were joined by British Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who argued that we need to prevent a Beijing-dominated world, and Singaporean author Kishore Mahbubani, who contends that the West should accept that it’s only a matter of ...
12.01.2020 The Powerful and the Damned, with Lionel Barber and Manveen Rana Lionel Barber was editor of the Financial Times for the tech boom, the global financial crisis, the continuing rise of China, Brexit, and the established media’s fight for survival in the age of disinformation. In this episode he revealed what ...
11.27.2020 Travelling While Black, with Nanjala Nyabola and Yousra Elbagir At this point in history we are witnessing the highest levels of migration on record. About 258 million people, or one in every 30, were living outside their country of birth in 2017. But whatever an individual’s reason for travel ...
11.24.2020 Debate: Joe Biden Won't Fix the Transatlantic Relationship This week's episode features another debate from our friends at Intelligence Squared Germany, who in partnership with The European Council on Foreign Relations debated whether the election of Joe Biden as U.S President will really change the relationship between Europe ...
11.20.2020 Anthony Scaramucci and Danielle Pletka on Trumpism and The Future of The Republican Party This week Anthony Scaramucci, the former Director of Communications in President Donald Trump’s White House, and Danielle Pletka, former Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, debate the Republican Party's response to the US election and the future of America. ...
11.19.2020 Business and the Future of Immigration in 2021 In this special podcast brought to you by the Home Office and Intelligence Squared, Director of Border and Immigration Policy at the Home Office Philippa Rouse, Head of Immigration Policy at the FSB Emelia Quist, and Partner at Fragomen Ian ...
11.17.2020 Margaret MacMillan and Peter Frankopan on How War Has Shaped Humanity Margaret MacMillan is a distinguished historian, known for her masterly grasp of her subject matter as well as her gift for vivid storytelling. In November 2020 she came to Intelligence Squared Plus to discuss war, a topic which, she argues, ...
11.13.2020 Rematch Debate: To Stop Climate Collapse, We Must End Capitalism Last January, before the coronavirus pandemic struck, Intelligence Squared staged a sold-out debate on whether we need a truly radical new economic system to deal with the looming climate catastrophe. While Covid-19 has dominated the headlines for most of the ...
11.10.2020 Martin Amis on Love, Loss and Christopher Hitchens Martin Amis has often been called the Mick Jagger of the British book world. As famous for his love affairs, his friendships and his complicated family history as for his dazzling prose, he has dominated the literary scene for decades. ...

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