Intelligence Squared

By Intelligence Squared

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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 sharpest minds. Join the debate, live and online, at www.intelligencesquared.com and download our podcasts every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

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Forever War: How Conflict B...

09.26.2022

Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Academic and author Samuel Moyn joins us to discusses warfare over the course of the 20th century – ...

Intelligence Squared episodes:

09.26.2022 Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Academic and author Samuel Moyn joins us to discusses warfare over the course of the 20th century – ...
09.25.2022 The Sunday Debate: The World Should Recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. In this archive debate from 2018, we invited voices to discuss one of the most contentious issues in ...
09.23.2022 Erdoğan’s War: The Quest for Power at Home and in Syria, with Gönül Tol Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now Turkey’s longest-serving president. Since coming to power as Prime Minister in 2002 he ...
09.21.2022 How The West Can Stop Putin, with Mikhail Khodorkovsky Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Mikhail Khodorkovsky has experienced first hand the wrath of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest ...
09.19.2022 Finding Our Inner Strength, with Bruce Daisley Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Bruce Daisley is one the world’s most respected thought leaders on workplace culture and the future of work. ...
09.18.2022 The Sunday Debate: Can Decolonisation Go Too Far? Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Today, decolonisation is generally spoken of as the rightful return of things to the way they once were, ...
09.16.2022 The Extraordinary Life of Catherine Dior, with Justine Picardie Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Dior is a name that resonates with glamour, elegance and luxury around the world. The French fashion house ...
09.14.2022 Understanding Environmental Inequality, with Leah Thomas Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Environmental preservation and social justice are often presented as two separate issues; the Earth and its future are ...
09.12.2022 The Inside Story of Europe’s Biggest Financial Scandal, with Dan McCrum Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. When Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate Wirecard, a hot new European tech startup ...
09.11.2022 The Sunday Debate: Has the Political Establishment Failed America? Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. In this archive debate from 2017 produced in collaboration with the University of Chicago, we asked: has the ...
09.09.2022 How Social Media Rewired our Brains and our World, with Max Fisher Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. How does more time spent online result in more havoc and social unrest in the world? In just ...
09.07.2022 The Futureverse: Undervalued – Is the Future of Art Female? Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Until very recently, female artists have occupied a tiny space of the art market, undervalued and ignored. There ...
09.05.2022 How to Improve the World for the Generations to Come, with Will MacAskill Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Will MacAskill is the philosopher thinking a million years into the future who is also having a bit ...
09.04.2022 The Sunday Debate: Reflections on the Collapse of the Soviet Union, with Timothy Garton Ash and Ivan Krastev Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Following the death of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev this week, we dip into the archive for ...
09.02.2022 Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin, with Philip Short Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Journalist, author and former BBC foreign correspondent Philip Short joins us to discuss his new book, Putin: His ...
08.31.2022 Lessons from the American Civil War, with Sarah Churchwell and Karen Joy Fowler Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. How can history and literature help us make sense of the current turmoil we encounter in the world? ...
08.29.2022 Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations, with Nihal Arthanayake Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. As an acclaimed interviewer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 5 Live, Nihal Arthanayake has spent years trying to ...
08.28.2022 The Sunday Debate: Should the West defend Taiwan? Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. For many in the West, defending Taiwan means standing up for democracy and freedom, and not bending to ...
08.26.2022 The Science of Anti-Ageing, with Nicklas Brendborg Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Nicklas Brendborg is the young science writer making us rethink our understanding of the ageing process. He joins ...
08.25.2022 Spies, Communism and the Battle to Win the Cold War, with Scott Anderson Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. In this archive conversation from 2020, journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer and war reporter Scott Anderson joins us to ...
08.22.2022 Too Woke? How Society's Best Intentions Could Be Betraying Black America, with John McWhorter Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. To anyone who has been following the debates surrounding race in America, John McWhorter needs little introduction. A ...
08.21.2022 The Sunday Debate: Prosecute Trump On January 6 2021 a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S Capitol seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Rioters overran police and broke through windows chanting ‘stop the steal’ while threatening Vice President Mike Pence with violence. The moment ...
08.19.2022 Engineering for Change, with Will Butler-Adams With the climate crisis mounting, cycling is often touted as being part of the solution for how we can make our cities less congested, more green and generally more pleasant places to be. The unmistakable silhouette of a Brompton bike, ...
08.17.2022 Afghanistan After The Withdrawal: What Lessons Have We Learned? One year ago the United States decided to withdraw from Afghanistan after two decades in the country. The Taliban, a militant Islamist group that ran most of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, swept to power without much resistance from the ...
08.15.2022 Salman Rushdie: Touchstones with Razia Iqbal For this archive episode from 2021, journalist and BBC News broadcaster Razia Iqbal is joined by the acclaimed author Salman Rushdie to discuss his cultural touchstones. The conversation focuses on topics such as his love of James Joyce, Bob Dylan ...
08.14.2022 The Sunday Debate: The Bittersweet Truth About What We Eat To unpack the truth behind the often confusing information about the food we eat, in this archive discussion from 2017, Intelligence Squared brought together some of the world’s leading experts on the science of human nutrition and health. Joining our ...
08.12.2022 Western Intervention and the Rise of Guerrilla Warfare, with David Kilcullen This month will mark a year since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021 and the chaotic withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan. In this archive discussion from 2020, we discuss the nature of past Western interventions and the ...
08.10.2022 An Honest Life, with Micheal Leviton In an era of fake news and 'alternative facts', the issue of truth and how it is presented to the world has never been more timely. But on a personal level, things are less clear cut. We all tell white ...
08.08.2022 Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, with Reni Eddo-Lodge Reni Eddo-Lodge, the journalist, podcaster and author of essential book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, joins columnist, author and academic Gary Younge in conversation. As the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of the ...
08.07.2022 The Sunday Debate: If You Believe You are a Citizen of the World, You are a Citizen of Nowhere In this archive debate, we revisit a discussion from 2018 when an assembled panel of smart thinkers gathered to reflect on the concept of nationhood, nationality and the impact of former UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s infamous 2016 speech that ...
08.05.2022 Shinzo Abe's Legacy and Japan's Future, with Satona Suzuki and Jeff Kingston Japan's recently assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe was a leader who leaves behind a complex legacy. Internationally, he strengthened Japan's relationship with the US in ways unseen before. Closer to home, crucial good relations with South Korea dissipated. His ...
08.03.2022 The Future of the War in Ukraine, with Fiona Hill We welcome back Fiona Hill, the foreign affairs and national security expert, to discuss Putin, foreign policy, and what could lie ahead for the war in Ukraine. Hill has been an advisor to three US Presidents and is former Senior ...
08.01.2022 Reclaiming the Earth: Exploring Race, Heritage and the Natural World For this episode focusing on how craft, creativity and our relationship with the planet can help us rethink established narratives and contribute to addressing historical injustices of the past, we visit the Radical Acts Biennial, an initiative from Harewood House. ...
07.31.2022 The Sunday Debate: Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War For this week's Sunday Debate, we're dipping back into the archive to 2014, when we gathered a panel of expert historians to debate whether Britain was right to fight in the First World War, a tragedy that laid the foundations ...
07.29.2022 How to Lead a Sustainable Business – Emma Dabiri on Reinventing Stories Around Race For this edition of Intelligence Squared, we join Alannah Weston, Chairman of Selfridges Group, for her podcast How to Lead a Sustainable Business, in which she speaks to thought leaders who are reinventing their sectors for a sustainable and just ...
07.27.2022 Putin’s Long War: From Chechnya to Ukraine, with John Sweeney In the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, award-winning journalist John Sweeney reported from Kiev, drawing on his decades of experience covering stories ranging from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya. His ...
07.25.2022 Why Religion Keeps Evolving, with Robin Dunbar Robin Dunbar has been hailed as one of the most insightful and creative evolutionary thinkers of our time, famed for his work on human networks and communities (he came up with the Dunbar number, the idea that humans can have ...
07.24.2022 The Sunday Debate: Angela Merkel is Destroying Europe In this archive listen from 2013, we explore the global political impact of a leader whose legacy and influence is still being questioned today: Angela Merkel. As with any leader, a legacy isn't set in stone and as the dust ...
07.22.2022 The Man Who Escaped Auschwitz to Warn the World, with Jonathan Freedland During the Second World War, Rudolph Vrba was one of the very few people to escape the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He did so along with fellow escapee, Alfred Wetzler, in April 1944. Vrba is the subject of ...
07.21.2022 Breaking the Power of Big Tech, with Jamie Susskind Trolling, conspiracy theories, racist algorithms, cyberwarfare – every day our headlines are ablaze with negative stories about the internet. The problem? The unaccountable power of the big tech companies. That’s the view of bestselling author and barrister Jamie Susskind. His ...
07.18.2022 Next Steps for an Anti-Racist Society, with Ibram X. Kendi Activist, academic and author Ibram X. Kendi joins us for a discussion on his new book, How to Raise an Antiracist. It follows his Intelligence Squared talk that took place in 2019 outlining how to implement strategies for tackling racism ...
07.17.2022 The Sunday Debate: The Battle for the Countryside, with George Monbiot, Rory Stewart, Minette Batters and Mark Cocker The British countryside is often heralded for its natural beauty, but much of these bucolic landscapes are, of course, man-made. With farming and land use being a crucial discussion within the global debate around the climate crisis, we revisit a ...
07.15.2022 The Magical World of Animal Senses, with Ed Yong What do bees sense in flowers? What do songbirds hear in each others’ tunes? And what’s that smell sending your dog running up the street? These questions and many more are the basis of science communicator Ed Yong's book, An ...
07.13.2022 The Futureverse: Reimagining Worth How do we define value? How has this changed over time? And who decides what is deemed valuable? For centuries, society has seen value mainly through an economic lens: one takes a job because of its monetary benefits; marriage is ...
07.11.2022 Doughnut Economics, with Kate Raworth Oxford University economist Kate Raworth has been described by the author and environmentalist George Monbiot as, "The John Maynard Keynes of the 21st century." In 2018, she came to Intelligence Squared to talk through the set of ideas that has ...
07.10.2022 The Sunday Debate: Hip-hop vs Shakespeare In a debate that spans centuries created in partnership with Sotheby's, we hear from Peabody Award-winning spoken-word performer George the Poet and Booker Prize-winning author Howard Jacobson about whether modern-day genres such as hip-hop and slam poetry speak more to ...
07.08.2022 A Life in Forensic Psychiatry, with Dr Ben Cave What is it like to treat some of the most troubled men and women in society? Dr Ben Cave is a forensic psychiatrist whose 35-year career has been spent helping those with mental health conditions ranging from delusional disorders to ...
07.07.2022 Them’s the Breaks: Boris Johnson’s Resignation and Britain’s Political Crisis, with Jonathan Freedland, Simon Jenkins and Manveen Rana In a special programme following the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK, we hear from columnist, author and former foreign correspondent Jonathan Freedland, and journalist, author and former editor of The Evening Standard and The Times ...
07.06.2022 The Hunt for the Missing Cryptoqueen, with Jamie Bartlett Dr Ruja Ignatova, an Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptocurrency guru, promised her followers a financial revolution through her project: OneCoin. Then, in October 2017, she disappeared. But not before she had duped investors around the world, some of whom are the poorest ...
07.04.2022 On Speaking and Being: The Power of Words, with Kübra Gümüsay Language is expressive, a way of opening doors or a tool for creating new dialogue. But a tool so powerful can also take us to unforeseen or unintended places. It can create narratives that become fixed, unhelpful, or exclusionary. Kübra ...

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