Intelligence Squared

By Intelligence SquaredSociety & Culture News Arts News Commentary

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Intelligence Squared episodes

July 11, 2021 The Sunday Debate: Revere or Remove? The Battle over Statues, Heritage and History
Statues and memorials to famous figures of the past adorn our towns and cities. But what should be done when some of these figures have come to be seen by many people as controversial symbols of oppression and discrimination?
In Britain, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign hit the headlines when it demanded the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford’s Oriel College, of which he was a leading benefactor, because of his colonialism. In the US, violent protests in Charlottesville were sparked by a decision to remove from a park a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, because of the association of the Confederacy with slavery.
Passions run high on both sides. Are those calling for the removal of controversial statues seeking to right an historical injustice or are they trying to erase history? And are those who object to removing memorials defending the indefensible or are they conserving historical reality, however unpalatable that may be?
To discuss these emotive questions and examine the broader cultural conflicts which lie behind them, Intelligence Squared joined forces with Historic England and bringing together a stellar panel including historians David Olusoga and Peter Frankopan, the journalist and author Afua Hirsch and the cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.
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1 hr 5 min
July 09, 2021 The Ever-Changing Brain with David Eagleman and Brian Eno
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 mistakenly perceive book pages to be slightly red in colour? Will we one day be able to control a robot with our thoughts, just as we do our fingers and toes? Why do we dream at night, and what does that have to do with the rotation of the planet? These are just some of the questions David Eagleman answered when he came to Intelligence Squared for this exclusive online event. Eagleman is a leading neuroscientist, as well as one of the world’s most dynamic and engaging science communicators. He specialises in brain plasticity – the idea that our brains are constantly changing and reconfiguring the world around us. The more experiences we have, the more the brain absorbs and the more it adjusts. In conversation with musician and producer Brian Eno, Eagleman discussed his latest findings which he outlines in his new book, Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. And he showed that far from getting less malleable as we get older, our brains can continue to learn and absorb information quickly, if we keep on providing them with stimuli and new experiences. To buy the book click here: https://www.primrosehillbooks.com/product/livewired-the-inside-story-of-the-ever-changing-brain-david-eagleman-intel/

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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.
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58 min
July 06, 2021 Race and Guns in a Divided America, with Carol Anderson and Mark Mardell
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't), their life - as surely as the lives of Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor - may be snatched away in a single, fateful second.
In this week's podcast historian Carol Anderson speaks to Mark Mardell about her new book The Second, illuminating the history and impact of the Second Amendment: from the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry or use a firearm, to today, where measures to expand and curtail gun ownership continue to limit the freedoms and power of Black Americans.
To buy the book click here:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-second/carol-anderson/9781526633682

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38 min
July 04, 2021 The Sunday Debate: The Catholic Church is a Force For Good in the World
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, it is being criticised as being a malign influence in debates about some of the most pressing issues of the modern world – overpopulation, Aids, global warming, human rights and so on. Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens battle it out with Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe over the motion “The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World” in our debate from 2009.
—
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 [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2.
And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared..
Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
50 min
July 02, 2021 Albums that Changed My Life, with Tom Gatti, David Mitchell and Preti Taneja
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, forging our friendships and charting our love affairs. They become part of our story.
In this special podcast for Intelligence Squared, journalist and music obsessive Tom Gatti – editor of Long Players, a new anthology of writing on albums – was in conversation with two of his contributors, acclaimed novelist David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet) and writer and activist Preti Taneja, author of the prize-winning novel We That Are Young. They discussed the power of certain records to act on us like Proustian madeleines, transporting us back to a particular time and place – Gatti, by his own admission, has listened to Radiohead’s The Bends more times than is strictly necessary; Mitchell’s great formative influence is Joni Mitchell’s Blue; Taneja grew up with Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest. And they explored how music influences their writing – directly in the case of Mitchell’s latest novel, Utopia Avenue, the epic tale of a psychedelic rock band’s rise to stardom in the late sixties.
To find out more about Long Players click here: https://www.primrosehillbooks.com/product/long-players-writers-on-the-albums-that-shaped-them-tom-gatti/
To see the Spotify playlist that accompanies the book please go here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bzkr33b38k4egE6laYQuC

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53 min
June 29, 2021 Emma Dabiri and Alex Renton on Race, Reckoning and What We Can Do Next
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's episode they come to Intelligence Squared to discuss how we can move forward on these seemingly intractable issues. The episode was hosted by Farah Jassat Head of Podcasts at Intelligence Squared.
To buy Dabiri's book click here: https://amzn.to/3hgSuyn
For Alex Renton's book click here: https://bit.ly/3qyhSUq

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1 hr 2 min
June 25, 2021 The Devil You Know, with Dr Gwen Adshead and Linda Yueh
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 them to articulate their life experience.
In the face of overcrowded prisons and cuts to mental health care, Adshead speaks to Linda Yueh about why we need to challenge what we think we know about evil. To order the book click here: https://bit.ly/3d9SVsX

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39 min
June 22, 2021 Surviving Disaster, with Max Brooks and Carl Miller
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 hyper-realistic disaster/monster/survival story that explores what happens to humanity when it is forced into social isolation, how our modern societies are built for comfort and convenience over resilience, and our distinct inability to survive when infrastructure breaks down.
To find out more about the book click here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Devolution-Max-Brooks/dp/1529124093

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35 min
June 18, 2021 While Justice Sleeps, with Stacey Abrams and Tayari Jones
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 be nominated by a major party for State Governor. Her fight against voter suppression helped win Georgia for the Democrats and helped Joe Biden secure the presidency. As Biden himself has said, ‘Nobody, nobody in America has done more for the right to vote than Stacey’. And as if that weren’t enough for this remarkable 47-year-old woman, she has also written two political books and eight romantic novels.
In June 2021 she came to Intelligence Squared to mark the publication of her new thriller 'While Justice Sleeps', a page-turner set in the corridors of political and judicial power, which has already been a No 1 New York Times bestseller. Abrams will be in conversation with the internationally bestselling novelist Tayari Jones, whose book, 'An American Marriage', about the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, dominated the top ten fiction list on both sides of the Atlantic for many months and has been praised by Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey.
To find out more and order the book click here: https://bit.ly/3qeNO03

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51 min
June 17, 2021 Debate: We Must Stop Big Data's Pandemic Power Grab
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 Intelligence Squared Germany in partnership with the European Council on Foreign Relations. The host was Ulrike Franke.
To find out more about ECFR click here: https://ecfr.eu/

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55 min