Intelligence Squared

The Bengal Famine is the forgotten story of the Second World War. Between 1943 and 1944, at least three million Indians, all of whom were British subjects, died from starvation or diseases linked to malnutrition.

It is one of the darkest chapters in colonial history, yet the memory of those millions who perished is not broadly nurtured in Britain, India or Bangladesh. There is no memorial, museum, or archive dedicated to them anywhere in the world – not even a plaque.

Who better to shed light on these untold stories than the award-winning journalist Kavita Puri? Described by The Radio Times as ‘our foremost chronicler of the lives of British South Asians,’ Puri has received critical acclaim for her radio series and writing on Indian history.

In March 2025 she joined author Sathnam Sanghera live on stage to uncover this tragic chapter of British and Indian history. Drawing on the themes of her hit podcast Three Million, Puri told the dramatic and complex story of British colonialism, Indian nationalism, global war and the end of empire, while challenging national mythologies, the prevailing British narrative of World War II, and what we understand a hero to be.

Puri also discussed the extensive archival research that went into the making of the podcast, and the new discoveries uncovered by forensically piecing together the stories of eyewitnesses and survivors.

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The Bengal Famine is the forgotten story of the Second World War. Between 1943 and 1944, at least three million Indians, all of whom were British subjects, died from starvation or diseases linked to malnutrition.

It is one of the darkest chapters in colonial history, yet the memory of those millions who perished is not broadly nurtured in Britain, India or Bangladesh. There is no memorial, museum, or archive dedicated to them anywhere in the world – not even a plaque.

Who better to shed light on these untold stories than the award-winning journalist Kavita Puri? Described by The Radio Times as ‘our foremost chronicler of the lives of British South Asians,’ Puri has received critical acclaim for her radio series and writing on Indian history.

In March 2025 she joined author Sathnam Sanghera live on stage to uncover this tragic chapter of British and Indian history. Drawing on the themes of her hit podcast Three Million, Puri told the dramatic and complex story of British colonialism, Indian nationalism, global war and the end of empire, while challenging national mythologies, the prevailing British narrative of World War II, and what we understand a hero to be.

Puri also discussed the extensive archival research that went into the making of the podcast, and the new discoveries uncovered by forensically piecing together the stories of eyewitnesses and survivors.

------

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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Ed Winters, known to his millions of online followers as Earthling Ed, has perfected the art of persuasion. During his extensive career as an activist and educator, he has made the case for veganism everywhere from university campuses to live on GB News. His compelling and informative content has garnered millions of views, and earned him a dedicated following across online platforms.

Earthling Ed joined us live at the Kiln Theatre to share his insights on how we can all become better conversationalists and critical thinkers. How can we productively engage with those who have opposing views? How can emotionally charged conversations become productive? And how can we engage others to create a more ethical, kind and sustainable world?

Drawing on the new paperback edition of his bestselling book, How to Argue with a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time), Ed discussed how to debunk and respond to every argument against veganism: from classic conspiracy theories and questions over a lack of protein to newer issues surrounding processed vegan substitutes and more.

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Ed Winters, known to his millions of online followers as Earthling Ed, has perfected the art of persuasion. During his extensive career as an activist and educator, he has made the case for veganism everywhere from university campuses to live on GB News. His compelling and informative content has garnered millions of views, and earned him a dedicated following across online platforms.

Earthling Ed joined us live at the Kiln Theatre to share his insights on how we can all become better conversationalists and critical thinkers. How can we productively engage with those who have opposing views? How can emotionally charged conversations become productive? And how can we engage others to create a more ethical, kind and sustainable world?

Drawing on the new paperback edition of his bestselling book, How to Argue with a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time), Ed discussed how to debunk and respond to every argument against veganism: from classic conspiracy theories and questions over a lack of protein to newer issues surrounding processed vegan substitutes and more.

If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

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... 

Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99:

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…

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…

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This event was part of our Age of the Strongman series. Click here to see the other events in the series: https://www.intelligencesquared.com/the-age-of-the-strongman/.

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War in Ukraine. Interference in democratic elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics to destabilise Europe. In recent years, Vladimir Putin has waged a relentless campaign to expand his influence beyond Russia’s borders and to undermine Western democracy. But how did he come to have such control over Russia – and what is it that he really wants?

In March 2025 Catherine Belton, acclaimed journalist and author of the bestselling book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West joined us live from Kyiv for this installment of our series, The Age of the Strongman. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, Belton revealed how Putin’s rise was orchestrated by a network of former KGB officers and oligarchs who used economic power, fear and corruption to install him in the Kremlin. She explored how this model of governance and ‘strongman leadership’ has been exported globally and what the consequences continue to be for us all. 

The event was chaired by Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator for the Financial Times.

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This event was part of our Age of the Strongman series. Click here to see the other events in the series: https://www.intelligencesquared.com/the-age-of-the-strongman/.

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War in Ukraine. Interference in democratic elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics to destabilise Europe. In recent years, Vladimir Putin has waged a relentless campaign to expand his influence beyond Russia’s borders and to undermine Western democracy. But how did he come to have such control over Russia – and what is it that he really wants?

In March 2025 Catherine Belton, acclaimed journalist and author of the bestselling book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West joined us live from Kyiv for this installment of our series, The Age of the Strongman. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, Belton revealed how Putin’s rise was orchestrated by a network of former KGB officers and oligarchs who used economic power, fear and corruption to install him in the Kremlin. She explored how this model of governance and ‘strongman leadership’ has been exported globally and what the consequences continue to be for us all. 

The event was chaired by Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator for the Financial Times.

-----

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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... 

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George Mpanga, known as George the Poet, is seen by many as one of the UK’s most compelling voices in poetry, music, and social commentary. 

Originally hailing from St Raphael’s Estate in Neasden, Mpanga has spent over a decade working at the intersection of art and politics reflecting on his upbringing to shed light on how race and inequality still shape Britain today.

His debut poetry collection in 2015, Search Party, tackled the north-south divide, the housing crisis and critiqued government anti-immigration policies, to widespread acclaim. Since then, Mpanga’s work has bridged grime, prose, spoken-word performance, and most recently longer-form audio, as he has continued to interrogate the socio-political status quo.

In February 2025 he joined us on stage to discuss the themes of his new memoir, Track Record: Me, Music, and the War on Blackness. He discussed his personal story alongside a broader social history of race and identity in Britain, and examined what he terms “the war on Blackness”: the systemic forces that continue to oppress people of African descent worldwide.

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George Mpanga, known as George the Poet, is seen by many as one of the UK’s most compelling voices in poetry, music, and social commentary. 

Originally hailing from St Raphael’s Estate in Neasden, Mpanga has spent over a decade working at the intersection of art and politics reflecting on his upbringing to shed light on how race and inequality still shape Britain today.

His debut poetry collection in 2015, Search Party, tackled the north-south divide, the housing crisis and critiqued government anti-immigration policies, to widespread acclaim. Since then, Mpanga’s work has bridged grime, prose, spoken-word performance, and most recently longer-form audio, as he has continued to interrogate the socio-political status quo.

In February 2025 he joined us on stage to discuss the themes of his new memoir, Track Record: Me, Music, and the War on Blackness. He discussed his personal story alongside a broader social history of race and identity in Britain, and examined what he terms “the war on Blackness”: the systemic forces that continue to oppress people of African descent worldwide.

-----

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.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

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... 

Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99:

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…

Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access.

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This event took place on the 31st of October 2016 at the Royal Institution in London.

CHAIR: Afua Hirsch - Writer and broadcaster

SPEAKERS FOR THE MOTION: AA Gill - The Sunday Times’s star restaurant and TV critic

AGAINST THE MOTION: George Monbiot - Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet

Fancy a nice juicy steak? Most of us do from time to time, and we don’t trouble our consciences too much with the rights and wrongs of eating meat. Others, while vaguely aware that we ought to go vegan, just can’t face the rest of our lives denying ourselves bacon, beef, butter etc. But once we start looking into the arguments for veganism, it becomes difficult to justify the omnivore diet.

Take the environment for starters. Livestock farming has a massive impact on the planet, producing around 14% of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions according to the UN. That’s roughly the same as the total amount of global transport emissions. Animals are extremely inefficient processors of the maize and soya that farmers grow to feed them. If we ate those crops ourselves instead of feeding them to livestock, we could free up hundreds of millions of hectares of rainforests, savannahs and wetlands where wild animals could flourish instead.

And then there are the arguments about animal welfare. Recent scientific research indicates what many of us feel we already know – that animals have complex emotional lives not dissimilar to our own. Intensive farming – the kind that confines hens, pigs and cattle to squalid indoor pens – thwarts their instincts to move around freely and build social bonds with their group. Tens of billions of animals exist in this way, and that’s before their short lives are ended in the horror house of the abattoir. As for those who say a vegan diet isn’t healthy, elite athletes who have made the switch, including world tennis No 1 Novak Djokovic, prove you don’t need animal protein to excel at the highest levels in sport.

On the other side of the argument we developed as omnivores and every human culture has its culinary traditions, based on the taste and aesthetics of meat and dairy. Do we really want to live in a world where there is no beef Wellington or cheese soufflé? As for the environmentalist arguments, omnivores now have some serious eco-credentials behind them. A study at Cornell University shows that a diet that includes a few small portions of grass-fed meat a week may actually be greener than eating no animal products at all.

And when it comes to animal welfare, rather than abandoning animal products altogether, couldn’t we do more good by pressing for genuinely transparent labelling of our meat and dairy? If consumers really know what they are getting, fewer people might be willing to buy the £3 chicken produced in the barbaric conditions of the agricultural industry. As for a vegan diet being healthier, we should stop giving airtime to self-appointed health experts and lifestyle bloggers. Some dieticians argue that there are nutrients we need that we just can’t get from plants alone. Yes, we can get calcium from kale and iron from beans, but the quantity, quality and bio-availability of such elements are far better when we get them from animal rather than plant sources.

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This event is part of Conversations at the Kiln, a new event series at Kiln Theatre programmed by Intelligence Squared. For more events with speakers from the worlds of literature, art, poetry and politics, click here.

Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, is celebrated globally for his heartbreaking, funny and moving depictions of working-class life, identity and resilience.

Born and raised in Glasgow, Stuart’s fiction draws heavily from his own experiences growing up as a gay man in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. His debut Shuggie Bain received worldwide acclaim for its searing portrayal of poverty, addiction and one young boy’s tumultuous relationship with his mother in 1980s Scotland. It was heralded as a masterpiece by many critics, and received the Booker Prize in 2020; to date, it has sold over a million copies.

In his second novel Young Mungo, Stuart returned to the streets of Glasgow to tell an equally compelling story of vulnerability and strength. This coming-of-age tale delves into the forbidden love between two young men, set against the backdrop of sectarian violence and familial expectations. Similarly critically acclaimed, the book cemented Stuart’s place as one of today’s most compelling literary voices.

In February 2025 Stuart joined us live on stage to discuss his literary journey, the inspiration behind his award-winning novels, and his insights on writing honest depictions of marginalised worlds rarely seen in the literary mainstream.

With the respected production company A24 set to adapt both novels for the BBC, Stuart also discussed the process of bringing his characters to life on screen.

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