Intelligence Squared

The genius of Countdown’s dictionary corner Susie Dent is the master of the English language. Lexicographer and etymologist by training, she has spent 30 years on our screens explaining the history and origin of words on one of the world’s longest-running game shows, Channel 4’s Countdown.

In November 2024 Dent came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss her life-long love affair with the English language and how it has culminated in her debut crime novel Guilt by Definition — a glorious celebration of the English dictionary. As all good crime novels begin, it unfolds around a mysterious disappearance. And the protagonist, Martha Thornhill, Senior Editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary, uses words, and their peculiarly precise meanings, as clues in her quest to find out what really happened.

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The genius of Countdown’s dictionary corner Susie Dent is the master of the English language. Lexicographer and etymologist by training, she has spent 30 years on our screens explaining the history and origin of words on one of the world’s longest-running game shows, Channel 4’s Countdown.

In November 2024 Dent came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss her life-long love affair with the English language and how it has culminated in her debut crime novel Guilt by Definition — a glorious celebration of the English dictionary. As all good crime novels begin, it unfolds around a mysterious disappearance. And the protagonist, Martha Thornhill, Senior Editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary, uses words, and their peculiarly precise meanings, as clues in her quest to find out what really happened.

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.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

- Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts

- Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series

- 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events 

... 

Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99:

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- Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series

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Adolescence is the most dramatic and formative period of our lives. Once puberty kicks in and we move to secondary school, our peers take centre stage, and we begin to experience peer pressure and risk-taking. In these pivotal years, adolescents experience sex, love, bullying, friendship, social media and more. According to psychologist Lucy Foulkes, adolescence profoundly shapes who we become as adults, and yet as a period of life, it’s so often dismissed or misunderstood. And even though adults want to protect them, it’s important that as a society we don’t try to prevent teenagers from having the challenging, exhilarating experiences that helps them understand who they are and how to navigate the world.

In November 2024, Foulkes came to Intelligence Squared to share surprising insights from her recent book 'Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us', gathered from her research as an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford. She will explain why, in contrast to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, she disagrees with blanket bans for smartphones as a solution for improving teen mental health. She will discuss why self-consciousness, risk-taking and sensation-seeking are crucial features of the teenage developmental phase. And she will reveal why being popular can be just as hard as being lonely, and why friendships at this age shape us for life.

Foulkes was joined in conversation by journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes.

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.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

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... 

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Adolescence is the most dramatic and formative period of our lives. Once puberty kicks in and we move to secondary school, our peers take centre stage, and we begin to experience peer pressure and risk-taking. In these pivotal years, adolescents experience sex, love, bullying, friendship, social media and more. According to psychologist Lucy Foulkes, adolescence profoundly shapes who we become as adults, and yet as a period of life, it’s so often dismissed or misunderstood. And even though adults want to protect them, it’s important that as a society we don’t try to prevent teenagers from having the challenging, exhilarating experiences that helps them understand who they are and how to navigate the world.

In November 2024, Foulkes came to Intelligence Squared to share surprising insights from her recent book 'Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us', gathered from her research as an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford. She will explain why, in contrast to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, she disagrees with blanket bans for smartphones as a solution for improving teen mental health. She will discuss why self-consciousness, risk-taking and sensation-seeking are crucial features of the teenage developmental phase. And she will reveal why being popular can be just as hard as being lonely, and why friendships at this age shape us for life.

Foulkes was joined in conversation by journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes.

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.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

- Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts

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- 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events 

... 

Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99:

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Our guest today is Baroness Lola Young. Lola Young is a member of the House of Lords, as well as an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice.

In her new memoir, Eight Weeks, Lola tells her remarkable life story from a childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first Black women in the House of Lords.

Through her care records, fragments of memory, and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, she assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in the care system.

Joining Lola to discuss the book is Habiba Katsha, a journalist who specialises in writing about race, gender, beauty, and internet culture.

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.

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Where should you move first in Connect 4? Which property is best in Monopoly? How can pi help you win Rock Paper Scissors?

In October 2024 award-winning mathematician Marcus du Sautoy came to the Intelligence Squared stage to explore the maths and strategy behind the games we love and the tactics needed to master them all. Du Sautoy also described the history of games and the crucial role they play in society.

This is the second 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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Where should you move first in Connect 4? Which property is best in Monopoly? How can pi help you win Rock Paper Scissors?

In October 2024 award-winning mathematician Marcus du Sautoy came to the Intelligence Squared stage to explore the maths and strategy behind the games we love and the tactics needed to master them all. Du Sautoy also described the history of games and the crucial role they play in society.

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.

For £4.99 per month you'll also receive:

- Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts

- Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series

- 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events 

... 

Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99:

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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 recent years the benefits of eating a diet rich in plants have increasingly been at the forefront of our conversations about food. You may have heard scientists like Tim Spector, the founder of ZOE, argue that a healthy diet should consist of 30 plants a week. This recommendation comes from a study led by Spector for the British and American Gut Project in 2019. It showed that people who ate more than 30 plants a week had the healthiest microbiomes and the best health outcomes, while those who didn’t had worse health outcomes. 

That science has informed the cooking of chef and founder of River Cottage Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ever since it was published. And in May 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage where he was in conversation with ZOE’s Dr Federica Amati to argue that getting 30 different plants on our plate every week is easier than you might think. Together they addressed some of the big questions around plant-based eating: to what extent can eating plants really help us avoid disease? How realistic is it for the average person to get 30 different plants every week? And is there a risk of overstating what plants can do for our health?

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

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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.

David Baddiel has been on our screens for over 35 years. The creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and one half of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, he spent his early career in the world of television comedy. More recently, he has become a leading voice on Jewishness and antisemitism in the U.K after releasing his award-winning documentary and book Jews Don’t Count.

In October 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss how both comedy and Jewishness have shaped his career and life. Drawing from his hilarious new memoir My Family, he discussed his upbringing from reckoning with his family’s trauma from the Holocaust to his late mother’s affair with a golfing salesman and his father’s struggles with dementia. Baddiel revealed his family story to shed light on why he believes laughter has the capacity to transform our darkest experiences into something more bearable.

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

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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 writing of Rachel Cusk poses us constant challenges. Her critically acclaimed Outline trilogy and memoirs – A Life’s Work and Aftermath – dared us to rethink the limits of character, identity and what it means to be a woman. Arguably, no writer working today has pushed the boundaries of contemporary writing and storytelling as far. In June 2024, she came to Intelligence Squared to discuss her exhilarating new novel Parade. This work promises to once again expand the notion of what fiction can be and do.

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

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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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