Intelligence Squared

Annabelle Hirsch’s recent book is A History of Women in 101 Objects; a selective exploration through the past, both ancient and modern, looking at items found across millennia ranging from cave paintings from 20,000 BC to a ring owned by Kim Kardashian, which contribute to women's history. Hirsch is joined in conversation by the journalist, crime podcaster and screenwriter Poppy Damon, who is co-creator of Murderabilia – a podcast about the collection of true crime objects – from Audible. We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And while you’re listening, why not visit Intelligencesquared.com and sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about some of our great upcoming events and deals. 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

We revisit POWER TRIP, Intelligence Squared's new podcast investigating the past and future of AI. Carl Miller asks who will win and who will lose, as AI's capabilities begin to threaten jobs and livelihoods. Through the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, automation and globalisation, the workplace has been on the frontlines of changes across wider society. Featuring Kenneth Cukkier, Deputy Executive Editor at The Economist; James Bessen, economist and technologist at Boston University and Darren Jones MP, Chair of the House of Commons business select committee.  Want the future right now? Become a supporter of Intelligence Squared to get all five episodes of POWER TRIP to binge in one go. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone who follows the news cycle knows that between conflict and pandemics, the looming threat of the climate crisis, powerful AI and not to mention political scaremongering and moral panics, we’re never short of things to feel fearful of. Cultural historian Robert Peckham's recent book is: Fear: An Alternative History of the World. In it, he argues that fear is one of the main driving forces of human history, while also tracing the politics of fear from the outbreak of bubonic plague in the 14th century to the covid-19 pandemic today. Peckham was previously Professor of History and MB Lee Endowed Professor in the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. He’s also the founder of Open Cube, an organisation that promotes the integration of the arts, science, and technology for health. Joining him in conversation is Sophie McBain, associate editor of the New Statesman, and an award-winning writer whose work often focuses on the intersection where fields such as psychology, science and society’s l

The Labour MP Wes Streeting reveals his childhood struggle with poverty and the inspirational figures who set him on the path to university and politics in this discussion with BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Justin Webb. Streeting grew up in London’s East End and is now the UK’s shadow health secretary. He explains how the influence of his mother and two grandfathers had a lasting impact on his outlook and how an innate sense of optimism has allowed him to get to where he is today, as told in his recent book: One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up. We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And while you’re listening, why not visit Intelligencesquared.com and sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about some of our great upcoming events and deals. If you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts,

This is an episode of Tides of Transformation: An Oil Story, a brand new podcast from Intelligence Squared. In this episode, Gavin Bridge from Durham University and James Marriott of Platform London and the co-author of Crude Britannia: How Big Oil Shaped a Nation are joined by former CEO of the Net Zero Technology Centre Colette Cohen OBE and former trade union organiser Jake Molloy for a conversation about the evolution of the oil sector in Britain and the different components that comprise it, including the offshore, refineries, trading and finance. Our panelists also explore the differing pace of change across the oil sector, the complexity this creates for the expansion of clean energy projects, and what must be done to ensure a rapid, and just, energy transition. Other contributors include the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Gail Bradbrook, Morgan Stanley’s Global Oil Strategist Martijn Rats, and Fuels Industry UK’s Director of Downstream Policy Dr Andy Roberts. The host is Dr Helen Czerski. For more

When did you first hear of GPT, Claude, DALL-E or Bard? Feels like a while ago, right? In barely over a year AI has permeated our conversations, our places of work and it feels omnipresent in the culture. It also threatens to make some of the pillars of our society redundant. Join researcher and author Carl Miller for POWER TRIP, a brand new podcast from Intelligence Squared, to see where that journey is leading us.  Want the future right now? Become a supporter of Intelligence Squared to get all five episodes of POWER TRIP to binge in one go. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.  Technology is going to impact the future of humanity in ways that we may never have predicted and in the coming years perhaps in ways we can no longer control. In this first episode, Carl Miller guides us through the journey of how we got to this point in the story of AI and asks whether historians in the future will look at the era as one of pre-GPT and post-GPT. Featuring Michael Wooldridge, Director of

We revisit a debate from 2021 between the former Greek finance minister, economist and author Yanis Varoufakis, and Gillian Tett, the Financial Times columnist, anthropologist, and author. The two gathered to debate: Can We Fix Capitalism? Our chair was Politico's Anne McElvoy, who at time of recording was senior editor at The Economist.  Gillian Tett is also Provost of Kings College at Cambridge University and a sought after voice whose smart insights can help put the often complex worlds of finance and the economy into perspective. Coming up on Wednesday 25 October 2023, Gillian Tett will be live onstage in London to discuss the economic outlook for 2024 ahead. The event in partnership with Y TREE is going to touch on issues such as how businesses can harness AI for the benefit of society and also the potential economic turbulence that could be the result of a second Trump presidency. Joining Tett onstage will be Johnny Dymond of BBC News. Follow the link below to purchase tickets and get ahead on the big e

This is the second instalment of our two-part debate, with George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, arguing for the motion We Should All Go Vegan. Patrick Holden, Founder and chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, argues against it. Our chair is Alice Thomson, Columnist and interviewer at The Times. Livestock farming contributes 14.5% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Farm animals belch out massive amounts of methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. They are also extremely wasteful of resources, using up 83% of farmland worldwide while providing only 18% of our calories, guzzling soya and grain that could feed humans more efficiently, and requiring vast amounts of water. As for our health, vegan sports stars such as Venus and Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton prove that you can be superfit on a plant-based diet, and research has linked vegan diets to lower rates of some diseases.

In this two-part debate, George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, argues for the motion We Should All Go Vegan. Patrick Holden, Founder and chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, argues against it. Our chair is Alice Thomson, Columnist and interviewer at The Times. Livestock farming contributes 14.5% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Farm animals belch out massive amounts of methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. They are also extremely wasteful of resources, using up 83% of farmland worldwide while providing only 18% of our calories, guzzling soya and grain that could feed humans more efficiently, and requiring vast amounts of water. As for our health, vegan sports stars such as Venus and Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton prove that you can be superfit on a plant-based diet, and research has linked vegan diets to lower rates of some diseases. That’s the argument made by the ve

Until recently, the Murdoch's formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down. Michael Wolff the acclaimed author of a trilogy of books about the the chaotic Trump presidency and the biographer of Rupert Murdoch comes to Intelligence Squared to discuss this real life Succession with Justin Webb. The episode was produced and edited by Conor Boyle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tomiwa Owolade is a rising star of literary and cultural criticism in the UK. His first book is This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter. In this discussion, Owolade joins commentator Inaya Folarin Iman to argue that too much of the debate around race in Britain today is viewed through the prism of American ideas and history – models that don’t reflect the challenges and achievements of the increasingly diverse Black British population.  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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com 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 ch

Mark Galeotti is one of the world’s leading experts on modern Russia and is the author of books such as Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine and The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War. In conversation with Intelligence Squared's Conor Boyle, he explains how the recent death of the Wagner mercenary Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin means that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing powerful allies and those willing to carry out Russia's military agenda. How long can Putin cling onto power?  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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philosopher Susan Neiman and cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams take part in a challenging conversation on the themes of Neiman’s new book Left is Not Woke. The book sets out what Neiman sees as the dangerous consequences of conflating ‘wokeism’ with the Left, arguing that this confusion threatens the core principles that have guided progressive movements for centuries. 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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com 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

Philip Gold is one of the world's leading researchers of depressive illness. Since 1974, he has worked at the National Institute of Health, where he has served as Chief of Neuroendocrine Research, and Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program, and Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrinology. For this episode, he joins science communicator and Postdoctoral fellow at The Francis Crick Institute, Dr Güneş Taylor, in conversation to talk about his life's work and the findings of his recent book: Breaking Through Depression.  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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com 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

Bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein goes down the rabbit hole in pursuit of her doppelganger – another well-known writer with a name similar to hers but whose views couldn’t be more different from her own. She finds herself returning again and again to a place she calls Mirror World, where conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and wellness influencers make common cause with far-right propagandists and demagogues. In conversation with journalist Ruchira Sharma, Klein sheds light on our own culture as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister. 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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-

This the second instalment of our three-part episode. Mustafa Suleyman is the ultimate AI insider. As co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, he is one of the pioneers of the artificial intelligence revolution, potentially the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. His new book The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma, asks questions about whether society is prepared for such rapid change. In the first of a three-part conversation for this episode of Intelligence Squared, Suleyman joined Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, live at the Tabernacle theatre in London to explain how he believes we are approaching a critical threshold in the history of humankind.  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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And if you’d like to suppo

Mustafa Suleyman is the ultimate AI insider. As co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, he is one of the pioneers of the artificial intelligence revolution, potentially the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. His new book The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma, asks questions about whether society is prepared for such rapid change. In the first of a three-part conversation for this episode of Intelligence Squared, Suleyman joined Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, live at the Tabernacle theatre in London to explain how he believes we are approaching a critical threshold in the history of humankind.  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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling

John Gray is one of the UK’s most important and influential political thinkers. Sceptical of ideas about progress and the perfectibility of human nature, he is an arch critic of liberalism, believing that history moves in cycles rather than inexorably towards a better future. For this episode of Intelligence Squared he is joined by David Runciman, a political scientist known for his clear analysis of modern political complexities. Together they explore the themes of Gray’s new book The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, which looks at the world of the 2020s through the prism of the great 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, famous for saying that without government, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Traversing 20th-century Russia, India and China, and referencing thinkers from Nietzsche and Hegel to Pinker and Fukuyama, Gray shares his realist vision for what the future may hold and explains how, in a world of absurdity, meaning can be found not in grandiose ideas but in mor

Do you ever turn away from the news in despair? Do you scroll through social media and come away feeling angry, frustrated and fearful? Have you given up on the idea that a level of sanity might ever be restored to our politics? If so, acclaimed political commentator Rafael Behr's new book might be for you, Politics: A Survivor’s Guide: How to Stay Engaged without Getting Enraged. In conversation with fellow political journalist Jonathan Freedland, Behr discusses how social media is impacting contemporary political discourse and contributing to what he sees as the failures at the heart of our democracy. 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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com 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 acc

Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis has spent the last number of years investigating the global waste industry. In June 2023 he came to Intelligence Squared to tell us the truth about Britain’s overflowing sewers and hollowed-out mining towns, the mountainous landfills of New Delhi, Ghana’s flooded second-hand markets and what it all means for the future. Joining him to discuss the book is Dr Güneş Taylor, science communicator and Postdoctoral fellow at The Francis Crick Institute. 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 podcasts@intelligencesquared.com 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