The Labour MP Liam Byrne is Chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee. He also served on the front bench for both prime ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. So he is well-positioned to be thinking about some of society's more pressing economic questions and these are the focus of his recent book, The Inequality of Wealth: Why it Matters and How to Fix it. Joining Byrne in conversation for this episode by the economist and writer Tej Parikh, Economics Leader Writer for T...
Mar 20, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 2054
Roland Allen is a publisher and author whose new book is a history of that everyday essential, the humble notebook. His book – The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper – explores how the notebook's invention ushered in a communications revolution, transforming the ways that ideas were transmitted across the globe and even helping facilitate artistic movements within its pocket-sized pages. Joining Allen in conversation for this episode is fellow writer and former Managing Director of Condé N...
Mar 18, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 2053
Debut novelist Flora Carr's new book, The Tower, looks at the life Scotland's 16th-century monarch Mary, Queen of Scots. In this tale of desire and friendship, Carr weaves in figures that have been long forgotten by the historical record and reimagines the Queen during the period she was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle in Scotland in order to create a new work of literary feminist fiction. Joining Carr to discuss the book for this episode is historian Francesca Peacock, whose own recent book – Pu...
Mar 17, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 2052
2024 is set to be a seismic year. A win by Donald Trump in the US presidential election could upend the world economy, ongoing military conflicts could continue to escalate and the race to develop AI will accelerate as China and the US battle it out for technological supremacy. Who better to make sense of these unsettling and fast-changing times than Martin Wolf? He is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times and widely regarded as one of the world’s most influential writers on the glo...
Mar 15, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 2051
It’s often said that you can’t put a price on a life but in the name of business many organisations do it everyday. Drawing from the themes of her latest book, The Price of Life, journalist and broadcaster Jenny Kleeman shows us how the monetary value of human life is often coldly calculated in industries ranging from insurance to the welfare sector. She also digs into the disturbing and murky underworld of organised crime, where sourcing a hitman or a female trafficking victim could cost as lit...
Mar 13, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2050
Peter Pomerantsev is the journalist, author and academic who specialises in disinformation and the more covert mass communication techniques of our geopolitical age. His latest book is How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, which looks at the Second World War and the career of journalist Sefton Delmer, whose work for the British government contributed to the vital information war waged against Germany and the Nazis. Joining Pomerantsev in conversation for this epis...
Mar 11, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 2049
This is the second instalment of our live debate with an expert panel deciding whether the UK's private schools should continue to enjoy their tax advantages. The UK has an education system that perpetuates inequality. Seven per cent of its children go to private schools and yet these institutions receive around three times the funding per student as the average state school. Privately educated people then go on to dominate our elite institutions. They are seven times as likely to win a place at...
Mar 10, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 2048
In this live debate, our expert panel decides whether the UK's private schools should continue to enjoy their tax advantages. The UK has an education system that perpetuates inequality. Seven per cent of its children go to private schools and yet these institutions receive around three times the funding per student as the average state school. Privately educated people then go on to dominate our elite institutions. They are seven times as likely to win a place at Oxford and Cambridge universitie...
Mar 08, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 2047
In a world of chaos and disaster where many of us already feel powerless, it can be humbling to consider the idea of chance and fate having a big hand in all of our destinies, all of the time. But is it all just random? Someone who knows more about chaos and disaster than most is Dr Brian Klaas, political scientist at UCL and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His latest book is Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. In it he explores how events of historic significance have...
Mar 06, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2046
This is the second instalment of our two-part discussion. Tim Marshall is one of the world’s most successful authors on foreign affairs. He’s the writer who put the ‘geo’ into geopolitics with his multi-million selling books Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography. Marshall’s principal argument is that without geography we cannot understand the world. His latest book is The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space will Change our World. In February 2024 Tim joined journalis...
Mar 04, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 2045
Tim Marshall is one of the world’s most successful authors on foreign affairs. He’s the writer who put the ‘geo’ into geopolitics with his multi-million selling books Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography. Marshall’s principal argument is that without geography we cannot understand the world. His latest book is The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space will Change our World. In February 2024 Tim joined journalist and presenter Ritula Shah for an Intelligence Squared li...
Mar 03, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 2044
In this episode, Helen Newman, Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe is joined by Paul Signac’s great granddaughter Charlotte Hellman, artist Erik Madigan Heck, and the National Gallery’s Christopher Riopelle for a conversation about the revolutionary impact made by the Impressionists. This podcast was originally recorded at Sotheby’s in London in February 2024 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Impressionism. To see the works discussed in this episode and to step further into the world of Sotheby’s, ...
Mar 01, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2043
In this archive listen from 2022, Professor Jim Al-Khalili is the physicist who makes science look easy. He’s the author of several books including The Joy of Science, which offers eight core scientific principles that can be applied to everyday life. As a broadcaster Jim is perhaps best known as the voice of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and he holds the position of Distinguished Chair in physics and University Chair in public engagement at the University of Surrey. Our host for this discus...
Feb 28, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 2042
Corey Keyes is a sociologist and a professor at Emory University in Georgia who studies positive wellbeing: how humans thrive and flourish. He coined the term “languishing” to describe the opposite of flourishing. When you’re languishing you may not be mentally unwell, but you’re probably feeling low, directionless or undervalued, you might feel disconnected from others and like your life lacks meaning and purpose. He has recently published a book, Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World...
Feb 26, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 2041
In Part Two of our double episode discussion, we're once again joined by head of TED, Chris Anderson. He has had a ringside view of the world’s most influential thinkers in action – TED’s annual conference in Vancouver sees thousands of delegates flock from across the world to hear presentations from pre-eminent scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, political leaders and CEOs on the biggest issues of the day. Speakers have included Elon Musk on artificial intelligence, Bill Gates on how to prevent...
Feb 25, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 2040
As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s most influential thinkers in action. TED’s annual conference in Vancouver sees thousands of delegates flock from across the world to hear presentations from pre-eminent scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, political leaders and CEOs on the biggest issues of the day. Speakers have included Elon Musk on artificial intelligence, Bill Gates on how to prevent future pandemics and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on how to create a better fu...
Feb 23, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 2039
The recent death of Russian anti-corruption activist, opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny while serving a decades-long sentence in a remote Arctic penal colony shocked the world last week. But for those watching the erosion of free expression in Russia closely over recent years, sadly the news may have felt like more of a matter of grim inevitability rather than one of complete surprise. Back in July 2022, we heard from British investigative journalist and author, John Sweene...
Feb 21, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 2038
How has feminist thought evolved throughout the ages? Beginning in the fifteenth century with Christine de Pizan, who imagined a City of Ladies that would serve as a refuge from the harassment of men, historian of ideas Hannah Dawson has magnificently drawn together an anthology of six hundred years of feminist thinking from all over the world in her latest book, The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing. Alongside traditional feminist icons such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who stated that she did ‘not w...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 2037
There are six crucial substances in human history, according to writer and broadcaster Ed Conway: sand, iron, salt, oil, copper and lithium. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They build our homes and offices, power our computers and phones, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted. As Sky News Economics Editor, Ed Conway has travelled the globe in search for the origins of these vital substances – from the sweltering darkness of the deep...
Feb 18, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 2036
Solar panel installers, architects, environmental scientists, recycling coordinators, wind turbine engineers, geologists, project managers, electric vehicle manufacturers – these are just a small subset of the countless jobs connected to the green revolution. For renewable energy to be a sustainable part of our lives, we need to ensure it offers both economic growth and climate security. How do we ensure the social and economic benefits of clean energy are available to all, and not just those at...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 2035
The latest book from critically acclaimed writer Helen Oyeyemi, Parasol Against the Axe, is a novel set among the city of Prague’s streets. It’s often said that a city can feel like a character in a book but in a skilled feat of unconventional storytelling, Oyeyemi’s tale uses the city as the literal narrator of its story. That plot involves a lost weekend set around a hen party and some surreal storytelling to make outlandish ideas come alive, while also focusing in on themes such as love and a...
Feb 14, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 2034
Richard Sennett is a sociologist and the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, whose work has given particular focus to areas such as how we co-exist in urban spaces and our places of employment. But his new book looks at the role of performance in society. The Performer explores how the spectacle of the arts can be mirrored in roles found elsewhere in life, such as in politics and wider everyday business, where we’re often being encouraged to try and make ourselve...
Feb 12, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 2033
2024 is set to be the biggest election year in history but what happens to politics when it’s always about the next election? We lose our sense of perspective, says Professor of Politics at London School of Economics, Jonathan White — and to our peril. The erosion of medium to long-term political thinking and the decaying of our political attention span has not only warped our political priorities, but has, he argues, endangered a pivotal idea central to democracy: the future. In conversation wi...
Feb 11, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 2032
This is the second instalment of a three-part discussion. Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain during the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was pivotal as a strategist in leading New Labour to victory in 1997. In recent years Campbell has become a podcasting sensation as the co-host of The Rest is Politics podcast, dissecting what’s gone wrong in British politics – and more – with former Conservative Party minister Rory Stewart. For this episode, he comes to the Intel...
Feb 09, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 2030
Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain during the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was pivotal as a strategist in leading New Labour to victory in 1997. In recent years Campbell has become a podcasting sensation as the co-host of The Rest is Politics podcast, dissecting what’s gone wrong in British politics – and more – with former Conservative Party minister Rory Stewart. For this episode, he comes to the Intelligence Squared to discuss what to do about the chaos of c...
Feb 07, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 2029
In uncertain times, people look to the stars and otherworldly influences for guidance. It has always been so, says Professor of History at Princeton University, Anthony Grafton, whose new book, Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa, traces the story of the dark arts over the centuries with a focus on Renaissance Europe. The figure of the Magus — a learned magician — was common around the circles of kings and princes and could help push the limits of knowledge while unveiling the secret...
Feb 05, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 2028
Hannah Durkin is a historian whose new book, Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade, shines a light on the final years of a pivotal yet deeply troubling period in US and global history. The Clotilda, the subject of Durkin's book, was the last slave ship to land on American soil in 1860. This was despite a federal law banning the importation of captive individuals from the African continent having been passed over half a century prior. Some of the survivors o...
Feb 04, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 2027
Simon Shuster is senior correspondent for Time. As a journalist working in both Russia and Ukraine for nearly two decades, he has watched and reported on the story of conflict between the two countries longer than many. His new book is The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky. Shuster has had unprecedented access to the Ukrainian president over a pivotal period for global history, tracing his journey from comedian, actor and perfo...
Feb 02, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 2026
According to the WHO, Alzheimer’s ranks as the seventh leading cause of death globally. By 2050 or earlier in the absence of a breakthrough, the number of people aged 65 and older with Alzheimer’s is projected to reach 12.7 million people. But the more you know about dementia, the more tools you’ll arguably have to prevent or delay its onset. In this episode neurologist Dr Richard Restak in conversation with science journalist Alex Wilkins from New Scientist arms us with practical advice for how...
Jan 31, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 2025
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and the celebrated author of bestselling book, The Power of Habit. The writer for the New Yorker returns now with his new book, Supercommunicators, which focuses on why some of us are a lot more gifted than others in getting our message heard. Joining Duhigg in conversation for this episode is Helen Czerski, the physicist, oceanographer, writer and science communicator. If you'd like to get access to all of our longer form interviews and member...
Jan 29, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 2024
