Megan Nolan is an Irish journalist and author who has made a name for herself by cutting to the quick of the most uncomfortable facets of the human experience. She first appeared on Intelligence Squared to discuss her widely acclaimed debut, Acts of Desperation, back in 2022 and she returns now with her latest novel, Ordinary Human Failings, which follows a family and a tabloid journalist embroiled in a harrowing murder, which was recently selected for the Women’s Fiction Prize longlist. In this...
Apr 08, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 2066
Kohei Saito is the Japanese philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo, whose ideas have become highly influential in the conversation surrounding how to better use economics to combat the looming climate crisis. His book, Slow Down, is a bestseller. Joining him to discuss Slow Down on the podcast for this episode is Adam McCauley, the writer and researcher whose work focuses on the social, cultural, and political impacts of emerging technologies. He is currentl...
Apr 06, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 2065
With AI's capabilities now beginning to conjure visions reminiscent of science fiction, it's fiction writers who are pointing the way to where these tools will take us in decades to come. 2054, the second of a trilogy of books depicting the AI-infused geopolitical landscape of decades not so far away is co-written by former marine and New York Times bestselling author and writer Elliot Ackerman, and Admiral Jim Stavridis, who spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Navy. The duo's story picks up 20...
Apr 05, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2064
In a world increasingly built around convenience, why do we often feel so short of free time? It’s a question that’s been on the minds of authors Nick Srnicek and Helen Hester. Srnicek is Lecturer in Digital Economy in the Department of Digital Humanities at Kings College London. Hester is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London. Together they’ve written a book, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time. For this episode, Srnicek joins ...
Apr 03, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 2063
This is the second instalment of a three-part discussion. Armando Iannucci is one of Britain’s best-loved comedy writers. The creator of hit shows such as The Thick Of It, Veep and Alan Partridge, Iannucci is renowned for his sharp political satire and parodies of the rich and powerful. His latest project, a West End stage production of Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-nominated black comedy Dr. Strangelove, focuses on a rogue US general who triggers a nuclear crisis. In March 2024 Iannucci came to the I...
Mar 31, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 2061
Armando Iannucci is one of Britain’s best-loved comedy writers. The creator of hit shows such as The Thick Of It, Veep and Alan Partridge, Iannucci is renowned for his sharp political satire and parodies of the rich and powerful. His latest project, a West End stage production of Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-nominated black comedy Dr. Strangelove, focuses on a rogue US general who triggers a nuclear crisis. In March 2024 Iannucci came to the Intelligence Squared stage where, in conversation with auth...
Mar 31, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 2060
Jason Okundaye is a writer whose essays and work have been published in titles such as The London Review of Books, the Guardian, British GQ and more. His debut book, Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain, explores the stories of seven black, gay men in Brixton, South London. Through conversations with these men, he traces their journeys and arrivals to South London throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, upto the present day, seeking to reconcile the Black and gay narratives...
Mar 29, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2059
Tom Chatfield is a tech philosopher whose new book looks at how humans have lived side by side with technology for millennia and offers ideas for how humanity will fare in the imminent AI-powered future. Chatfield's work often focuses on the cross-section of society and tech. He is a creator of textbooks and courses training in critical thinking and his previous non-fiction books include How To Thrive in the Digital Age. Not only that but he's also a novelist, having published a thriller – This ...
Mar 27, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 2058
This is Part Two of a three-part discussion. Why are middle-aged women these days subject to so much rage and hatred – frequently from people who see themselves as kind and ‘on the right side of history’? What explains the popularity of the Karen meme, which references a stereotypically privileged white woman whom everyone feels entitled to loathe? Why does this age-old misogyny feel so very now? As writer Victoria Smith approached middle age she made her peace with her sagging neckline and havi...
Mar 25, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2057
This is Part One of a three-part discussion. Why are middle-aged women these days subject to so much rage and hatred – frequently from people who see themselves as kind and ‘on the right side of history’? What explains the popularity of the Karen meme, which references a stereotypically privileged white woman whom everyone feels entitled to loathe? Why does this age-old misogyny feel so very now? As writer Victoria Smith approached middle age she made her peace with her sagging neckline and havi...
Mar 24, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2056
As a writer who focuses on technology and as AI Editor for The Financial Times, Madhumita Murgia has been unable to ignore the increasing reach of AI into the infrastructure that helps run our societies. It's the subject of her new book, Code Dependent, a study of how technology and AI often designed with idealistic intent is beginning to have a significant effect on real people's lives and not always for the better. Joining Murgia in conversation for this episode is Carl Miller, co-founder of t...
Mar 22, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 2055
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
