This is an archive discussion first aired in early 2022. Morten Christiansen is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. Together, they've written The Language Game, a new book which explores the science and psychology of language and some of its mysteries too. Hosting the discussion is journalist Christine Ro, whose work covers areas ranging from science and culture to international development. Let us know you...
Sep 15, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3064
This is the second instalment of a two-part episode. Arsenal Football Club is special. Its multicultural fandom reflects a changing city and a unique relationship with Black British popular culture – thanks to its decades of fielding iconic Black players on the pitch and the storied and diverse histories of its terraces. Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle are the co-editors of a book celebrating that sporting culture, Black Arsenal: Club, Culture and Identity. For this episode, they are joi...
Sep 12, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 3063
This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. Arsenal Football Club is special. Its multicultural fandom reflects a changing city and a unique relationship with Black British popular culture – thanks to its decades of fielding iconic Black players on the pitch and the storied and diverse histories of its terraces. Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle are the co-editors of a book celebrating that sporting culture, Black Arsenal: Club, Culture and Identity. For this episode, they are join...
Sep 10, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3062
Leading social philosopher Roman Krznaric discusses his latest book, History for Tomorrow, which looks at what lessons we can learn from the past thousand years while also exploring how these learnings can help us better tackle some of the major challenges we face today. Krznaric is a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing. Eudaimonia is a Greek word, which roughly translates as happiness or wellbeing. Joining him to discuss the book is Adam McC...
Sep 09, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 3061
The podcast welcomes back Oliver Burkeman for this episode. The writer whose popular column for The Guardian ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’ made him into one of the most astute interrogators of the wellness and self-help fields, returns with a new book, Meditations for Mortals. As well as being a guide through some smart ideas on how to make life feel more manageable, the book also proposes a four-week plan to help readers embrace their own limitations and begin using them as strengths. Joi...
Sep 07, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 3060
This is the second instalment of a three-part episode. In the 20th century most autocrats were brutal dictators whose main goal was to control a domestic population. But in the 21st century autocracy has become much more sophisticated and ambitious in its scope. States like Russia have developed sophisticated cross-border networks of kleptocratic financial structures, innovative security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given ...
Sep 05, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3058
This is the first instalment of a three-part episode. In the 20th century most autocrats were brutal dictators whose main goal was to control a domestic population. But in the 21st century autocracy has become much more sophisticated and ambitious in its scope. States like Russia have developed sophisticated cross-border networks of kleptocratic financial structures, innovative security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given c...
Sep 03, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 3057
What kinds of sound are our oceans making, and what do they mean? In this episode, award-winning science writer Amorina Kingdon discusses her book, Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water, which is the culmination of her work exploring how marine animals use sound to survive and the ways humans are impacting critical underwater soundscapes. These explorations range from investigations of the syntax of whalesong to analysing the reverberations of the plainfin midshipman fish, whose swim-...
Sep 02, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 3056
This is the second instalment of a two-part episode. Jordan Stephens’ life during his teenage years and his twenties was a whirlwind. As one half of the hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, his days were full of success, fame and adulation as Rizzle Kicks’ debut sold over 1 million singles and 600,000 albums in 2012. But for Jordan, success brought pain in its wake: a hidden pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive ideas of masculinity, and heartbreak. Diagnosed with ADHD, he was always chasing the elus...
Aug 31, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 3055
This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. Jordan Stephens’ life during his teenage years and his twenties was a whirlwind. As one half of the hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, his days were full of success, fame and adulation as Rizzle Kicks’ debut sold over 1 million singles and 600,000 albums in 2012. But for Jordan, success brought pain in its wake: a hidden pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive ideas of masculinity, and heartbreak. Diagnosed with ADHD, he was always chasing the elusi...
Aug 29, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 3054
The development of life on Earth is often framed through the evolution of separate and distinct life forms but less common is the idea of the Earth itself as being one whole living organism. Writer Ferris Jabr's new book, Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life, takes an all-encompassing view of the intertwined ecosystems on our planet, their origins and where issues such as the climate crisis today might leave them in the future for a book that views the natural world in widescreen. Joining...
Aug 28, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 3053
We welcome back Anna Bogutskaya to the podcast for this episode to discuss her book, Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us. As the title suggests, it’s a publication celebrating the goriest, scariest, and to many – most downright entertaining film genre out there. Bogutskaya is a writer, film programmer and podcaster, who regularly can be heard on The Final Girls horror podcast. Her writing has appeared in BBC Culture, Little White Lies, The Guardian, Tortoise, The Face, LA Review of ...
Aug 25, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 3052
The bestselling war historian Rick Stroud joins the podcast to discuss some of the lesser told narratives of World War One, drawing from his recent book, I Am Not Afraid of Looking into the Rifles. The book explores some of the stories of the women who played their part during the conflict that shaped the opening of the 20th Century and for which the sacrifice on the battlefields of male soldiers is well known. Stroud's book seeks to address the lack of space given to the contribution of women i...
Aug 24, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3051
For this episode the writer, musician and author Molly Roden Winter discusses her bestselling book, More: A Memoir of Open Marriage. The book tells the story of Roden Winter's own journey navigating the polyamorous lifestyle while upholding many of the more traditional values associated with marriage simultaneously. Joining her to talk about it is Sarah Ditum, who listeners may remember from the podcast earlier this year discussing her own book: Toxic: Women, Fame and The Noughties. We are spons...
Aug 23, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 3050
Influence can be as gentle as a bit of friendly advice or as seismic as a strategy to win an election. As a behavioural scientist who has worked with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Justin Hempson-Jones is more familiar with influence's uses – and its dangers – than most. In his recent book, Influence: Understand it, Use it, Resist it, he offers new perspectives on how individuals can use influence to achieve their goals in ev...
Aug 21, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 3049
The author and broadcaster Paul Morland is one of the UK’s leading thinkers on demographics – the study of population and its characteristics. Morland has been an associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and is a senior member at St Antony's College, Oxford. He last joined Intelligence Squared in 2022 and now returns to discuss his new book, No One Left. As that title suggests, Morland says the world is facing something of a crisis, with various nations facing population decl...
Aug 19, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 3048
Paulina Rowinska is a writer, mathematician and science communicator, whose new book, Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers, tells the stories found within crunching tricky equations. Rowinska has a PhD in Mathematics of Planet Earth from Imperial College London and across the pages of Mapmatics she explores fields ranging from map-making to forecasting elections, how we get our packages delivered on time and even how mathematics can be used to prevent crime. Joining her to discus...
Aug 18, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3047
The writer Simon Kuper returns to the podcast to discuss the follow-up to his book Chums, which highlighted the narrow and highly privileged pathway that often funnels attendees of some the UK's top education establishments into the highest seats of power in government. His new book is Good Chaps, an exploration of the idea that most politicians who have followed a privileged route into power will be naturally predisposed to following the rules and doing the right thing. Kuper is known for his w...
Aug 16, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3046
Debut novelist Amy Twigg's book, Spoilt Creatures, tells a story set on a women's commune where things take a dark turn. The novel has earned Twigg praise as one of the Observer newspaper's top 10 best new novelists of 2024. Joining her to discuss the story is Anna Bogutskaya, a writer, film programmer and podcaster, who is the creator of Eerie – a horror anthology podcast. Bogutskaya is also author of the soon to be released book, Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us. We are sponsor...
Aug 13, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3045
A poet, performer, novelist and screenwriter, Olivia Gatwood has received international recognition for her writing, which has focused on topics including coming of age, feminism, gendered violence and true crime. Her debut novel is Whoever You Are, Honey, a dark and brilliant story set amid a secluded California beachside community living in the shadow of the neighbouring tech giants of Silicon Valley. The book has been described as, “a fever dream for the AI age,” and has already been snapped ...
Aug 12, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 3044
Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015, Jess Phillips has never shied away from controversy nor has she been afraid to veer away from Labour Party lines to uphold her political principles. For this episode, we’re joined by Phillips to discuss some of the most pressing issues in British politics during a fortnight that has seen shocking scenes of violence and racism unfold across UK streets. Following Labour’s recent election win, Phillips is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister ...
Aug 10, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 3043
Marcel Dirsus is a political scientist and the author of How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive. As Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University, Dirsus mainly works on regime instability, political violence and German foreign policy. His new book takes us into the downfall of dictators ranging from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, as well as unpacking why some dictatorial leaders and regimes remain solid. Joining him in conversation for this...
Aug 09, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3042
The award-winning science journalist Olive Heffernan’s work has been featured in National Geographic, New Scientist, The Guardian, BBC Wildlife and more. Her new book is The High Seas: Ambition, Power and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean. Two thirds of the ocean lie beyond national borders and yet they are home to some of the richest natural resources and natural biodiversity on the planet. It makes these areas highly coveted territories and Heffernan’s book studies both the exploitation of the mari...
Aug 07, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 3041
A truly multifaceted talent, Joelle Taylor is a poet, playwight, actor and most recently a novelist, who has written four collections of poetry along with also being a Poetry Fellow of the University of East Anglia and a Fellow at the Royal Society of Literature. Taylor's new novel is The Night Alphabet, a narrative of interconnecting stories told via tracing the interwoven tapestries found on the skin of a heavily tattooed figure living in a future London of 2233. Joining Taylor to discuss the ...
Aug 05, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3040
The award-winning classicist and cultural critic Daisy Dunn is the author of seven books including her latest, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World through the Women Who Shaped It. The book re-examines not only the female individuals who were at the heart of many well-known stories of the ancient world, but also looks at the whole of wider history through the perspective of women too. Joining Dunn to discuss it is Peter Stothard, the author specialising in ancient history and w...
Aug 03, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 3039
Sheila Heti is a writer from Toronto who has published 11 books since the early 2000s. Those include Motherhood, Pure Colour, and How Should A Person Be? That latter title was a breakout work mixing memoir with fiction and self-help in a quest to examine her own authenticity. Her latest book is Alphabetical Diaries – a slim, elegant volume that compresses 10 years of Heti’s own diary entries into 60,000 words across 25 chapters. Every entry, as the title suggests, is organised alphabetically. Jo...
Aug 01, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3038
This episode is brought to you by CHANEL. CHANEL Connects – the acclaimed arts and culture podcast – is back for its fourth season, with nine episodes featuring the artists, curators and thinkers shaping culture today. If you enjoy the episode, you can hear much more from the new season, just search CHANEL Connects now on your preferred streaming platforms or visit chanel.com. The artist William Kentridge and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev are old friends who, together, have created some of ...
Jul 30, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3037
Orlando Whitfield started his career as a dealer in the feverish global art market but left it disillusioned and burnt-out a decade later. Today he works as a writer and his recent book is All That Glitters, a memoir that explores his experience as an associate of Inigo Philbrick, an ambitious art market player who in 2022 was sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors in what has been described as allegedly the biggest art fraud in American history. Whitfield, by contrast, ende...
Jul 28, 2024•32 min•Season 1Ep. 3036
James Comey is the former FBI Director turned crime novelist who has spent a career fighting organised crime and hostile threats to American democracy. In 2016 as head of the FBI, he reopened a previously closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails from her time as Secretary of State, which is still a divisive moment that many say helped define the election of that year. In July 2024 Comey came to the Intelligence Squared stage for our first ever event in Brighton, where he discussed the ...
Jul 28, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 3035
This is an episode of Generation One: The Climate Podcast, brought to you by UCL. Generation One is a collective of people committed to a new era of positive climate action. By turning science and ideas into action, they are working towards creating a positive, fair and progressive future. For us and for the generations to come. Hosts Professor Mark Maslin and Dr Simon Chin-Yee tackle the biggest challenges facing the climate crisis, with insights from world-leading academics, industry experts, ...
Jul 25, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 3034
