The death of Edward I in 1307 marked the beginning of a period of intense turmoil and change in England. The fourteenth century ushered in the beginning of the bloody Hundred Years’ War with France, an epic conflict with Scotland that would last into the sixteenth century, famine in Northern Europe and the largest human catastrophe in known history, the Black Death. In this episode, medieval historian and writer Helen Carr speaks to Mythili Rao about this period of social, political and cultural...
Jul 28, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 3258
The issue of Taiwan is a constant background hum in today’s news cycle. Perched precariously on the fault-lines of global power, the fate of this vibrant democracy and tech colossus will shape Asia’s future – either containing or facilitating China’s expansionist goals. In today’s episode we’re joined by top foreign correspondent Chris Horton. Horton has spent over a decade of living and reporting in Taiwan, and has interviewed everyday citizens, presidents and other key figures for his new book...
Jul 26, 2025•59 min•Season 1Ep. 3257
For the past fifty years, Silicon Valley has led the world in developing cutting-edge technologies and spawning high-growth, billion-dollar tech companies. More recently, China has emerged as a formidable force in innovation. But is our focus on the US-China rivalry causing us to overlook the rise of new tech powerhouses elsewhere? In today’s episode, Financial Times/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize winner Mehran Gul invites us to take a wider view. Drawing from his new book, The New Geography of In...
Jul 25, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 3256
It’s been a remarkable eighteen months for Dutch-Israeli author Yael van der Wouden. Her debut novel, The Safekeep, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and this year it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Set in the Netherlands 15 years after the end of World War II, The Safekeep is the story of a reclusive young woman living in her family’s isolated country home, whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of an unpredictable house guest. In this episode, Yael sat down with host Mythili Ra...
Jul 23, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 3255
This is an episode of The Specialist, produced by Intelligence Squared in partnership with Sotheby's. In The Specialist, explore the significance and journey of an extraordinary work through the eyes of those that know it best. The shredding of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon live at auction in 2018 has gone down in art history. Alex Branczik, Chairman and Head of Modern & Contemporary Art Europe and Asia, reveals how Sotheby’s navigated the newly titled Love is in the Bin through a media storm a...
Jul 22, 2025•14 min•Ep. 3252
This is an episode of The Specialist, produced by Intelligence Squared in partnership with Sotheby's. In The Specialist, explore the significance and journey of an extraordinary work through the eyes of those that know it best. Rubens’ early masterpiece The Massacre of the Innocents was hidden away for nearly 250 years. George Gordon, Deputy Chairman, Sotheby’s Europe and Co-Chairman of Old Master Paintings & Drawings Worldwide, spearheaded its discovery, attribution and triumphant sale. Mor...
Jul 22, 2025•15 min•Ep. 3243
In today’s episode, journalist and author Joey D'Urso joins us to discuss the themes of his new book More Than A Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money and Power. D'Urso travelled across the globe from Birmingham to Belgrade and Medellin and Mumbai, to uncover how the colours, crests and sponsors of football teams reflect and good and the bad of of the places they represent. He was joined in conversation by Conor Boyle, Head of Programming at Intelligence Squared. (edited) Lea...
Jul 21, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3255
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. Geography explains why Donald Trump wants to control Greenland. Greenland is of strategic military importance given it sits in the Arctic Ocean along the shortest route for Russian intercontine...
Jul 19, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 3253
What happens when the world’s biggest economy turns its back on global trade? In today's episode, host Adam McCauley is joined by renowned financial journalist and economist Philip Coggan to examine the far-reaching consequences of Donald Trump’s trade war. Drawing parallels with Churchill’s economic decisions in the early 20th century, Coggan argues Trump’s tariff measures and isolationist rhetoric argues that we are witnessing the dismantling of a global economic order that has underpinned int...
Jul 17, 2025•48 min•Season 1Ep. 3251
On June 7th 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamt, but to Texas. The man who persuades the passengers to go is David Jochelmann, Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather. It marks the beginning of the Galveston Movement, a forgotten moment in history when 10,000 Jews fled to Texas in the lead-up to WWI. In today's episode historian and author Rachel Cockerell tells this fascinating story in conversation with James McAuley, journali...
Jul 15, 2025•29 min•Season 1Ep. 3250
In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. What happened in Charlottesville—and why did so few see it coming? What does it reveal about the myths we tell ourselves about America? In this episode, we speak with Deborah Baker , Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Charlottesville , about the harrowing events of August 2017, when a violent far-right rally tur...
Jul 13, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 3249
Why does the universe behave in ways that defy logic - and can anyone truly understand it? In this episode, we’re joined by physicist Frank Verstraete and writer Céline Broeckaert , the husband-and-wife team behind the new book Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics . Together, they take us on a journey into the strangest - and most essential - corner of science, unpacking everything from quantum entanglement to the surprising role of symmetry in nature. Frank Verstraete is the Leigh Trapnell Pr...
Jul 12, 2025•48 min•Season 1Ep. 3248
What happens if globalisation fails? Can nations truly stand alone in an interconnected world? Is the new race for national self-sufficiency a path to real security, or a dangerous illusion? In this episode, we’re joined by economics journalist Ben Chu, author of Exile Economics: What Happens if Globalisation Fails, to unpack the shifting tides of the global economy. He speaks to Conor Boyle, Head of Programming at Intelligence Squared about what’s driving this great unravelling—and what it coul...
Jul 10, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 3247
If ever a politician got a bum rap it’s Neville Chamberlain. He has gone down in history as the British prime minster whose policy of appeasement in the 1930s allowed the Nazis to flourish unopposed. He has never been forgiven for ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the Munich Agreement of September 1938, and for returning home triumphantly declaring “peace for our time”. The very word “appeasement” is now synonymous with him, signifying a craven refusal to stand up to bullies and aggress...
Jul 08, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 3246
The concept of government is under attack. In the United States, Donald Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers; ignored congressional statutes; insulted judges; and allowed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, access to sensitive government information in a slash-and-burn campaign against the US government. In June 2025 Michael Lewis, the renowned author of bestselling non-fiction masterpieces including Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys and Liar’s Poker, came to the Intelligence ...
Jul 07, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3245
The concept of government is under attack. In the United States, Donald Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers; ignored congressional statutes; insulted judges; and allowed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, access to sensitive government information in a slash-and-burn campaign against the US government. In June 2025 Michael Lewis, the renowned author of bestselling non-fiction masterpieces including Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys and Liar’s Poker, came to the Intelligence ...
Jul 05, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3244
Today’s episode is the recording of our recent panel Ctrl, Alt, Delusion: Resetting Reality in the Manosphere , live at SXSW London, in partnership with Sage & Jester. Sage & Jester is an impact-led arts production company that exposes manipulation and misinformation. At Sage & Jester, entertainment sparks critical thinking. Their work blends wisdom and wit to entertain, enlighten, and help you harness your internal BS detector. They're not just storytellers, they are catalysts for a...
Jul 04, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3240
The tortured poet. The rebellious scientist. The monstrous artist. The tech disruptor. You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. Taking us from the Renaissance Florence of Leonardo da Vinci to the Florida rocket launches of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Helen Lewis joined us to unravel a word that we all use — without really questioning what it means. In conversation with acclaimed satirist and s...
Jul 01, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3241
The tortured poet. The rebellious scientist. The monstrous artist. The tech disruptor. You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. Taking us from the Renaissance Florence of Leonardo da Vinci to the Florida rocket launches of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Helen Lewis joined us to unravel a word that we all use — without really questioning what it means. In conversation with acclaimed satirist and s...
Jun 30, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3240
After coming last by quite such a distance on Taskmaster Series 15, and seeing his emotional frailties laid bare in a series of memes of him with his head in his hands, Ivo Graham is adapting to an increasingly irreversible reputation as a man better known for his chaos than his comedy. His new book Yardsticks For Failure is a map of the brain behind the breakdowns; a deep dive into the various facepalms of Ivo’s recent past, and a live diary of his unravelling present, where his solution to the...
Jun 29, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3239
After coming last by quite such a distance on Taskmaster Series 15, and seeing his emotional frailties laid bare in a series of memes of him with his head in his hands, Ivo Graham is adapting to an increasingly irreversible reputation as a man better known for his chaos than his comedy. His new book Yardsticks For Failure is a map of the brain behind the breakdowns; a deep dive into the various facepalms of Ivo’s recent past, and a live diary of his unravelling present, where his solution to the...
Jun 27, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 3238
‘A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination’ Benedict Cumberbatch Matt Haig is one of Britain’s most celebrated authors, best known for his internationally bestselling novel The Midnight Library and the critically acclaimed memoir Reasons to Stay Alive. Matt’s newest novel, The Life Impossible, which became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, follows retired maths teacher Grace Winters who leaves her mundane bungalow in England for Ibiza, where she embarks on a journey to un...
Jun 24, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3237
‘A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination’ Benedict Cumberbatch Matt Haig is one of Britain’s most celebrated authors, best known for his internationally bestselling novel The Midnight Library and the critically acclaimed memoir Reasons to Stay Alive. Matt’s newest novel, The Life Impossible, which became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, follows retired maths teacher Grace Winters who leaves her mundane bungalow in England for Ibiza, where she embarks on a journey to un...
Jun 22, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3236
Deborah Frances-White is the writer and comedian best known for hosting The Guilty Feminist podcast. David Tennant is the multi-award-winning actor who has played iconic roles including Doctor Who, Hamlet, Barty Crouch Jr., Rivals’ Lord Tony Baddingham and more. In April 2025 they came to Intelligence Squared to discuss how we can have better and more open conversations on difficult topics. Drawing from her new book Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, Deborah shared how she grew up in a cult...
Jun 21, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 3236
Deborah Frances-White is the writer and comedian best known for hosting The Guilty Feminist podcast. David Tennant is the multi-award-winning actor who has played iconic roles including Doctor Who, Hamlet, Barty Crouch Jr., Rivals’ Lord Tony Baddingham and more. In April 2025 they came to Intelligence Squared to discuss how we can have better and more open conversations on difficult topics. Drawing from her new book Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, Deborah shared how she grew up in a cult...
Jun 20, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3235
What is happening behind closed doors in Britain’s far right movement? On today’s episode, we’re joined by journalist Harry Shukman, the journalist who spent over a year undercover investigating the British far right. Drawing on his new book, Year of the Rat, Shukman sheds light on the secret meetings, pub gatherings, political canvassing, and neo-Nazi conferences at the heart of the extreme right-wing activity in Britain. Through his investigations, Shukman has effectively exposed the mechanics...
Jun 17, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 3234
‘Embracing the knowledge in The Next Conversation will vastly improve your life.’ – Andrew Huberman, creator of the Huberman Lab Podcast ‘ The Next Conversation gives you the tools to change your life, one conversation at a time.’ – Mel Robbins, bestselling author and host of the Mel Robbins Podcast In a time when conversations often feel more divisive and polarised than ever, knowing how to communicate effectively has never been more essential. Jefferson Fisher has built a global following by a...
Jun 15, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 3233
‘Embracing the knowledge in The Next Conversation will vastly improve your life.’ – Andrew Huberman, creator of the Huberman Lab Podcast ‘ The Next Conversation gives you the tools to change your life, one conversation at a time.’ – Mel Robbins, bestselling author and host of the Mel Robbins Podcast In a time when conversations often feel more divisive and polarised than ever, knowing how to communicate effectively has never been more essential. Jefferson Fisher has built a global following by a...
Jun 14, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 3232
On today’s episode, an episode from our friends at Sotheby's, exploring the world of Shakespeare. Sam Leith, author, journalist and literary editor of The Spectator, will be joined by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford, Tracy-Ann Oberman, who most recently starred as Shylock in her adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, and acclaimed actor Joseph Kloska. They will be revealing how different editions shaped our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays. Why do some of his most famou...
Jun 12, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3231
In June 2024, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. In Stephen Witt’s new book ‘The Thinking Machine’ he chronicles the astonishing story of how a designer of videogame equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process reinvented the computer. He spoke about it with author and Research Director at Demos Carl Miller. ---- 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 intellig...
Jun 11, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 3230
