Intelligence Squared

Blockchain technology has gone mainstream. It earns huge amounts of column inches and airtime. Stories abound of Bitcoin millionaires and multimillion-dollar ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). New cryptocurrencies are launched every week. People who don’t entirely understand what they’re buying are rushing to purchase Bitcoin for fear of missing out, and recently the UK's Royal Mint announced its firs...

Following the fall of communism in 1989, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama shot to fame with his thesis about the ‘end of history’ – the idea that the entire world was set on a path towards universal liberalism. But 30 years on, liberalism is under attack from both the Right and the Left – and from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Professor Fukuyama was joined in conversation by John Gray, the...

Nick Higham is a journalist and author known to TV viewers in the UK as a former correspondent for BBC News and also as regular host of its literary interview show: Meet the Author. His new book, The Mercenary River: Private Greed, Public Good, A History of London's Water, tells the story of a resource in the city many take for granted. But the flow of water, like any natural resource, has often b...

Over four million people have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion began. The support for Ukranians has been compassionate and heartwarming but it has also raised questions about why those fleeing North Africa and the Middle East are not afforded the same degree of sympathy. Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer, and Africa Correspondent for The Irish Times. Her new book, My...

How we save the planet is clear: we need to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees in order to avoid doing irreversible damage. But exactly what should we do to reduce damaging greenhouse gas emissions? In recent years, hydrogen has emerged as a promising source of clean energy. It has been called ‘freedom fuel’, the ‘Swiss army knife’ of the energy transition, and a ‘silver...

We are in an era of crisis, collapse, and reactionary tyrants, argues Laurie Penny, but we are also witnessing a transformation: a revolutionary change in how we define gender, sex, consent and whose bodies matter. In her new book, Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback, Laurie offers an urgent analysis of this moment of sexual politics we are living through. Our host for the...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare the West’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. Around 40 per cent of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, while some 7 per cent of US oil is Russian. Journalists Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s new book, The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources, tells the story of how trading commodities such as these has shaped the global f...

Bestselling investigative journalist Oliver Bullough discusses his recent book, Butler to the World, which details how Britain became a favoured destination for funnelling the finances of oligarchs and the globe's super rich. He joins fellow journalist and broadcaster Manveen Rana to talk about the book and how international finance plays into the current situation in Ukraine. Learn more about you...

In this debate from the Intelligence Squared archive, we head back to 2020, when we invited journalist and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, academic and writer Azadeh Moaveni, the Saudi political analyst Salman al-Ansari and former Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan to debate the motion: Iran is Not Our Enemy. The discussion touches on many issues that hold relevance in the current moment, ranging from the ef...

Professor Lewis Gordon is a leading philosopher and Department Head at the University of Connecticut who believes that intellectual thought matters as much as political activism in the struggle to achieve racial justice. His recent book Fear of Black Consciousness is an exploration that combines academic theory and also his ideas on pop culture to create a broad and thought-provoking study, Gordon...

In his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin cast the female animal as passive, coy, monogamous and submissive: in other words, in the shape of a Victorian housewife. Meanwhile the male animal became the main event, the dominant driver in his theory of evolutionary change. But according to a revolution in zoology and evolutionary biology, this is all wrong. Lucy Cooke, zoologist, explorer, and autho...

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, a columnist for The New Statesman, and has been a regular contributor to the Talking Politics podcast. Her new book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, looks at decades of geopolitical history that have fed into our current moment: one of war and conflict, nations competing for dwindling natural resources, and...

Banks, energy suppliers and oligarchs are just some of the targets that sanctions enforced by the West are looking to put pressure on in order to halt Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. In this edition of The Sunday Debate, we ask how effective the financial freeze caused by sanctions can be in comparison to the potential impact of a fully fledged military intervention. Joining us is Bill Browder, H...

Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment was one of the UK’s bestselling books of 2021. It was the Sunday Times Science and Environment book of the year and won her the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. In this episode she talks with broadcaster and science communicator Helen Czerski about the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in only tiny numbers – and about what h...

John Simpson is the BBC’s World Affairs Editor and has dedicated his life to telling stories from the frontline having joined the BBC more than 50 years ago as a reporter. In this special episode, Chris Hirst, Global CEO of advertising group Havas Creative, meets the veteran journalist to discuss having a front seat for some of the most significant moments in modern history; from the fall of the B...

Journalist and author John Preston is a master of storytelling, with his novels The Dig and A Very English Scandal having been snapped up for both Netflix and BBC adaptations. His most recent book is Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, which tells the story of the rise and fall of the infamous 20th-century UK newspaper and media magnate. Preston joins journalist Mark Mardell to discuss the book a...

Technology might move fast but the fears surrounding it remain ever-present. Back in 2015 Intelligence Squared gathered both tech evangelists and technology naysayers to debate how robots and AI might swallow up jobs in years to come. The speakers included economist, commentator and author George Magnus, internet entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen, technology entrepreneur, presidential advisor an...

Whether it's arguing over cancel culture, mask-wearing or what to do with statues, the culture wars now seem to be a constantly reappearing flashpoint in public discourse. Acclaimed writer and podcaster Jon Ronson was curious to learn how this phenomenon had come about and has spent the last year creating the hit radio and podcast series, Things Fell Apart, for BBC Radio 4, exploring the history o...

Between 1500 and 1866, 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported by ship from Africa to the Americas as part of the Middle Passage crossing. Some 1.8 million of them died, their bodies thrown into the Atlantic, while the others who survived undertook journeys of misery and terror – chained together, starved, and surrounded by disease, to be sold into slavery and forced to work in brutal, deh...

'Sprakkar' is an ancient Icelandic word meaning extraordinary or outstanding women. It forms the basis of the new book by Eliza Reid, author and co-founder of the Iceland Writers Retreat, who is also the nation's First Lady. Rosamund Urwin from the Sunday Times joins Eliza to discuss the book, which tells the stories of Iceland’s women and also the country’s efforts to elevate them while striving...

Among wine lovers, there is no greater divide than that between Burgundy and Bordeaux. These are the world’s most celebrated wine regions. What separates them and why the great rivalry? Back in 2015 we invited two of the UK's top wine critics, Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, to debate the issue. Chairing the event was Michelin-starred chef and restauranteur Michel Roux Jr.  We’d love to hear you...

The future. It’s all there, in front of us. It could go wonderfully. Or it could go badly wrong. It will inevitably require our passions and our ingenuity. So how do we see the challenges early on, find solutions and help make the world a better place? For ourselves, for our families, for everyone. Welcome to The Futureverse, a new series brought to you by Intelligence Squared and in partnership w...

Journalist and Russia expert Owen Matthews and Radek Sikorski, former foreign minister of Poland, discuss the biggest crisis Europe has faced since the Second World War. In conversation with investigative reporter Manveen Rana, Matthews and Sikorksi explain the background to the crisis and attempt to answer: what does Putin want?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Anna Delvey and Simon Leviev, now infamously known as The Fake Heiress and The Tinder Swindler, are two characters who have infiltrated pop culture and gripped Netflix viewers over recent months. Their joint claim to fame? They're both notorious con artists. So why are viewers and listeners so drawn to these stories of true crime? Writer and author Rachel Williams and journalist Erlend Ofte Arntse...

Rob Davies is an investigative journalist for The Guardian and his new book, Jackpot, tells the story of how Britain came to be one of the largest gambling markets in the world. The book describes how the mainstreaming of gambling advertising in the early 2000s combined with high-tech microtargeting of online gamblers has meant that the industry today is profiting from preying on the most vulnerab...