Intelligence Squared

Roopa Farooki is a doctor, author and creative-writing lecturer, whose new book, Everything Is True, tells the story of her first 40 days treating patients during the pandemic in the UK. She speaks with paediatrician and broadcaster Dr Guddi Singh about the reality of working in medicine during a global health crisis and the challenges of capturing the full scope of that experience in words on the...

Natalie Livingstone’s recently published book, The Women of Rothschild, tells the lesser known stories of the women who have played pivotal roles in one of the world’s most storied family dynasties throughout history. She joins journalist, author and former Editor-in-Chief of Tatler, Catherine Ostler, to discuss the book and its protagonists, who range from hostesses and diplomats to political mov...

Zillah Byng-Thorne is CEO of Future, the UK’s biggest magazine publishing group. With a stable of over 160 titles across print and online including recent acquisitions such as Wallpaper and The Week, Future is a truly multifaceted business and its CEO has also returned the group to record profits in recent years. She talks to Jeremy Leslie, Creative Director of the site, design consultancy and sho...

Whether we call it Facebook or the recently coined Meta, the Silicon Valley tech giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg has rarely been out of the headlines since its inception over a decade ago and rarely have those headlines been good news. From Cambridge Analytica to the United States Capitol attack, the company's utopian ideals of connecting up society seem to often have the opposite effect. However...

Lea Ypi grew up in Albania during the 1980s and 1990s, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe. Almost impossible to visit and nearly impossible to leave, during that era it was a place of queuing and scarcity, political executions and secret police. But to Ypi, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. She joins award-winning fo...

In today's highly polarised political landscape, Liberalism, somewhere in the middle, often comes under attack from both right and left. Joshua L Cherniss is Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University and his new book, Liberalism in Dark Times, looks at why moderate, centre-ground voices are having to think smarter and talk louder to be heard. He joins journalist and broadcaster Ge...

Olivia Yallop is a strategist, creative and trend analyser, whose new book Break the Internet lifts the lid on how the influencer economy works. She speaks with Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos about her approach to creating the book, which included visiting a VIP influencer party with a million-follower policy and a trip to influencer bootcamp...

Verdi created some of the most beloved operas of all time. Wagner’s music is in an altogether more intellectual sphere. Back in 2013, Stephen Fry hosted a debate featuring cultural critic and author Norman Lebrecht, novelist and critic Philip Hensher and conductor Paul Wynne Griffiths, plus opera singers Dušica Bijeli and John Tomlinson, to decide which of the two highly influential composers take...

2022 looks set to be another seismic year. A new Covid-19 variant threatens to prolong the pandemic. A diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics looks likely to escalate tensions with China. And time is running out to ’keep 1.5 alive’, in spite of the commitments made at COP26. Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times and widely regarded as one of the world’s most...

In their recent book, Poles Apart, behavioural scientist Alex Chesterfield, public affairs specialist Laura Osborne and political advisor Ali Goldsworthy look at what factors drive society apart and what can help bring it back together. Economist and broadcaster Linda Yueh hosts a wide-ranging discussion with the authors exploring not only the cultural forces at play, but also the economic, politi...

Damian Bradfield is a tech leader who as co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of WeTransfer steers an essential tool for creatives plus the site's burgeoning culture brand WePresent, too. He joins journalist Rosamund Urwin to discuss the company's journey and also talk through the Ideas Report: WeTransfer's annual survey of the global creative industries.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Jane Austen created the definitive picture of Georgian England. No writer matches Austen’s sensitive ear for the hypocrisy and irony lurking beneath the genteel conversation. That’s the argument of the Janeites, but to the aficionados of Emily Brontë they are the misguided worshippers of a circumscribed mind. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë dispensed with Austen’s niceties and the upper-middle class...

Gloria Estefan is one of the most successful female singers ever. With more than 120 million records sold worldwide, three Grammy Awards, and a career spanning four decades, she has helped make Latin-flavoured pop music an international success. Estefan is also the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Honor and has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. From fleeing Cuba as a young child wh...

Though no laughing matter, the extremes of the Donald Trump presidency made comedians' jobs a little trickier: was the reality more absurd than satire created around it? In 2020 we invited celebrated comedy writer and producer Armando Iannucci, Labour MP Jess Phillips, and satirist and impressionist Jan Ravens, to discuss the issue. The event was chaired by journalist Samira Ahmed. Learn more abou...

Michael Lewis is one of the most successful non-fiction authors alive. In a series of titles that have sold 9 million copies worldwide, he has lifted the lid on the biggest business stories of our times, enthralling readers with his knack for humanising complex subjects and giving them the page-turning urgency of the best thrillers. Liar’s Poker is the cult classic that defined Wall Street during...

Nearly four centuries after his death, no writer has matched William Shakespeare’s influence across drama, theatre and poetry but a few have come close. John Milton, say his fans, works on an altogether different, higher plane. In Paradise Lost – one of the most significant poems ever written in English – Milton moved beyond the literary to address political, philosophical and religious questions...

Samira Ahmed speaks to the chef Yotam Ottolenghi about his life and career, from discovering his love of food in Jerusalem to his professional partnership with Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi, plus how he creates his well-loved cookbooks such as Simple and Flavour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We hear from a panel of historians, authors and broadcasters – Hallie Rubenhold, Natalie Livingstone, Dan Jones and chair Saul David – about how women's stories and female historians have been marginalised throughout history. The conversation, recorded at The Cliveden Literary Festival, also discusses how historians today can help redress the imbalance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...

Satya Nadella is one of the world’s most inspirational business leaders; as much a humanist as a technologist and executive. In September 2017, he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss his personal journey from a childhood in India to becoming Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation with journalist and author Kamal Ahmed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

We compare the works of two of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt and Vermeer. Making the case for Rembrandt van Rijn in this debate was historian, author and broadcaster Simon Schama. For Schama, Rembrandt's works are raw humanity personified with formal beauty being the least of the painter's concerns. Novelist Tracy Chevalier, however, champions Johannes Vermeer. She claim...

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University and author of two seminal recent books on the shifting geopolitics of the world: The Silk Roads and its follow-up, The New Silk Roads. He speaks to fellow historian and writer Simon Sebag Montefiore at the Cliveden Literary Festival about how we may be currently witnessing the end of a historical era amid the emergence of a brand...

Samira Ahmed speaks to the author Fatima Bhutto about the power of writing fiction, growing up in one of Pakistan’s most famous political dynasties and why she blames her aunt, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, for the death of her father. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former governor of the Bank of England Lord King, global economist Dr Dambisa Moyo and businessman Ian Livingstone join Senior Editor at the Economist Anne McElvoy to map out a road to economic recovery after the pandemic. Following UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's warning of a new 'tidal wave' of Covid-19 cases in the coming weeks in the UK and beyond, we returned to this discussion from the Cli...

This week, we’re going back to 2017, with our debate "It's time to bring Russia in from the cold: Rapprochement is in the West's best interests". For this major event, Intelligence Squared put together a stellar line-up. Making the case for rapprochement with Russia was Vladimir Pozner, one of Russia’s best known television journalists and a former advocate for the Soviet Union, and Domitilla Sagr...

Journalist and author Janine di Giovanni's over the past 30 years has seen her report from the frontlines of some of the most complex and turbulent stories of our times, including the siege of Sarajevo and both the Srebrenica and Rwandan genocides. Her new book, The Vanishing, focuses on the plight of Christians in the Middle East, who have suffered persecution and in countries ranging from Iraq t...