Intelligence Squared

‘I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface and breathe again.’ – Sheryl Sandberg Sheryl Sandberg is the COO at Facebook and international bestselling author of 'Lean In'. In 2015 disaster struck when her husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly at the age of 47. Sheryl and her...

Daniel Dennett is one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers. A philosopher and cognitive scientist, he is known as one of the 'Four Horseman of New Atheism' along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. In 2013 he came to Intelligence Squared to share the insights he has acquired over his 40-year career into the nature of how we think, decide and act. De...

Is it in the West’s interests to bring Russia in from the cold? Or should we be on our guard against an ascendant, belligerent country on Europe’s borders? For this major debate, 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 Dom...

What’s happening to Europe? The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was seen as a triumph for liberal democracy. True, the ‘end of history’ narrative didn’t play out across the world as many predicted. But in Europe political liberalism seemed unshakable, supported as it was by international business and transnational organisations such as the EU and NATO. But now Europe stands at a precarious moment....

Could London be the first carbon neutral city? Listen to this exciting debate hosted by Intelligence Squared. Gadget guru Jason Bradbury is the chair, plus guests including award winning actor and broadcaster Richard Ayoade. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho...

There are lies, damn lies, and then there’s fake news. Manipulating the facts for political gain is as old as politics itself, but due to the rise of social media and search engine algorithms false stories can now spread like wildfire. In the run-up to the US presidential election, more people on Facebook engaged with fake news than they did with fact-checked media outlets. And according to a stud...

The books 'Freakonomics' and 'SuperFreakonomics' have been worldwide sensations, selling tens of millions of copies. They have come to stand for challenging conventional wisdom using data rather than emotion. Questions they examine are typically: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? How much do parents really matter? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it’s so ineffective? Now...

Speaking and writing correct English are the hallmarks of an intelligent person. No one who cares about language wants to be caught splitting an infinitive or muddling up ‘infer’ and ‘imply’. Which is why the bestseller lists are regularly topped by books on 'good' English by the likes of Daily Mail polemicist Simon Heffer and Today programme presenter John Humphrys - both of whom defend the motio...

Radical philosopher, polymath, film star, cult icon, and author of over 30 books, Slavoj Žižek is one of the most controversial and leading contemporary public intellectuals, simultaneously acclaimed as the ‘Elvis of cultural theory’ and denounced as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’. In this special lecture for Intelligence Squared from July 2011, Žižek argues that global capitalism is...

As Donald Trump approaches the first 100 days of his presidency, things couldn’t be worse. His administration has been more gaffe-prone, incompetent and unstable than any other in American history. Trump has been engulfed in a scandal over his campaign’s links to Russia, his first choice for National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign within weeks, and other senior officials rem...

Anne-Marie Slaughter is one of the world’s top foreign policy thinkers, admired by influential global leaders such as Joe Biden, Condoleeza Rice and Eric Schmidt. A former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton in the State Department, she hit the headlines in 2012 when she published an article in The Atlantic called ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’. The piece went viral and sparked off a massive de...

Has the political establishment failed America? Whether they voted for Trump or Sanders or none of the above, millions of Americans say the answer is yes – and that the system benefits the elites at the expense of everyone else. Others say that despite its flaws, the political establishment has been a force for unparalleled stability, prosperity and equality — and that it is now the only thing sta...

A debate on the eve of the Second PAGE Ministerial Conference (http://bit.ly/2jhYyaX). Filmed at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) in Berlin on March 26th 2017. Globalisation has created wealth across the world, lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. But has too much of the wealth ended up in the hands of too few? How ca...

Social media is like fast food – rapidly consumed for instant gratification. No wonder social media demeans art. Artworks that instantly seduce online become tedious when contemplated over time in the flesh. Once art goes viral, it gains traction, particularly in the market, and becomes unjustifiably acclaimed. Museums may be keen to reach new audiences, but can great masterpieces really be apprec...

Niall Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation. In this talk from February 2011, based on his book 'Civilisation: The West and the Rest', he asks how Western civilization came to dominate the rest of the world. His answer is that the West developed six “killer applications” that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant wor...

Why do they do it? Again and again, after every attack, our media react by giving the terrorists exactly what they want – maximum publicity. Of course, the public should be told that an atrocity has taken place. But each attack dominates the news for days at a stretch. The TV networks go into overdrive, flying out their journalists to the scene of the attack and saturating their airtime. All this...

A year ago, you could have been forgiven for thinking that gender equality was on an unstoppable trajectory. America stood poised to elect its first female president. On this side of the Atlantic, members of the political and cultural establishment proudly sported ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’ T-shirts. Had you told a Hillary Clinton supporter or one of those T-shirt campaigners that a year...

'America first!' Donald Trump hammered out this message over and again in his inauguration speech a week ago today. He promised tariffs, a crackdown on immigration, and a restoration of American military might. He entered the White House as the least popular incoming president in 40 years. Not every liberal thinker, however, is in a state of despair. Jeffrey Sachs was recently ranked by The Econom...

How come there are conscious minds? How do language and culture evolve? Should we still teach children things which computers can do better? Will our smart electronic devices rob us of our intelligence? Will human intelligence and AI co-evolve? These are some of the intriguing questions that Daniel Dennett, one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of modern times, sought to answer when...

What should we be eating to live a long and healthy life? How is it that some people can eat absolutely anything and stay slim, while others on a ‘healthy’ diet get fat? Why is it that Cubans are much healthier than Americans, despite eating on average twice the amount of sugar? To unpack the truth behind the often confusing information about the food we eat, Intelligence Squared brought together...

Steven Pinker is one of the world’s leading authorities on language, mind and human nature. A professor of psychology at Harvard, he is the bestselling author of eight books and regularly appears in lists of the world’s top 100 thinkers. In 2014 he returned to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss his latest publication 'The Sense of Style', a short and entertaining writing guide for the 21st...

He has been called ‘the most influential columnist in America’, and is read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama. As a star columnist of The New York Times, Thomas Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. Although he has been dubbed ‘the high priest of globalisation’, Friedman is well aware that it is the tensions created by globalisation which have paved the way for t...

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? And why should it matter? After what for many of us has been an annus horribilis in 2016, pessimists seem to have all the best tunes. Terror attacks, horror headlines from Syria, a tide of hatred and resentment poisoning our politics: the world looks increasingly grim. But what about the actual facts? If you step back and examine the data, it’s clear that life i...

In 2011, we welcomed world renowned American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker to the Intelligence Squared stage. He argued that, contrary to popular belief, we are living in the least violent period of history, and that even the horrific carnage of the last century, compared to primitive societies, is part of this trend. Pinker claimed that, thanks to the spread of government, literacy and trade,...

Is it a myth that women can have it all, all of the time? Or do the rising numbers of female executives in Hong Kong and around the world suggest otherwise? Does the glass ceiling exist as a barrier to the boardroom, or is the only limitation to a woman’s professional success her personal ambition? To celebrate International Women’s Day this year, Intelligence Squared Asia brought together four ex...