Intelligence Squared
Intelligence Squared is the home of lively debate and deep-dive discussion. Follow Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy four regular episodes per week taking you to the heart of the issues that matter in the company of the world’s great minds. We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2. And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared today. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.
Episodes
August 1, 2025 • 13 mins
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.
On today's episode, the legendary Shahnameh – the Persian Book of Kings – an epic poem composed of around 50,000 rhyming couplets that recounts the mythical and historical past of the Persian Empire. Head o...
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August 1, 2025 • 69 mins
Capitalism is driving us to disaster. Our planet is heading for a terrifying environmental cataclysm – and our economic system is responsible. The defining characteristic of capitalism is perpetual economic growth. And while it has brought us wonderful benefits, including improved health, wealth and opportunities to travel and experience the world, ever-increasing production and consumption – inherent in capitalism – are an existen...
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July 29, 2025 • 52 mins
How did Apple, the world’s most valuable company and creator of the defining product of the 21st century, end up so deeply entangled with China’s authoritarian state?
In 1996, Apple was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Fast forward to 2003, and the company made a pivotal move - outsourcing production to China in search of affordable, scalable labor. That decision helped catapult Apple to unprecedented success with the iPod and...
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July 28, 2025 • 45 mins
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 ...
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July 26, 2025 • 62 mins
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 ev...
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July 25, 2025 • 51 mins
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 tak...
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July 23, 2025 • 50 mins
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 unpredictab...
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July 22, 2025 • 14 mins
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 navigat...
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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, s...
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July 21, 2025 • 40 mins
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...
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July 19, 2025 • 33 mins
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 ...
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July 17, 2025 • 51 mins
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 ...
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July 15, 2025 • 32 mins
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 th...
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July 13, 2025 • 41 mins
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 ha...
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July 12, 2025 • 51 mins
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 ...
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July 10, 2025 • 42 mins
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 Sq...
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July 8, 2025 • 67 mins
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 hi...
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July 7, 2025 • 40 mins
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, Th...
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July 5, 2025 • 40 mins
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, Th...
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July 4, 2025 • 48 mins
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. Th...
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