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Intelligence Squared
Intelligence Squared
300 episodes
Ideas shape the world. Intelligence Squared brings you the conversations that explain them.In every episode, we bring together leading thinkers, writers, scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs, to challenge assumptions, test ideas and debate the questions shaping our future. If you want to think more clearly about the world and where it's heading, you're in the right place. 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.
More about the show
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Episodes page 3 of 6
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What Would Happen If We Met Aliens? With Neil deGrasse Tyson
World famous astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson joins Dr Radha Modgil to discuss his new book Take Me to Your Leader, exploring the science of alien life, humanity’s obsession with UFOs, and what first contact might…
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London Falling: Patrick Radden Keefe on How Money, Power and Corruption Shape Our City, with Emily Maitlis (Part Two)
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award winning writer known for his ability to tell complex stories in ways that are compelling and revealing. Author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain—a shocking exposé of the Sackler family…
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London Falling: Patrick Radden Keefe on How Money, Power and Corruption Shape Our City, with Emily Maitlis (Part One)
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award winning writer known for his ability to tell complex stories in ways that are compelling and revealing. Author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain—a shocking exposé of the Sackler family…
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What Do We Ask Google, and What Does It Tell Us About Human Nature? With Simon Rogers
What do our Google searches reveal about who we really are? For a new book, What We Ask Google, data analyst Simon Rogers explores the world’s biggest dataset - billions of searches carried out over two decades - to…
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How Is Predictive AI Shaping Our World? With AI Philosopher Carissa Véliz
AI models now advise on everything from war, crop output, and marriages. Algorithms determine whether we can get a loan, a job, an apartment, or an organ transplant. Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor at the Institute…
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Weimar and Hitler: How did fascism take hold in Germany’s historic town? With Katja Hoyer
The town of Weimar looms large in German history. This ancient town nestled in the heart of the country was home to some of Europe's greatest thinkers, Goethe and Schiller, Liszt and Nietzsche among them. It gave its…
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An Evening with Kae Tempest (Part Two)
Kae Tempest is widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest wordsmiths. In a career of ferocious creativity, he has received multiple prizes and critical recognition across the many forms he works in. Beginning as a…
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An Evening with Kae Tempest (Part One)
Kae Tempest is widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest wordsmiths. In a career of ferocious creativity, he has received multiple prizes and critical recognition across the many forms he works in. Beginning as a…
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What Will Trigger the Next World War? With Peter Apps
How close are we to a new global conflict? In this episode, journalist Hannah Lucinda Smith speaks with global defence commentator Peter Apps about his new book The Next World War: The New Age of Global Conflict and…
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Lena Dunham: Famesick, with Dolly Alderton (Part Two)
According to award-winning actor, writer, director and producer Lena Dunham, we’re now too invested in having a good relationship with our ex. Best known for creating the hit HBO show Girls, which earned her eight…
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Lena Dunham: Famesick, with Dolly Alderton (Part One)
According to award-winning actor, writer, director and producer Lena Dunham, we’re now too invested in having a good relationship with our ex. Best known for creating the hit HBO show Girls, which earned her eight…
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The Age of Growth: Live in Partnership with IBM
In this episode, journalist Kamal Ahmed explores how innovation is the driving force behind meaningful growth, not simply through capital investment, but by rethinking and reinventing the status quo with transformative…
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Demis Hassabis and Sebastian Mallaby on The Quest for Artificial General Intelligence (Part Two)
Demis Hassabis – CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind – is one of the world’s most visionary technologists. A child chess prodigy from North London, Hassabis was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using…
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Demis Hassabis and Sebastian Mallaby on The Quest for Artificial General Intelligence (Part One)
Demis Hassabis – CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind – is one of the world’s most visionary technologists. A child chess prodigy from North London, Hassabis was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using…
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How Does Chemistry Shape our World? With Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu
Chemistry is everywhere. From cosmetics and the clothes we wear to life-saving medicines and kitchen experiments, chemical processes are all around us, defining our interactions with the world we live in. In this…
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Why Did Elite Cambridge Graduates Become Soviet Spies? Revisiting the Cambridge Five, with Antonia Senior
The Cambridge Five - Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt - made up one of the most notorious spy rings of the 20th century. Besotted with communist…
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How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell
Our changing climate is accelerating conflict and migration, with the potential to drive political instability from the Sahel to Saudi Arabia to Siberia. From the water-stressed mountains of the Arabian Peninsula to…
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Is There a Crisis of Overdiagnosis in Modern Medicine? With Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan
More people are being labelled with medical conditions than ever before. Diagnoses of autism, ADHD, allergies, and long COVID have skyrocketed - but are we actually getting less healthy? In this episode, neurologist…
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How Has Translation Transformed Shakespeare? With Daniel Hahn
What does it mean to translate some of the most recognisable and revered works in the English language? When the wordplay, poetry, and syntax of Shakespeare are all changed, is it still truly Shakespeare? In this…
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Should You Be Talking To AI? with Jamie Bartlett
Hundreds of millions of people now talk to AI, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini every day. They organise their finances and holidays, ask advice, seek therapy and find love – via machines. Almost overnight, chatbots…
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Who Are Renoir’s Mystery Girls? With Catherine Ostler
Could one of Renoir’s most iconic paintings conceal one of the most astonishing true stories of scandal and tragedy in Golden Age Paris? In 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking…
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Stalin vs Trotsky: The Assassination That Changed History, with Josh Ireland
On August 20, 1940, in a quiet study in Mexico, one of the 20th century’s most consequential political exiles was assassinated with an ice pick. The killing of Leon Trotsky marked the culmination of a relentless…
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Can Discomfort Be the Key to a Better Life? With Ken Rideout
Dr Radha Modgil is joined by endurance athlete, investor and author Ken Rideout for an inspiring Intelligence Squared conversation on what it really takes to transform your life. Drawing on the ideas in his book…
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How and Why did Sexual Reproduction Evolve on our Planet? With Dr Lixing Sun
Before sex evolved on our planet, two billion years ago, all reproduction happened asexually. So why and how did sexual reproduction evolve? Dr Lixing Sun is Distinguished Research Professor in behavior and evolution…
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Hungry for Life! An Evening with Prue Leith (Part Two)
According to Great British Bake Off judge and national treasure Prue Leith the secret to a happy life lies in embracing everyday with joy while accepting our inevitable end. Prue has had an exhilarating career. She…
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Hungry for Life! An Evening with Prue Leith (Part One)
According to Great British Bake Off judge and national treasure Prue Leith the secret to a happy life lies in embracing everyday with joy while accepting our inevitable end. Prue has had an exhilarating career. She…
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How deeply was the British Crown involved in the transatlantic slave trade? With author of The Crown’s Silence, Brooke Newman
How deeply was the British Crown involved in the transatlantic slave trade? New research by historian Brooke Newman argues that, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, until well into the 19th century, the Crown and its…
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The Specialist | The Coin Worth More Than Its Weight in Gold, with Selby Kiffer and David Tripp
This is an episode of The Specialist, your weekly dose of wonder. 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…
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Why Are Populists Winning? With Liam Byrne and Will Hutton
Populism has been winning big in recent years. It is the wave that has buoyed Donald Trump’s second term in office, Marine Le Pen’s popularity in France, and Reform UK’s recent leaps and bounds in British polling.…
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How To Overcome Trauma, With Psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead (Part Two)
Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrists. She is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller, The Devil You Know, which inspired her series of BBC Reith Lectures in 2024. In February 2026, she…
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How To Overcome Trauma, With Psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead (Part One)
Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrists. She is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller, The Devil You Know, which inspired her series of BBC Reith Lectures in 2024. In February 2026, she…
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How Has Living With Animals Shaped Our Brains? With Michael Bond
Humans are animals. 40,000 years ago our ancestors considered themselves inseparable from the landscape and the wild animals that lived alongside them. But over generations, we developed an idea that still shapes…
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The Specialist | From Canvas to Canon: Joan Mitchell’s King of Spades, with Courtney Kremers
This is an episode of The Specialist, your weekly dose of wonder. 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…
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Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell
Are Pagan Traditions Shaping a New British Identity? In this episode, Academic, broadcaster and critic Shahidha Bari speaks to journalist, DJ and author Zakia Sewell about her book Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and…
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Sex, Gender and Christianity: A 3,000 Year History, with Diarmaid MacCulloch and Mary Beard (Part Two)
In the twenty-first century, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary revolutions in attitudes to sex and gender in human history, bringing liberation for some and…
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Sex, Gender and Christianity: A 3,000 Year History, with Diarmaid MacCulloch and Mary Beard (Part One)
In the twenty-first century, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary revolutions in attitudes to sex and gender in human history, bringing liberation for some and…
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Is the Russia–Ukraine War a Failure of Strategy? With Lawrence Freedman
In an age of grinding wars, nuclear brinkmanship, and political volatility, what does strategy really mean - and how do leaders make decisions when the world feels chaotic? In this episode, Lawrence Freedman draws on…
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What Is Really at Stake at the North Pole? With Neil Shea
What Do Wolves, Caribou, and Global Superpowers Have in Common? In this episode, Professor Helen Czerski speaks to journalist and author Neil Shea about the Arctic’s changing face and the struggles that its indigenous…
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Sotheby's Talks | How Do Objects Achieve Iconic Status, with Grayson Perry and Xa Sturgis
On today’s episode, an episode from our friends at Sotheby's exploring the question: How do objects achieve iconic status? Taking inspiration from the book Icons: 100 Extraordinary Objects from Sotheby’s History,…
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Fiona Hill: The World in 2026 (Part Two)
Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham, from 2017 to 2019 she was a senior adviser on European and Russian Affairs at the White House and…
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Fiona Hill: The World in 2026 (Part One)
Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham, from 2017 to 2019 she was a senior adviser on European and Russian Affairs at the White House and…
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How has American hubris shaped Iran? With Scott Anderson
Scott Anderson is a veteran foreign reporter and war correspondent, and a contributing writer for The New York Times. Over his career he has reported from Bosnia, Libya, Palestine and across the Middle East. In this…
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What Does It Take to Run Goldman Sachs During a Meltdown? With Former CEO Lloyd Blankfein
What does it take to lead one of the world’s most powerful banks when the global financial system is on the brink of collapse? As CEO for Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2018, Lloyd Blankfein was at the helm as the global…
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CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Trump, Iran and the World in 2026 (Part Two)
As one of the world’s most respected journalists, CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour has witnessed some of the most consequential events of our time. In the Middle East, she has reported from the…
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CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Trump, Iran and the World in 2026 (Part One)
As one of the world’s most respected journalists, CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour has witnessed some of the most consequential events of our time. In the Middle East, she has reported from the…
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Fatima Bhutto on Grief, Survival, and the Life-Affirming Love of Canine Companions
Fatima Bhutto was born into the world of high politics in Pakistan. She was just 14 when she witnessed the assasination of her politician father outside of their home, and was forced to flee the country. She…
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Are Lithium and Cobalt the New Oil? The Elements of Power, with Nicolas Niarchos
Decarbonisation is triggering a new great-power race. As demand for green technologies and sustainable power sources grows, Washington and Beijing are battling for control of cobalt, lithium, copper, and nickel - the…
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The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson on Afghanistan: An American Catastrophe (Part Two)
Jon Lee Anderson is considered one of the great foreign correspondents of our time. Since the late 1980s, his on-the-ground reporting in Afghanistan has provided invaluable insight into decades of conflict and…
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The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson on Afghanistan: An American Catastrophe (Part One)
Jon Lee Anderson is considered one of the great foreign correspondents of our time. Since the late 1980s, his on-the-ground reporting in Afghanistan has provided invaluable insight into decades of conflict and…
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The Specialist | Jackie O's Faux Pearls, with Frank Everett
This is an episode of The Specialist, your weekly dose of wonder. 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, Frank…
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