Intelligence Squared

At this point in history we are witnessing the highest levels of migration on record. About 258 million people, or one in every 30, were living outside their country of birth in 2017. But whatever an individual’s reason for travel the experience tends to vary greatly depending on the colour of the traveller’s skin. In November 2020, writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola came to Intelligence Squared to discuss her new book 'Travelling While Black' and offer thoughtful and original reflections on migration, race and identity from an African woman abroad. She will speak of her experiences exploring the world, from working with migrants crossing the Mediterranean to confronting how tourism is often exclusively designed for white people. Drawing from her experiences in places including Nepal, Botswana, Sicily, Haiti, New York and Nairobi, Nyabola asks tough questions and offers surprising, shocking and sometimes funny answers. The event was hosted by award-winning journalist Yousra Elbagir. To find out

This week's episode features another debate from our friends at Intelligence Squared Germany, who in partnership with The European Council on Foreign Relations debated whether the election of Joe Biden as U.S President will really change the relationship between Europe and The United States. The debate featured Matt Karnitschnig, Chief Europe Correspondent, POLITICO going up against Sudha David-Wilp, Deputy Director, German Marshall Fund. The debate was chaired by Jana Puglierin, Senior Policy Fellow and Head of Berlin Office, European Council on Foreign Relations. To find out more about the ECFR click here: https://ecfr.eu/ 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Anthony Scaramucci, the former Director of Communications in President Donald Trump’s White House, and Danielle Pletka, former Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, debate the Republican Party's response to the US election and the future of America. The podcast was hosted by Jonathan Freedland, columnist for the Guardian and regular presenter on BBC Radio 4.  Find out more about Danielle Pletka's podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-hell-is-going-on/id1467993804 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this special podcast brought to you by the Home Office and Intelligence Squared, Director of Border and Immigration Policy at the Home Office Philippa Rouse, Head of Immigration Policy at the FSB Emelia Quist, and Partner at Fragomen Ian Robinson discuss the UK's new points based immigration system and what it will mean for businesses and individuals. Hosted by broadcaster Linda Yueh, the panel delves into the key changes and dates businesses need to look out for and the guidance on offer to steer them through the process. For more information go to gov.uk/hiringfromtheEU 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

War - Do we care enough? In this episode, distinguished historian Margaret MacMillan explains why we should care about war and how it’s profoundly impacted our societies, political institutions, values, language and some of our greatest cultural treasures. In conversation with bestselling author and historian Peter Frankopan, MacMillan examines questions such as why warriors are typically men, what role women play, why there are wars with no clear objective or ending, and how non-state actors influence outcomes. Drawing on the themes of MacMillan’s book, 'War: How Conflict Shaped Us', the two also discuss the benefits of war, including votes for women, penicillin, and (arguably) nuclear power. Listen now to discover how war has shaped our past and will continue to shape our future. This event was recorded in November 2020 and produced by Senior Producer Conor Boyle with editing by Executive Producer Rowan Slaney and Daisy Moll — We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who

Last January, before the coronavirus pandemic struck, Intelligence Squared staged a sold-out debate on whether we need a truly radical new economic system to deal with the looming climate catastrophe. While Covid-19 has dominated the headlines for most of the ensuing months, averting ecological disaster remains the single most important issue we face. We therefore restaged the debate online to give all who were unable to attend the in-person event a chance to hear the arguments, ask questions live and cast their vote.   — 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 i

Martin Amis is often called the Mick Jagger of the British book world. As famous for his love affairs, his friendships and his complicated family history as for his dazzling prose, he dominated the literary scene for decades.  In this exclusive Intelligence Squared event he speaks about his much anticipated autobiographical novel Inside Story. It is perhaps Amis’s most intimate book, a meditation on love, loss, ageing and death. We encounter the vivid characters who have helped define Amis – his father Kingsley, his literary hero Saul Bellow, the poet Philip Larkin and his novelist stepmother Elizabeth Jane Howard.  And of course there is his lifelong friend and conversation partner, Christopher Hitchens, whose death from cancer he chronicles in some of the tenderest prose he has ever written.  In conversation with novelist Alex Preston, Amis reflects on his life and work and explore the hardest questions we all face: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die. This event was recorded in November 2020 and pro

In this week's podcast Design Museum director Tim Marlow, South London Gallery director Margot Heller, academic and critic Shahidha Bari and botanist Roy Vickery discuss the White Cube Gallery exhibition 'Danh Vo: 'Chicxulub'. Incorporating imperial narratives, plant folklore, Catholicism and Coca-Cola, this podcast in partnership with White Cube is a fascinating exploration of an exhibition steeped in history and nature. To find out more about the exhibition and see photos of the works discussed click here: https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/danh_vo_bermondsey_2020 To watch the video version of this talk, please visit our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/iqsquared 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this election special we were joined by Danielle Pletka, the Washington Post commentator and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Josh Glancy, the Washington Bureau Chief of The Sunday Times to analyse how the candidates have performed in the key battleground States, what we can expect to unfold in the next few weeks and what this election means for the country and the world. The podcast was hosted by Linda Yueh, economist and broadcaster.  To find out more about Danielle Pletka's podcast click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-hell-is-going-on/id1467993804 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this U.S election special we were joined by historian Sarah Churchwell and Jonathan Freedland to speak about how Biden and Trump have performed in the final weeks of the presidential race, the battleground States listeners should look out for and what's at stake for the country as a whole. 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's episode we were joined by Danielle Pletka, Washington Post commentator and senior fellow at the American Enterprise; and Emily Tamkin, U.S editor of The New Statesman, to speak about how the candidates have performed in the final weeks of the race, the battleground States listeners should look out for and what's at stake for the country as a whole. The episode was hosted by Manveen Rana, senior investigative journalist for the Times newspaper. She is also the host of a podcast called Stories of Our Times which you can listen to here: https://apple.co/38jGWb1 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rep. Ilhan Omar, the groundbreaking Somali-American community organizer from Minnesota, speaks to public intellectuals Dr Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose. She lays out her #PeopleFirst plan to transform our society and how the progressive movement will do if Democrats win back the Senate and the White House. This special episode is a 'takeover' of the Intelligence Squared podcast by The Tight Rope. Listen to The Tight Rope on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3jKajFj Listen to The Tight Rope on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2HRIwpB 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Bolton knows a thing or two about Donald Trump. So many things, in fact, that he’s now being investigated by the US Justice Department for potentially spilling classified information in his new book. On Wednesday October 28 he came to Intelligence Squared Plus to share what he knows – days before what could be the most important presidential election in American history. How does Bolton rate Trump’s chances of re-election? What kind of second term president will he be if he wins? How will his handling of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement affect those crucial voters in the swing states? Bolton discusses a president he has called unfit for office, a country that is at its most politically divided in decades, and exactly what he thinks will happen on Election Day. The podcast was hosted by Emily Maitlis broadcaster and host of BBC Newsnight.  You can find out more about Bolton's book here: https://bit.ly/3mAfgCh Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.  See acas

Fear is on the march. All over the world citizens have surrendered basic freedoms to the state in order to be protected from Covid-19. Good government has become not just important but a matter of life and death. But the assumption that Western governments have any advantage over the rest of the world is questionable: ask yourself, where would you feel safer today – in Los Angeles and Barcelona or in Singapore and Seoul? The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of the West, argue bestselling authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, and it is accelerating a shift in the balance of power to the East. While Western democracies have been consumed by in-fights such as the battle over Brexit or partisan showdowns in Congress, countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as China, have been stealing a march economically, technologically and, arguably, politically in recent years. Earlier this month, Micklethwait and Wooldridge came to Intelligence Squared to talk about the themes of their new

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X - including siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become hundreds of hours of interviews into a portrait that would separate fact from fiction. Following Payne's death, his daughter and primary researcher Tamara completed the biography, 'The Dead Are Arising'. In this week's episode Tamara spoke to writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied about this penetrating and riveting account of Malcolm X and his legacy in the African American freedom struggle.  Find out more about the book here: https://amzn.to/2TipryK 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually the relationships soured too. In this week's Friday episode Anne Applebaum speaks to Jonathan Freedland about the 'Twilight of Democracy' combining her personal and political experience in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past. You can find out more and order the book here: https://amzn.to/36IdGKc 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week's podcast is from our friends at Intelligence Squared Germany who hosted a live debate in Berlin last week on whether the EU's 'Green Deal', a plan to deliver both economic growth and carbon neutrality, is really achievable. The debate was held in partnership with The European Council on Foreign Relations and featured Franziska Brantner of the German Green Party taking on renowned climate activist Dr. Tadzio Müller. It was hosted by BBC journalist Damien McGuinness. — Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.c

In this week's episode Helen Pluckrose documents the evolution of the ideas that inform today's radical social justice activism, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Pluckrose argues this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous. As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself.  While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities

Thomas Friedman has been called ‘the most influential columnist in America’. The Financial Times has described him as a ‘global star’ and he has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. On October 6, Friedman will be joining us online less than a month before Americans go to the polls to elect their next president. In conversation with ITV’s political editor Robert Peston, one of Britain’s leading journalists and broadcasters, Friedman will examine what is likely to be the most consequential Presidential elections of our times. Will enough Americans rally round President Trump to give him a second term, despite the innumerable scandals that have beset his administration? Or will the Democrats find a way to send him packing? And with the campaign already shaping up to be more bitter and divisive than any other in history, is there any hope for America’s fractured politics? You can find Tom Friedman's latest book Thank You For Being Late here: https://amzn.to/2FdmBIa Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/

North Korea shocked the world in September 2017 by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. Soon after, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state’s ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. World leaders, intelligence officials and many ordinary people around the world shuddered at the thought of a fully nuclear-armed North Korea. But how did this brutal nation build such a sophisticated nuclear programme? If the international community had taken non proliferation more seriously after the Cold War could things have turned out differently? And what should be our end game with the North Koreans? Should we be seeking an Iran style nuclear deal or would that be a fatal error of judgment? In September 2020 we were joined by Ankit Panda, renowned security expert and author of 'Kim Jong Un and The Bomb', who spoke to Dr Patricia Lewis, former Director of the UN Instit