Intelligence Squared

Adolescence is the most dramatic and formative period of our lives. Once puberty kicks in and we move to secondary school, our peers take centre stage, and we begin to experience peer pressure and risk-taking. In these pivotal years, adolescents experience sex, love, bullying, friendship, social media and more. According to psychologist Lucy Foulkes, adolescence profoundly shapes who we become as adults, and yet as a period of life, it’s so often dismissed or misunderstood. And even though adults want to protect them, it’s important that as a society we don’t try to prevent teenagers from having the challenging, exhilarating experiences that helps them understand who they are and how to navigate the world. In November 2024, Foulkes came to Intelligence Squared to share surprising insights from her recent book 'Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us', gathered from her research as an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford. She will explain why, in contrast to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, she disa

Adolescence is the most dramatic and formative period of our lives. Once puberty kicks in and we move to secondary school, our peers take centre stage, and we begin to experience peer pressure and risk-taking. In these pivotal years, adolescents experience sex, love, bullying, friendship, social media and more. According to psychologist Lucy Foulkes, adolescence profoundly shapes who we become as adults, and yet as a period of life, it’s so often dismissed or misunderstood. And even though adults want to protect them, it’s important that as a society we don’t try to prevent teenagers from having the challenging, exhilarating experiences that helps them understand who they are and how to navigate the world. In November 2024, Foulkes came to Intelligence Squared to share surprising insights from her recent book 'Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us', gathered from her research as an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford. She will explain why, in contrast to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, she disa

Our guest today is Baroness Lola Young. Lola Young is a member of the House of Lords, as well as an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice. In her new memoir, Eight Weeks, Lola tells her remarkable life story from a childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first Black women in the House of Lords. Through her care records, fragments of memory, and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, she assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in the care system. Joining Lola to discuss the book is Habiba Katsha, a journalist who specialises in writing about race, gender, beauty, and internet culture. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, c

Where should you move first in Connect 4? Which property is best in Monopoly? How can pi help you win Rock Paper Scissors? In October 2024 award-winning mathematician Marcus du Sautoy came to the Intelligence Squared stage to explore the maths and strategy behind the games we love and the tactics needed to master them all. Du Sautoy also described the history of games and the crucial role they play in society. This is the second instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free

Where should you move first in Connect 4? Which property is best in Monopoly? How can pi help you win Rock Paper Scissors? In October 2024 award-winning mathematician Marcus du Sautoy came to the Intelligence Squared stage to explore the maths and strategy behind the games we love and the tactics needed to master them all. Du Sautoy also described the history of games and the crucial role they play in society. This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free I

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. In recent years the benefits of eating a diet rich in plants have increasingly been at the forefront of our conversations about food. You may have heard scientists like Tim Spector, the founder of ZOE, argue that a healthy diet should consist of 30 plants a week. This recommendation comes from a study led by Spector for the British and American Gut Project in 2019. It showed that people who ate more than 30 plants a week had the healthiest microbiomes and the best health outcomes, while those who didn’t had worse health outcomes.

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. David Baddiel has been on our screens for over 35 years. The creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and one half of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, he spent his early career in the world of television comedy. More recently, he has become a leading voice on Jewishness and antisemitism in the U.K after releasing his award-winning documentary and book Jews Don’t Count. In October 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss how both comedy and Jewishness have shaped his career and life. Drawing from his hilarious new

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. The writing of Rachel Cusk poses us constant challenges. Her critically acclaimed Outline trilogy and memoirs – A Life’s Work and Aftermath – dared us to rethink the limits of character, identity and what it means to be a woman. Arguably, no writer working today has pushed the boundaries of contemporary writing and storytelling as far. In June 2024, she came to Intelligence Squared to discuss her exhilarating new novel Parade. This work promises to once again expand the notion of what fiction can be and do. If you'd like to beco

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Organisational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant is one of the most sought-after business minds in the world and has provided expert advice to many of the world’s greatest business leaders, including Bill Gates and Sheryl Sandberg, equipping them with the mental tools to find motivation and meaning, rethink assumptions, and achieve greatness in their business and personal lives. For this Intelligence Squared live event, Grant joined economic journalist, FT senior columnist and author Tim Harford live on stage, to dis

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Exploring the acute sense of loss brought on by partition, the rupturing of cross-border relationships, and the scarring legacy of violence that still reverberates today Mishal Husain’s family lived through the mayhem of a botched partition. In June 2024 Husain, the acclaimed journalist and BBC Radio 4 Today Programme host, came to Intelligence Squared to tell her family’s story and shed light on this remarkable period of history. Drawing from her new book Broken Threads: My Family From Empire to Independence, she told stories l

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Too often historians have told the history of Africa through the prism of colonialism. But what picture of the continent emerges when we do away with making the story of Africa so anchored in European colonialism? Award-winning broadcaster Zeinab Badawi came to the Intelligence Squared stage recently to tell a new history of Africa – in all its shades and complexities – without the stifling gaze of Europe. Drawing on the themes of her latest book, An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, she descri

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. The deep connections between food, memory, love and life. The foods we turn to behind closed doors are deeply personal, saturated in memories and topped with a healthy dollop of guilty pleasure. In Comfort Eating, Grace Dent throws open her kitchen cupboards to reveal why we hold these secret snacks, naughty nibbles and hand-me-down recipes so dear to our hearts. We were joined by the author, critic and broadcaster – and one of our best loved writers on food – live at Union Chapel in October 2024 to discuss the deep connections

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Jordan Stephens’ life during his teenage years and his twenties was a whirlwind. As one half of the hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, his days were full of success, fame and adulation as Rizzle Kicks’ debut sold over 1 million singles and 600,000 albums in 2012. But for Jordan, success brought pain in its wake: a hidden pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive ideas of masculinity, and heartbreak. Diagnosed with ADHD, he was always chasing the elusive feeling of love and continually found himself distracted and derailed by drugs, drin

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. In the 20th century most autocrats were brutal dictators whose main goal was to control a domestic population. But in the 21st century autocracy has become much more sophisticated and ambitious in its scope. States like Russia have developed sophisticated cross-border networks of kleptocratic financial structures, innovative security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. Propagandists from one country can promote and finance

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Bestselling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has dedicated his career to speaking truth and wisdom in some of the most challenging spaces – communities polarised by politics and religion and university campuses mired in culture wars. Now he turns his attention to what he sees as a perfect storm of factors that are causing a collapse in mental health among teenagers today. According to the American College Health Association, since 2010 anxiety among American college students has increased by 134%, depression by 106%,

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain. Platinum-certified singer-songwriter MARINA, formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds, has been an integral part of the U.K music scene over the last decade. Amassing over 3 billion streams worldwide, her music — which includes hit songs Primadonna and Bubblegum B*tch — has connected with fans for their unique electro-pop sound and powerful lyrics. On October 22, MARINA came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss the themes of her debut poetry collection Eat The World. Her talent for evocative song lyrics has found a new

Many liberals believe that in recent years we have seen an erosion of the right to air unpopular opinions without the risk of being cancelled. We are in an ever-intensifying shutting down of conversation, they maintain, with constituencies on both the left and the right demanding that opinions they don’t like be declared out of bounds, socially, morally or legally. But some argue otherwise: that the so-called free speech crisis is completely a fiction. What we’re really seeing is a rebalance of power in elite institutions where privileged groups are being held to account for their words by others who have been historically excluded and marginalised. Intelligence Squared’s new book series THINK AGAIN, published in partnership with The Bodley Head invites two authors to debate the way forward. For the release of the first book, Is Free Speech Under Threat? Our authors are CEO of PEN America Suzanne Nossel and historian Charlotte Lydia Riley. The two recently joined Intelligence Squared live onstage in London to

This event was supported by Guinness Global Investors. For the final instalment of the Intelligence Squared Economic Outlook series for 2024, Financial Times columnist Tim Harford joined us to interrogate what the numbers are really telling us about the economy – and what those numbers tell us about what lies ahead. As the FT’s Undercover Economist, Harford demonstrates a remarkable ability to explain and communicate complex economic data in ways that are compelling and entertaining. This episode was recorded at The Tabernacle in London on Tuesday November 26, as Harford put our current economic challenges and opportunities into historical perspective and sought to map out the economic landscape we can expect in 2025.  This is the second instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-l

This event was supported by Guinness Global Investors. For the final instalment of the Intelligence Squared Economic Outlook series for 2024, Financial Times columnist Tim Harford joined us to interrogate what the numbers are really telling us about the economy – and what those numbers tell us about what lies ahead. As the FT’s Undercover Economist, Harford demonstrates a remarkable ability to explain and communicate complex economic data in ways that are compelling and entertaining. This episode was recorded at The Tabernacle in London on Tuesday November 26, as Harford put our current economic challenges and opportunities into historical perspective and sought to map out the economic landscape we can expect in 2025.  This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-le

David Baddiel has been on our screens for over 35 years. The creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and one half of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, he spent his early career in the world of television comedy. More recently, he has become a leading voice on Jewishness and antisemitism in the U.K after releasing his award-winning documentary and book Jews Don’t Count. In October 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss how both comedy and Jewishness have shaped his career and life. Drawing from his hilarious new memoir My Family, he discussed his upbringing from reckoning with his family’s trauma from the Holocaust to his late mother’s affair with a golfing salesman and his father’s struggles with dementia. Baddiel revealed his family story to shed light on why he believes laughter has the capacity to transform our darkest experiences into something more bearable. This is the second instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full conversatio