WEDNESDAY JULY 19 2023, 1PM BST
How the Food We Eat Is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis With Kimberley Wilson and Christian Jarrett

Science &
Technology
Ultra-processed foods, packed with with chemicals and additives, are wreaking havoc on our physical health, fuelling the obesity crisis and c...

What are the connections between propaganda about the Russian Empire and the invasion of Ukraine?

Mikhail Zygar, a renowned Russian dissident journalist, is the founding editor-in-chief of Russian news TV channel Dozhd, who was forced to close his company and flee the country after condemning t...

What was Rome like during its zenith? Find out on July 11 when acclaimed historian and co-host of The Rest Is History podcast Tom Holland comes to Intelligence Squared to paint a vivid picture of Rome during the Pax Romana, when Rome was the world’s great superpower. Drawing on his new book Pax: ...

Robin Dunbar has been hailed as one of the most insightful and creative evolutionary thinkers of our time, famed for his work on human networks and communities (he came up with the Dunbar number, the idea that humans can have no more than 150 meaningful relationships). Now he turns his attention ...

In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed watchtowers, evading thousands of SS men and slavering dogs, they trekked across marshlands, mountains and rivers to freedom. Vr...

War and Politics in the 21st Century with Sir Lawrence Freedman
Sir Lawrence Freedman is the UK’s leading expert on military strategy and the go-to voice since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for his clear-sighted analysis of the conflict.

On October 6 he comes to Intelligence Squared to discuss the...

If you look back over a thousand years of human history, one undeniable truth emerges: progress is not inevitable but hinges on the choices society makes regarding technology.

In the Middle Ages, agricultural advancements enriched the nobility and the Church, which used the wealth generated to...

What is it to imagine exactly? How do we go about it, and why is it so important that we imagine for ourselves? On July 3 author and Condé Nast Britain managing director Albert Read comes to Intelligence Squared to explain that the imagination is not just the preserve of artists and creatives but...

‘Putin’s calculation is simple: a Ukraine with a permanent war in its eastern region will never be fully welcomed by Europe or the rest of the world’ ― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s most famous living novelist. Hailed as a latter-day Bulgakov and a Ukrainian Murakami, he im...

Bruce Daisley is one the world’s most respected thought leaders on workplace culture and the future of work. He was Vice-President of Twitter in Europe for 12 years and has four times been voted the ‘fantasy hire’ that most business leaders would like to make.

In August 2022 he came to Intellige...

When we throw things ‘away’, what does that actually mean? Where does it go, and who deals with it when it gets there? Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis has spent the last number of years investigating the global waste industry. On June 27 he comes to Intelligence Squared to tell us...

Since the Wall Street Crash in 1929, financial meltdowns have repeatedly sent shockwaves through our world. From the currency crises of the 1980s and 1990s, to Japan’s housing crash, the dot com boom and bust, the global financial meltdown, the euro crisis and the COVID pandemic.

On May 31, econ...

China’s power has been growing for decades. A formidable and emerging power on the world stage, the China that most Westerners think they know is an intimidating, authoritarian nation which plans to take over the world. According to leading economist Keyu Jin, this prejudiced take on China is bli...

‘Being a disabled parent is a rebellious act.’ – Eliza Hull

When writer and musician Eliza Hull was pregnant with her first child, like most parents-to-be she felt a mix of nerves and excitement. But as a disabled person she faced added complexities. Would the pregnancy be too hard? Would people...

The great dilemmas of geopolitics are not battles of good against evil, where the choices are clear. They are contests of good against good, where the choices are often painful, incompatible and fraught with consequence. That’s the argument that political scientist Robert Kaplan will be making wh...

We need a food revolution – one that will transform the face of the planet and our relationship with it. That will be George Monbiot’s rallying cry when he came to Intelligence Squared to talk about the themes of his major new book 'Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet'.

As...

‘There is no transition without transmission.’ This phrase has been echoed by energy experts and politicians across the world. But what does it mean? It seems as if the renewable energy transition is unfolding smoothly. Globally renewable energy generation is predicted to increase five-fold by 20...

From the McDonald’s McPlant made with a Beyond Meat® patty to Sheese Dairy-Free Cheddar Style, there is a plant-based alternative for almost every food you can think of, making it easier than ever before to go vegan. No wonder the number of people in the UK following a plant-based diet has risen ...

The eugenics movement emerged in the late 19th century, promoting the theory that the human race could be improved by the selection of desirable heritable characteristics. The term was coined by Francis Galton in 1883 and the idea was initially embraced in Britain and the United States by philoso...

Is the UK’s 2024 general election a foregone conclusion, with the Labour Party some 20 points ahead in the opinion polls? Can Rishi Sunak turn around the economy in time? Is there enough difference between the two main parties on the issues that voters care most about – the cost of living crisis,...

In an age where the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation seems ever more blurred, can anyone actually own a culture? On April 24, acclaimed author and public intellectual Martin Puchner comes to Intelligence Squared to talk about the themes of his new book Culture: A New ...

Shortly after her fourteenth birthday, Hadley Freeman stopped eating. From the age of fourteen to seventeen, she lived in various psychiatric wards with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa.

Now, decades later, the award-winning Sunday Times columnist has written a book, Good Girls: A Story and Study...

The sexual revolution of the 1960s liberated women to enjoy sexual freedom and personal autonomy. That’s the conventional view but is it right? On March 14 writers Louise Perry and Mary Harrington come to Intelligence Squared to argue that the social changes generally seen as progressive over the...

On Easter weekend 1993 Nelson Mandela was engaged in slow-moving power-sharing talks with President F.W. de Klerk when a white supremacist shot Mandela’s heir-apparent, Chris Hani, in the hope of igniting an all-out civil war. 

In April 2023 acclaimed South African journalist Justice Malala came...