Act of Oblivion is a fine novel about a divided nation, about invisible wounds that heal slower than visible ones . . . it feels like an important book for our particular historical moment, one that shows the power of forgiveness and the intolerable burden of long-held grudges.’ ― The Observer

R...

Award-winning author of the best-seller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari sits down with Professor Shahidha Bari to discuss the themes of his new book, Unstoppable Us Volume 1, aimed at a younger audience.

Harari's latest book is aimed at children so it’s on the smaller...

Psychologist Daniel Goleman shot to fame with his groundbreaking bestseller Emotional Intelligence. Raw intelligence alone is not a sure predictor of success in life. A greater role is played by 'softer' skills such as self-control, self-motivation, empathy and good interpersonal relationships.

In April 2022 Oded Galor - an economist at Brown University - came to the Intelligence Squared stage in London to set out his radical new ideas about human progress. In this hope-infused conversation, Galor weaves together insights from technology, demography, colonialism, geography and culture t...

Women of colour have to navigate a world of work where they are often discriminated against because of their race as well as their gender. But despite the challenges, they are increasingly making their way to the top and carving out a new ‘normal’ for younger generations. To celebrate their succe...

‘Beneath mythology and allegory is usually the shabby and sordid truth, but with Cool Britannia the opposite was true. ‘ – Dylan Jones, Faster Than a Cannonball

1995 was the year of the Nineties, according to author and journalist Dylan Jones. It was peak Britpop (Oasis vs Blur), peak YBA (Trac...

Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was joined by Anne McElvoy, Senior Editor at The Economist and head of Economist Radio, to discuss gender, identity politics, liberalism and #MeToo.

Join our first YouTube livestream debate on Cancel Culture on 22nd Sept at 6pm BST/ 1pm ET.
Ask your questions live and take part during the event by voting on the motion, ‘Cancel Culture is Threatening our Freedoms’.

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Friends star David Schwimmer and comedy writer Nick Mohammed speak to Samira Ahmed for our award-winning podcast series How I Found My Voice. Together, they will discuss everything from a childhood fascination with magic and getting their first big break to how the Friends cast unionised for equa...

In this live podcast recording of the award-winning How I Found My Voice, presented by Samira Ahmed, Gloria Estefan reflected on her path to musical success and fame. Gloria Estefan is one of the most successful female singers ever. With more than 120 million records sold worldwide, three Grammy ...

‘There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men.’ – Napoleon Bonaparte

How should we remember Napoleon, the man of obscure Corsican birth who rose to become emperor of the French and briefly master of Europe?

As the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo approached...

The First World War is not called the Great War for nothing. It was the single most decisive event in modern history, as well as one of the bloodiest: by the time the war ended, some nine million soldiers had been killed. It was also a historical full stop, marking the definitive end of the Victo...

On November 19th Intelligence Squared hosted the ultimate clash of civilisations: Greece vs Rome. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and ardent classicist, made the case for Greece; while Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge and redoubtable media star, championed Rome.

As Boris argued, the...

Modern radical thinker Slavoj Žižek spoke on the 1st July as part of the 'Great Minds' series, and affirmed his status as a great mind of modern philosophy and social, cultural and political theory. Starbucks, social solidarity and self-commodification were among the varied and enlightening topic...

A monumental turning point of more hot air? How will COP change the world?

This debate is a part of Intelligence Squared Energised, a series of debates within climate and clean energy in partnership with Iberdrola.

Join ScottishPower CEO Keith Anderson and Professor of Energy Policy and Offici...

Pain, pleasure, suffering what makes a good life? In November 2021, Yale Professor Paul Bloom came to Intelligence Squared to talk about his new book The Sweet Spot, and explained how a life without chosen suffering would be empty – and perhaps worse than that, boring.

In conversation with Linda...

The Sackler name adorns the walls of many hallowed institutions – Harvard and Oxford Universities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Louvre. But the source of the family’s wealth has become an international scandal. They are the main owners of Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical com...

Drug pushers. We tend to associate them with the bleak underworld of criminality. But some would argue that there’s another class of drug pushers, just as unscrupulous, who work in the highly respectable fields of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. And they deserve the same moral scrutin...

Imagine if swathes of the British countryside were allowed to be wild once again, if trees and rare plants could flourish and beavers, boars and white-tailed eagles could retake their place in the ecosystem. That’s the goal of the growing numbers of nature-lovers who support the idea of rewilding...

The books Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics have been worldwide sensations, selling tens of millions of copies. They have come to stand for challenging conventional wisdom using data rather than emotion. Questions they examine are typically: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? How...

Many would argue that these are the fundamental goals of a good education. So why has Cambridge University taken to warning its students that the sexual violence in Titus Andronicus might be traumatic for them? Why are other universities in America and increasingly in Britain introducing measures...

We can’t say Karl Marx didn’t warn us: capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. In their chase for ever higher profits, the capitalists shed workers for machines. The higher return on capital means that the share of profits rises and the share of wages falls, and soon the mass of the...

Helen Pluckrose documents the evolution of the ideas that inform today's social justice activism, from its origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. As Pluckrose argues in her new book Cynical Theories, this dogma is recognisable as much by its real-world ...