In November 2019, P.J O'Rourke and Lionel Shriver came together to engage in a dissection of the American presidential race. O’Rourke is a lifelong Republican but in 2016 he backed Hillary Clinton, describing her as ‘the second-worst thing that could happen to America’. So who will be his pick fo...

It used to be so easy. You left university, came to London and got yourself a flatshare in one of the cheaper areas: Notting Hill, Maida Vale or Highgate. Living was cheap and if it took you a while to find out what you really wanted to do with your life you could drift about a bit and get by. Ma...

Michael Lewis is one of the most successful non-fiction authors alive. He has been acclaimed as a genius by Malcolm Gladwell and as the best current writer in America by Tom Wolfe. In a series of titles that have sold 9 million copies worldwide, he has lifted the lid on the biggest stories of our...

Is China, with its unfair trade policies and shameless theft of intellectual property, an enemy that needs to be reined in? Or is it in the West’s best interests to view China as a strategic partner and aim for mutual respect and cooperation?

We were joined by Keyu Jin, Professor of Economics at...

Have historians misunderstood everything? Have they missed the single greatest idea that best explains the past?

Niall Ferguson is the preeminent historian of the ideas that define our time. He has challenged how we think about money, power, civilisation and empires. Now he wants to reimagine hi...

Let’s be honest. It’s the political Left that has society’s best interests at heart, that works for the good of all. It has always been the Left that has struggled to protect the weak from the strong, that has fought for workers’ rights, for sexual and racial equality, for the welfare state. It i...

In Britain, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign hit the headlines when it demanded the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford’s Oriel College, of which he was a leading benefactor, because of his colonialism. In the US, violent protests in Charlottesville were sparked by a decision to remove...

In February 2019, Intelligence Squared brought together a panel of experts to argue the causes behind the rise of populism and to debate what should happen next. Should mainstream parties adopt the policies of the populists in an attempt to appeal to people who have hitherto felt unheard? Or shou...

When President Trump sacked James Comey as FBI Director in May last year, he ignited a political firestorm with huge implications for American democracy. Comey’s dismissal led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to look at possible links between the Russian government and the Tru...

A year ago, you could have been forgiven for thinking that gender equality was on an unstoppable trajectory. America stood poised to elect its first female president. On this side of the Atlantic, members of the political and cultural establishment proudly sported ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks L...

Want to join the debate? Check out the Intelligence Squared website to hear about future live events and podcasts: http://www.intelligencesquared.com
__________________________

Is Britain facing an identity crisis? The traditional dividing lines of left and right seem to be dissolving into new ...

In September 2019 John Humphrys left the Radio 4 Today programme after 32 years of forensically grilling figures in authority. As a presenter, he inspires love and loathing in equal measure. The Observer’s television critic once wrote that if he ever found himself sitting next to Humphrys at a di...

We are at war: cyberwar. Cyber attacks are becoming the weapon of choice for states, terrorists and criminal organisations. Through the fragile, interconnected structure of the web, anything can be hacked – from national infrastructure to an individual’s identity. The recent worldwide Ransomware ...

It’s time we came to to our senses. Brexit is a disaster and must be stopped. Leave campaigners promised our exit from the European Union would herald a glorious new era – the sunlit uplands of ‘global Britain’, with new trade deals signed in a matter of months and an extra £350 million per week ...

It’s been ten years since we saw suddenly unemployed Lehman Brothers bankers carrying their possessions out of their offices in boxes; since whole neighbourhoods in suburban America turned into empty ghost towns; since the British and American governments pumped trillions into the banking system,...

Professor Francis Fukuyama was joined in conversation by John Gray, the British political philosopher, who rejects the idea of universal liberal values and human progress. Despite the view held by many that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the end of the post-Cold War era, Fukuyama believes ...

What will it take for Labour to win again in Britain? Can the party capture the nation’s support again? Will previously loyal voters lost to the Brexit referendum return? Or has the party been redefined by identity politics, ignoring who they used to represent - older, working-class people, who l...

Lock them up. That’s the way we’ve always dealt with offenders. Criminals deserve to be put away for their crimes. Prison works because it keeps those criminals out of circulation, and acts as society’s most effective deterrent. Our prisons may be more crowded than ever – the prison population of...

“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means.”

When Theresa May uttered these words at the Tory party conference in 2016, there was uproar. May was targeting the liberal establishment, who flit business class from Mayfa...

Has society gone ‘woke’? Is antiracism being hijacked by the culture wars? And how do we make sense of the racial reckoning of 2020 and the backlash against it? In this live London event filmed in July 2022 award winning journalist, podcaster and author Reni Eddo-Lodge came to Intelligence Square...

Ibram X. Kendi shot to fame with his book How To Be an Antiracist, which reshaped the conversation about racial justice when it was published in 2019, selling over 1 million copies in the US and 100,000 copies in the UK. In July 2022 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage for an exclusive even...

The UK has made the momentous decision to leave the EU. On Monday July 4th Intelligence Squared staged an emergency event to discuss the ramifications. A panel including Douglas Carswell, Jonathan Freedland, Josef Janning, Liz Kendall, Anand Menon and Adair Turner examined:

What kind of deal can...

Twenty minutes a day, five days a week, “The Daily,” The New York Times’s flagship audio show, explores the world’s biggest stories, with the world’s best journalists. For the first time outside the United States, The New York Times — in collaboration with Intelligence Squared — presented a live ...

Is there a country in the world that attracts so much criticism as Israel? Studies consistently show Israel to be one of the most disliked nations in the world (along with Iran and North Korea). But how much of this is to do with genuine concern about Israel’s actions, and how much is actually a ...