Intelligence Squared

In conversation with writer and cultural historian Shahidha Bari, Slimani shared her insights into the impact of colonialism and the ways in which women in particular find themselves othered, politically, culturally and historically. To buy her new b...

Let’s face it, argues Jonathan Franzen: the climate apocalypse is coming. We’ve already messed up the planet. The polar bears are running out of ice to stand on. Australia and California will burn again. Temperatures keep rising. Our chance to prevent ...

How important is parenting? The multibillion-pound parenting industry tells us we can all shape our children to be joyful, resilient and successful. But what if it’s all bunk? Intelligence Squared brought together a panel of leading experts to explore ...

How should we talk about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart. In this week...

How did Dee Hock of Visa transform the way we pay for things? How did Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, create the biggest knowledge transfer engine the world has ever seen? And how did Barack Obama and his grassroots team revolutionise political camp...

How should we remember Napoleon, the man of obscure Corsican birth who rose to become emperor of the French and briefly master of Europe? In 2014, as the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo approached, Intelligence Squared brought together tw...

Testosterone – a hormone that has been mythologised, maligned and misunderstood. It is frequently cited as the basis of male aggression and sexual violence. Christine Lagarde, former chair of the IMF, once said ‘There should never be too much testoster...

When you start your day with a cup of tea or coffee you are ingesting a consciousness-altering drug, which you are quite likely to be addicted to. That drug of course is caffeine, the stimulant used by 90 per cent of people on earth, and it is one of t...

Both these novels imagined extraordinary futures, but which better captures our present and offers the keener warning about where we may be heading? In this the Intelligence Squared debate, we had Will Self arguing for Brave New World and Adam Gopnik a...

As billionaires jet off to space should we abolish them here on earth? In this week's debate professor Linsey McGoey of Essex University and Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute go head to head on whether society should tolerate the existence of bill...