Intelligence Squared

Chris Hirst, Global CEO of advertising group Havas Creative, cuts through the bullshit and gets to the heart of modern leadership in this straight-talking podcast brought to you by Intelligence Squared.  In this episode, Christ Hirst speaks to Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House Director of Communications - a post he held for an infamous 11 days under President Donald Trump in 2017. The majority of Scaramucci’s career has actually been spent outside politics. He is the founder of global investment firm SkyBridge Capital. In 2011, Scaramucci received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award and in 2016 was listed in Worth magazine's "100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance". He spoke to Chris Hirst about leading as an entrepreneur, having the tenacity to fail upwards, working for Donald Trump - and what he would do if Trump ran for President again. If you enjoyed this podcast please let us know what you think by rating and reviewing No Bullsh*t Leadership on Apple Podcasts. For updates on the series f

George Packer is journalist and author whose words, during 15 years as staff writer for the New Yorker and latterly at the Atlantic, have helped frame American public life. His latest book is Last Best Hope: America In Crisis and Renewal, which is now finding its way to shelves as a paperback, and reflects on the polarised nature of US politics and what could be done to bring the two sides closer to consensus. Hosting the discussion is Justin Webb from BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Cowley is Editor of British political weekly, The New Statesman. He’s also an author and his latest book, Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England, is a timely reflection on the identity of his home nation. The book follows both individual stories of everyday life and the broad arc of national politics over the past 25 years spanning the ascent of the Tony Blair government to Tory austerity, Brexit and the pandemic. Hosting the discussion is Kavita Puri, journalist, broadcaster and author of the book and radio programme, Partition Voices, which explores issues of identity within the British Asian community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, the parting of the Red Sea. These are a few of the stories from the Old Testament. And then there’s the New Testament, with its account of the life of Jesus, the Good Samaritan, the raising of Lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand. Whatever our creed or background, these stories are embedded in our consciousness. They inform our everyday speech and much of our art, music and literature. But which of these books is the greater? For this archive episode, we gathered expert voices to consider the question including writer and broadcaster Anne Atkins, Booker Prize-winning novelist and journalist Howard Jacobson, Professor of Theology and Culture in the African Diaspora Robert Beckford, and Anglican priest and presenter the Rev. Richard Coles. Hosting the discussion is broadcaster, comedian and author David Baddiel.  We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should

Journalist and writer Dipo Faloyin's new book, Africa Is Not A Country, looks to challenge overly simplistic narratives for one of the most culturally diverse regions on Earth. The African continent is home to over 2,000 languages – from Igbo to Xhosa, Franglais to Yoruba – and comprises countries as politically varied as post-Arab Spring Egypt, fast-growing Ghana, and increasingly authoritarian Rwanda. Joining Dipo to discuss it is our host, the award-winning journalist Yousra Elbagir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back for a third series, Alannah Weston, Chairman of Selfridges Group, speaks to inspiring leaders driving transformational systems change to put sustainability at the heart of their businesses. In this episode, Alannah is joined by Andy Cato, co-founder of Wildfarmed. Andy is a Grammy-nominated musician, one half of the incredible Groove Armada. In 2006, he read an article about the dire state of industrial food production, which ended with the line, “If you don’t like the system, don’t depend on it.” Andy sold his music rights, bought a farm, and has spent his life since finding a more restorative and sustainable way of growing food. Together, they discuss how following natural systems for soil health leads to abundance and how it can transform our ailing agricultural system. How to Lead a Sustainable Business is brought to you by Selfridges Group and Intelligence Squared. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho

Writer and audio documentary maker Hana Walker-Brown’s new book, A Delicate Game, investigates the reasons for sport’s troubling relationship with CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a type of dementia caused by repeated injuries to the head. Walker-brown interviewed athletes including former rugby star Steve Thompson, 43, who has no memory of playing in the World Cup final in 2003, and the family of Jeff Astle, the former England football player who died at 59 from dementia caused – an inquest found – by decades of heading leather footballs. Host for this discussion is Joey D’Urso, Investigations Writer for The Athletic UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has started the first war in Europe for a generation, defying the post-Cold War international rules-based order and inflicting great suffering on millions of civilians in the process. Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times and his latest book is The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World. The book focuses on how we have arrived in an era in which figures such as Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro, and, of course, Vladimir Putin, have managed to ascend to power and stay there. Hosting this discussion is Carl Miller, Research Director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank, Demos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's podcast is from our friends at Intelligence Squared Germany who hosted a live debate in Berlin last week on whether the EU's 'Green Deal', a plan to deliver both economic growth and carbon neutrality, is really achievable. The debate was held in partnership with The European Council on Foreign Relations and featured Franziska Brantner of the German Green Party taking on renowned climate activist Dr. Tadzio Müller. It was hosted by BBC journalist Damien McGuinness. — We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be.  Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.  And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared today. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out

Oded Galor’s remarkable new book, The Journey of Humanity, can feel like seeing the world with fresh eyes. His analysis of the origins of wealth and inequality is compelling, original and, especially during these troubled times, refreshingly optimistic. Speaking across the political divide the book sets out a convincing blueprint for how a better life can be had by everyone on the planet. Galor, an economist at Brown University, upends many of our assumptions about human progress. For nearly all of human history humans lived a subsistence existence but something astonishing happened 200 years ago and the living standards of nearly all humans have skyrocketed – albeit unevenly – since then. Hosting the discussion is journalist, author and former BBC News Editorial Director, Kamal Ahmed.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food is the best medicine, believes genetics expert Tim Spector, but most of the dietary advice that we are given is wrong, he claims. In his latest bestselling book, Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong, he argues that the most dangerous myth of all about food is the assumption that we all respond to the same foods in the same way and the food industry's oversimplified approach to diet. For this discussion, Tim is joined by Dan Saladino, the award-winning food writer and broadcaster. Dan's new book, Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, is a love letter to the world’s great food traditions and a wake-up call to protect the planet’s genetic biodiversity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the world facing a climate crisis, how can travel and tourism be part of the solution? For this programme, Intelligence Squared partners with Singapore Tourism Board to bring together cross-industry experts to discuss how the travel and tourism industry can go beyond sustainable storytelling and take real steps to help tackle some of the challenges facing the environment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blockchain technology has gone mainstream. It earns huge amounts of column inches and airtime. Stories abound of Bitcoin millionaires and multimillion-dollar ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). New cryptocurrencies are launched every week. People who don’t entirely understand what they’re buying are rushing to purchase Bitcoin for fear of missing out, and recently the UK's Royal Mint announced its first ever blockchain-based non-fungible token, an NFT. Back in 2018, Intelligence Squared gathered crypto specialists to debate whether blockchain technology has a legitimate future or not, including Jamie Bartlett, author and analyst on the politics of the internet, blockchain expert Primavera De Filippi, Vit Jedlička, President of the micronation Liberland, and crypto journalist David Gerard. The host for this discussion was journalist, author and former BBC News Editorial Director, Kamal Ahmed.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following the fall of communism in 1989, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama shot to fame with his thesis about the ‘end of history’ – the idea that the entire world was set on a path towards universal liberalism. But 30 years on, liberalism is under attack from both the Right and the Left – and from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Professor Fukuyama was joined in conversation by John Gray, the British political philosopher, who rejects the idea of a universal momentum towards liberal values and human progress. Despite the view of many that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the end of the post-Cold War era, Fukuyama believes that it is a wake-up call for the West to rekindle the spirit of 1989, while Gray holds that the idea that liberalism will ever triumph is a mirage. Chairing the discussion is the journalist, author and broadcaster, Helen Lewis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Higham is a journalist and author known to TV viewers in the UK as a former correspondent for BBC News and also as regular host of its literary interview show: Meet the Author. His new book, The Mercenary River: Private Greed, Public Good, A History of London's Water, tells the story of a resource in the city many take for granted. But the flow of water, like any natural resource, has often been fiercely contested, diverted and exploited by profiteers in London over the centuries. Our host for this discussion is the author of books including As Kingfishers Catch Fire and Winchelsea, Alex Preston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over four million people have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion began. The support for Ukranians has been compassionate and heartwarming but it has also raised questions about why those fleeing North Africa and the Middle East are not afforded the same degree of sympathy. Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer, and Africa Correspondent for The Irish Times. Her new book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route, tells the stories of refugees making perilous journeys and seeks to investigate the murky politics that means not all asylum seekers are given the same opportunities. Our host for this discussion is the economist, broadcaster and writer, Linda Yueh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How we save the planet is clear: we need to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees in order to avoid doing irreversible damage. But exactly what should we do to reduce damaging greenhouse gas emissions? In recent years, hydrogen has emerged as a promising source of clean energy. It has been called ‘freedom fuel’, the ‘Swiss army knife’ of the energy transition, and a ‘silver bullet’ for decarbonisation. But is it as simple as that? In this debate we separate fact from fiction with energy experts Barry Carruthers, hydrogen director of ScottishPower; Fiona Harvey, The Guardian’s environment correspondent; and Professor Nigel Brandon, Chair in Sustainable Development in Energy at Imperial College London. Chairing the debate is Kamal Ahmed, journalist, author and former BBC News Editorial Director. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are in an era of crisis, collapse, and reactionary tyrants, argues Laurie Penny, but we are also witnessing a transformation: a revolutionary change in how we define gender, sex, consent and whose bodies matter. In her new book, Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback, Laurie offers an urgent analysis of this moment of sexual politics we are living through. Our host for the discussion is cultural historian and broadcaster Shahidha Bari. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare the West’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. Around 40 per cent of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, while some 7 per cent of US oil is Russian. Journalists Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s new book, The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources, tells the story of how trading commodities such as these has shaped the global financial landscape and why we find ourselves in a pivotal moment in which geopolitical and economic relationships are being tested. Investigative journalist and Manveen Rana speaks with Javier and Jack about the book and its wider themes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bestselling investigative journalist Oliver Bullough discusses his recent book, Butler to the World, which details how Britain became a favoured destination for funnelling the finances of oligarchs and the globe's super rich. He joins fellow journalist and broadcaster Manveen Rana to talk about the book and how international finance plays into the current situation in Ukraine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices