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Intelligence Squared

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Apr 21, 2022 • 33min

How to Lead a Sustainable Business, with Alannah Weston and Andy Cato

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 20, 2022 • 46min

A Delicate Game: Confronting Brain Injury in Sport, with Hana Walker-Brown

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 18, 2022 • 1h 1min

Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 17, 2022 • 1h 9min

The Sunday Debate: The European Green Deal is Not Fit For Purpose

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 more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 15, 2022 • 1h 2min

The Journey of Humanity, with Oded Galor

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 13, 2022 • 60min

Debunking the Great Food Myths, with Tim Spector and Dan Saladino

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 11, 2022 • 1h 1min

Walking the Walk: How to Go Beyond Sustainable Storytelling

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 10, 2022 • 1h 6min

The Sunday Debate: Blockchain, Quantum Leap Forward or Digital Snake Oil?

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 8, 2022 • 1h 9min

Is Liberalism Obsolete? With Francis Fukuyama and John Gray

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Apr 6, 2022 • 41min

The Mercenary River, with Nick Higham

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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