Intelligence Squared19 Heinä 2025

How Geography Explains Our World, with Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall is one of the world’s most successful authors on foreign affairs. He’s the writer who put the ‘geo’ into geopolitics with his multi-million selling books Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography. Marshall’s principal argument is that without geography we cannot understand the world. Geography explains why Donald Trump wants to control Greenland. Greenland is of strategic military importance given it sits in the Arctic Ocean along the shortest route for Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles or submarines to reach the United States. It is also a land mass rich in rare earth metals like lithium and tungsten which will be key in building artificial intelligence and military hardware in the coming years. Geography also explains why China would find it highly difficult to invade Taiwan. The Taiwan Strait is about 130 km wide at its narrowest point, which is roughly three times the distance from Dover to Calais. Any invading force would face inhospitable coastlines, unpredictable monsoons and muddy, tidal beaches. Beijing might decide in time that these are risks worth taking. But these basic and immutable facts of natural terrain still matter hugely in international affairs. Join Marshall as he comes to Intelligence Squared stage to celebrate the release of a new 10 year anniversary edition of Prisoners of Geography updated with new chapters on Russia’s war in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East and The United States and China’s battle for global supremacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(1659)

How One Family Remade Britain: Thomas and Oliver Cromwell, with Miranda Malins

Thomas Cromwell helped Henry VIII break with Rome, reshape government and establish the Church of England. A century later, his distant relative Oliver Cromwell helped defeat a king, establish a repub...

15 Loka 57min

Can Europe Defend Itself? Timothy Garton Ash on Europe's Future

Europe’s past is not past. The borders of vanished empires still surface in election results. The European Union and Nato face a world in which Russia is aggressive, America is less dependable and Eur...

13 Loka 34min

Can Pigs Really Appreciate Bach? Katherine Rundell Live

Katherine Rundell has dazzled millions of readers globally with her writing on fantastical beasts. In her bestselling book The Golden Mole, she profiled some of the world’s most extraordinary endanger...

12 Loka 1h 23min

Archive: What Are the Chances We Exist at All? With Brian Cox and Alice Roberts

Who are we? Why are we here? Are we alone in the universe? How did we become the creatures that we are? How might we further evolve? These are some of the big questions that Brian Cox and Alice Robert...

11 Loka 1h 3min

What James Baldwin Can Teach Us About the World Today

On the 70th anniversary of the publication of Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin’s seminal novel about sexuality, race and myth in America, Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri joined us to reflect on the...

10 Loka 1h 17min

The Age of Change with Jeremy Hunt, in Partnership with IBM

In this episode, Kamal was joined by Jeremy Hunt, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lawrence Tallon, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and Dr. Angela...

6 Loka 43min

Carlo Rovelli Live: Why Numbers Don’t Exist

Carlo Rovelli is an award-winning theoretical physicist and writer with a gift for making complex ideas feel real and accessible. Whether exploring black holes, quantum mechanics, philosophy, or histo...

4 Loka 1h 32min

Anthony Scaramucci Tour Highlights

With the US midterm elections one month away, we revisit highlights from Anthony Scaramucci’s recent Intelligence Squared tour across the UK. The former White House communications director recalls ho...

3 Loka 38min