Intelligence Squared

A debate on the eve of the Second PAGE Ministerial Conference (http://bit.ly/2jhYyaX). Filmed at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) in Berlin on March 26th 2017. Globalisation has created wealth across the world, lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. But has too much of the wealth ended up in the hands of too few? How can our model for globalisation be reconfigured to promote more equal, stable economies which do not overstretch environmental resources? Our current socio-economic system, many argue, is increasing inequalities and accelerating climate change and destruction of the environment. The Sustainable Development Goals — the UN’s roadmap to prosperity for all on a healthy planet — will require considerable financial resources. Many experts are now calling for a change to our entire model of doing business, by measuring national prosperity beyond GDP, sharing wealth equitably, and shifting economies to an inclusive, sustainable model. But how can these goals be met, and what are the risks to an increasingly strained global jobs market and the needs of developing nations? We were joined on stage in Berlin Barbados' Minister of Labour and Social Security, Minister Esther Byer-Suckoo; Executive Director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byanyima; UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the UN Environment Programme’s New York Office, Elliott Harris; Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Heraeus Holding, Dr Jürgen Heraeus and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, Tim Jackson. The event was hosted by our Senior Producer Robert Collins. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

6 Apr 20171h 4min

Social media is like fast food – rapidly consumed for instant gratification. No wonder social media demeans art. Artworks that instantly seduce online become tedious when contemplated over time in the flesh. Once art goes viral, it gains traction, particularly in the market, and becomes unjustifiably acclaimed. Museums may be keen to reach new audiences, but can great masterpieces really be appreciated on the miniature canvas of your mobile phone screen? Shrink art and you shrink its power – no one can really believe they've experienced an artwork without examining the ideas and the artist's mastery of their medium. And this is an even bigger issue when it comes to experiential artworks such as performance or virtual reality. What nostalgic nonsense, say digital art fans. Attacking social media is like attacking photography in the 19th century. The internet is the medium of the age. To ignore it is to reject the future. For existing masterpieces, social media is the key to all the world’s museums and galleries. No longer are works hidden away in dusty storage rooms in another country. With a simple swipe of your finger you can explore artworks you never knew existed, prompted by suggestions from people you admire. Commercially, the online art market is estimated to have grown to over $3 billion in 2016. At last, art has become truly democratic, open to all to view and buy. This debate took place in Hong Kong on 23rd March 2017. Arguing for the motion were internationally acclaimed artist Ryan Gander and curator for the Encounters sector of Art Basel Hong Kong Alexie Glass-Kantor. Arguing against the motion were the Director of Indonesia's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Aaron Seeto, and international art advisor and founder of FSA Art Advisory, Lisa Schiff. The debate was chaired by Tim Marlow, Director of London's Royal Academy of Arts. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

30 Mar 20171h 2min

Niall Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation. In this talk from February 2011, based on his book 'Civilisation: The West and the Rest', he asks how Western civilization came to dominate the rest of the world. His answer is that the West developed six “killer applications” that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If it has and the Rest of the world can successfully download these apps, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

24 Mar 20171h 1min

Why do they do it? Again and again, after every attack, our media react by giving the terrorists exactly what they want – maximum publicity. Of course, the public should be told that an atrocity has taken place. But each attack dominates the news for days at a stretch. The TV networks go into overdrive, flying out their journalists to the scene of the attack and saturating their airtime. All this plays into the hands of terrorist organisations, allowing their killers to be glorified in the eyes of their supporters. In addition, the wall-to-wall news coverage creates a climate of fear and fuels the more authoritarian and xenophobic strands of our politics. President Trump’s recent actions – banning refugees and appearing to reference fictional terrorist attacks in Sweden – might be seen as an inevitable consequence of this hysteria. We should get things into proportion. After all, you’re more likely to fatally slip in the shower than be killed in a terrorist attack. This is the line that was taken by former Times editor and Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. He was joined by Fawaz Gerges, a prominent expert on ISIS and al-Qaeda who has extensively researched the historical roots of jihadi extremism on the ground in the Middle East. Gerges explained how the West has played into the narrative of terrorists by portraying them as an existential danger, rather than as mere common criminals. But for national security commentator Douglas Murray, the only way to defeat terrorism is to tackle it head on, speaking plainly about the true scale of the threat. The recent wave of attacks by ISIS was just the beginning, he argued. Over a thousand foreign fighters have recently returned from Syria to Europe, and are highly likely to pose a risk to our security. It’s vital that our media and authorities keep the public fully aware about the terrorist threat and encourage everyone to be vigilant. Honest reporting is absolutely crucial, especially when society itself is under attack. As for ISIS, how they are portrayed in the mainstream media is a matter of indifference to them – their publicity strategy is all about broadcasting their attacks on social media to an audience of millions, not headlines in the press. Does publicising terrorism play into the hands of the perpetrators or does it help keep us on the alert against further attack? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

17 Mar 20171h 3min

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 Like’ T-shirts. Had you told a Hillary Clinton supporter or one of those T-shirt campaigners that a year later the US president would be Donald Trump, a man with an abysmal record of sexually harassing women, and that women over the world would be defending their basic rights, including access to abortion, they would have barely believed it. How did we end up here? Has feminism become trapped, as some claim, in its own elitist ‘lean-in’ bubble? The recent Women’s Marches may have seen millions take to the streets in a tide of popular outrage. But some feminist commentators argue that the marches only demonstrated just how much middle-class liberal aspirations have become over-represented in the gender equality movement. Feminism, for these critics, has failed ‘ordinary’ women by focusing almost exclusively on the advancement of women at the top. According to a new report, while female CEOs’ salaries are rising, the gender pay gap across the globe is actually wider today than it was in 2008. If the gender equality project is to move beyond the needs and concerns of the so-called ‘elite’, what are the blindspots it needs to address? What can feminism do to expand the conversation beyond the ‘politically correct’ classes? How can we bring men into the conversation, and involve them in a project that stands to benefit everyone? To explore how gender equality can be made more accessible, Intelligence Squared is bringing together a brilliant panel to put forward their practical solutions. Speakers will include Jess Phillips, the outspoken MP described as ‘Labour’s future red queen’, and Catherine Mayer, bestselling author and co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party. They will be joined by writer and TV star David Baddiel, and teenage activist and journalist June Eric-Udorie, named one of the BBC’s 100 Women of 2016. Join us on March 8th, International Women’s Day, hear the arguments, and put your questions to our speakers. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

10 Mar 20171h 2min

'America first!' Donald Trump hammered out this message over and again in his inauguration speech a week ago today. He promised tariffs, a crackdown on immigration, and a restoration of American military might. He entered the White House as the least popular incoming president in 40 years. Not every liberal thinker, however, is in a state of despair. Jeffrey Sachs was recently ranked by The Economist as one of the world’s most influential political scientists. No Trump supporter himself, he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to explain why there may be silver linings to the Trump cloud, and to set out a new world order. Take trade. Trump has threatened to tear up Nafta and slam huge taxes on Mexican imports, and has already withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership to bring jobs back to the heartlands of America. While this strikes fear amongst free-trade supporters, there is a case to be made that globalisation has been moving faster than is politically sustainable, dividing rich from poor. Or take Trump’s proposal to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure. Sachs has described this promise to rebuild America’s decrepit inner cities, highways, schools and hospitals as 'a valid, indeed uplifting perspective’, provided it is done in a smart and fair way. Trump’s programme could be viewed as a Keynesian fiscal policy to boost competitiveness and job creation. It may, Sachs believes, be Trump’s great legacy. And then there’s foreign policy. As Sachs pointed out, Trump has filled his administration not just with protectionists but also with business people like himself, who enjoy making a buck (in fact, billions of them) and who have profitably invested for years in Russia, China, and other emerging economies. So while the rhetoric may be all about American primacy and trade protection, we shouldn’t rule out some friendly deal-making with other countries. And while Trump’s future relations with Vladimir Putin remain obscure, would it necessarily be a dangerous move if he pursues a conciliatory line with Russia? From a Russian perspective, America’s meddling in Ukraine and its attempts to bring that country into NATO, which would take the US-led military alliance right up to Russia’s border, look like aggression in its own historical sphere of influence. Isn’t it time there were a better understanding between both countries? Sachs argued that we are entering not a new tripolar world, dominated by the US, China and Russia, but what he calls ‘the World Century’, in which the rapid spread of technology and the sovereignty of nation states mean that no single country or region will dominate the world. For Sachs, the great foreign policy challenge will be to manage cooperation among regions, and face up to our common environmental and health crises. The idea that one place or people should have primacy over any other should be as antiquated as slavery or empire, and guard us against the senseless descent into violence. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

3 Mar 20171h 3min

How come there are conscious minds? How do language and culture evolve? Should we still teach children things which computers can do better? Will our smart electronic devices rob us of our intelligence? Will human intelligence and AI co-evolve? These are some of the intriguing questions that Daniel Dennett, one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of modern times, sought to answer when he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss his lifetime’s work on the evolution of the human mind. Dennett’s cross-disciplinary approach – encompassing neuroscience, evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence – has been widely acclaimed and helped redefine the role of the philosopher for our age. In this exclusive event, Dennett explored the major themes of his forthcoming book, 'From Bacteria to Bach and Back', including how our minds came into existence, how our brains work, and how ideas are culturally transmitted. He explorede many of the notions we take for granted about how we think – such as the idea of the individual – offering instead a bold new explanation of human consciousness which views it largely as a product of cultural evolution built up over millennia. Sharing the stage with Dennett were key figures from the next generation of scientists, AI experts, philosophers and artists, with whom he engaged on what it means to be human. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

24 Feb 20171h 3min

What should we be eating to live a long and healthy life? How is it that some people can eat absolutely anything and stay slim, while others on a ‘healthy’ diet get fat? Why is it that Cubans are much healthier than Americans, despite eating on average twice the amount of sugar? To unpack the truth behind the often confusing information about the food we eat, Intelligence Squared brought together some of the world’s leading experts on the science of human nutrition and health. Sugar has recently replaced saturated fat as the nutritional enemy number one. The theory is that it messes with our metabolism and causes heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Arguing that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium in our event was acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes, whose new book The Case Against Sugar has been making waves on both sides of the Atlantic. No one doubts that consuming a lot of sugar is unhealthy, but does the ‘sugar is poison’ theory really tell the whole story? A different explanation lies in a subject that has been getting a lot of attention recently – our gut microbiome. This is made up of the trillions of bacteria that inhabit our intestines and help digest our food and keep us healthy. The bad news is that the diversity of our microbes has plummeted in recent years due to the narrower range of foods and the predominance of processed junk in the Western diet. Research indicates that, rather than any single foodstuff being to blame for the rise of obesity and other modern diseases, the root of the problem lies in our depleted microbiomes. Setting out the new research on our gut bacteria and debunking many popular myths about diet was Tim Spector, an award-winning scientist who runs the British Gut project. What makes the subject even more fascinating is that we all have a very individual cocktail of bacteria in our gut, and research shows that the way we respond to food relates more to our own specific set of microbes than the calories in the food itself. Joining us was Eran Segal, one of world’s leading scientists in this field, who will explain how his lab can wire you up and predict precisely which carbohydrates you should and shouldn’t eat so as to prevent weight gain and be healthy. The results can be surprising. In 60% of cases, they show that you can enjoy sugary ice-cream but should avoid rice. A sharp critic of many of the ‘fashionable’ theories about diet and wellbeing is Sarah Jarvis, a GP who appears regularly on BBC radio and television. Her goal is to help her patients and the general public get the best quality information on nutrition and lifestyle so that they can make the informed decisions they need to be in control of their health. Chairing the event was Xand van Tulleken, a medical doctor and popular television broadcaster, who with his twin brother Chris, has presented a number of documentaries, often testing various diets on their identical genes. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

17 Feb 20171h 3min