Intelligence Squared

Historian David Starkey explores the inherent individuality of English Law relative to rival European systems.

Cairo. The facts say one thing: the biggest city in Africa and the Middle East and now so chaotic and polluted that most visitors to Egypt prefer to avoid it. This same city also speaks to us of history and humanity - Moses and Jesus, Arab poets and Napoleon's scholars who were here beside the Nile. It speaks of brilliance, beauty and power, of Europeans looking on in amazement at a Cairo that was the trading partner of Venice and of such importance that the Arabian Nights narrator called it the Mother of the World. More recently, through writers such as Nobel prizewinner Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany, it has spoken of humour amid hardships, of both compassion and corruption. Having seen Cairo shift and grow over the past twenty-five years, former resident Anthony Sattin invites you to examine the streets, the stories and the history of Cairo in an attempt to reconcile the myths with the facts. Writer and broadcaster who has spent much of his adult life travelling in and writing about the Middle East and North Africa. He fell in love in Cairo in the 1980s and has been a regular visitor ever since. His books include the highly-acclaimed The Pharaoh's Shadow, an account of his search for surviving ancient culture in Egypt, and The Gates of Africa, the story of the 18th century search for Timbuktu. His forthcoming book, A Winter on the Nile, tells of the journey Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert made in Egypt in 1849-50.

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate looks at the prospects of a hung parliament on the traditional two-party system.

Money, violence, hate, cheating: that is the face of modern football. Once the so called “beautiful game” represented something precious and important about English identity. But from a mixture of greed and appalling incompetence, the British football authorities have encouraged foreign oligarchs to take over the game – and this, say the traditionalists, has destroyed all that was valuable in the national game. But are the traditionalists right? Haven’t mercenary values and unsporting tactics always been part of the spirit of English football? Isn’t the truth rather that the foreign fortunes poured into our football and the foreign players they have attracted have made the game infinitely more exciting, skillful and pleasurable to watch? Speakers for the motion are Tom Bower, Dominic Lawson, Ed Smith Speakers against the motion are Garth Crooks, Hunter Davies, David Sheepshanks The Chair is Angus Scot

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate looks at Goldman Sachs

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate coincides with the live debate "The beautiful game? You're having a laugh!" which is available live online at www.intelligencesquared.com/live at 6.45pm on Thursday 29th April. England's national game excites fanatical loyalty and passion from its millions of followers, many of whom make lavish claims for its aesthetic appeal, its underlying moral qualities and its positive effects on society. But there are those who see this very adulation as evidence of the stupidity of football's legion of fans and followers. Can they not smell the stink of rotten money and rotten morals. The so-called "beautiful game", say the malcontents, is spectacularly corrupt and decadent – and it isn’t even that much fun to watch

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate looks at the possible effects of search giant Google scanning and digitising some ten million books

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate looks at tolerance. Gay rights are back on the agenda after a gay couple, Michael Black and John Morgan, were prevented from taking up a booking they had made at a B&B in Berkshire: the owner, Susanne Wilkinson, had disapproved of their relationship for religious reasons. The row was further inflamed last weekend when Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling sympathised with Wilkinson's views. Is such dislike of gay sex always an unacceptable prejudice? Or should homosexuals learn to tolerate the limits to other people’s tolerance of their lifestyles

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate considers drug legalisation after recent calls for the popular street drug, Mephedrone, to be banned.

Intelligence Squared's Quick Debate is a For and Against analysis of the week's most hotly disputed public issue. This week's debate considers whether politicians' domestic lives should be privatised.

American neuroscientist David Eagleman and British novelist Will Self discuss death and its possibilities.

Speakers: David Elstein Chairman of DCD Media plc and the Broadcasting Policy Group, formerly Chief Executive of Channel 5. Claire Enders Founder of Enders Analysis, a research service focusing on technology, telecoms and media across Europe. A. A. Gill Journalist and author, currently the Sunday Times's restaurant and television critic. Turi Munthe Founder of Demotix - www.demotix.com - a street-journalism website and newswire. Andrew Neil Former editor of the Sunday Times; publisher of Press Holdings and Chief Executive of the Spectator, broadcaster and business consultant on media matters. Matthew Parris Times newspaper columnist, television and radio broadcaster. Jacob Weisberg Editor-in-chief of the Washington Post's Slate Group of online magazines. Chair: Simon Jenkins Columnist for The Guardian and the London Evening Standard and former editor of the Times newspaper. He is also Chairman of the National Trust.

Art fairs, scoff the critics, have become shopping malls for the super-rich. They are giant marketplaces for the wealthy to buy, invest and speculate on the commodity of art. Galleries pressure artists to churn out 'safe', sellable works, which are not so much looked at as bought in bulk. But are art fairs in fact the perfect format for visitors to see art from all over the world which they wouldn't otherwise see? And by allowing artists to show their work to potential buyers en masse are these shows a crucial lifeline for artists today? Chaired by Simon de Pury. Arguing for the motion are Louisa Buck, Jasper Joffe, and Matthew Collings. Arguing against the motion are Richard Wentworth, Matthew Slotover and Sir Norman Rosenthal.

Has Europe fallen into an "us vs them" mindset? Have Europeans nurtured the perception that Islam is alien to the continent? Do they know what to make of people who don't conform to their Enlightenment values? Speakers: Tariq Ramadan, Zeinab Badawi, Petra Stienen, Douglas Murray, Flemming Rose

In this interview Joseph Stiglitz will be discussing his new book "FREEFALL: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy", a whodunnit account of how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behaviour to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Stiglitz will outline his remedies for the future, building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government, addressing the inequalities of the global financial system, and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. Joseph Stiglitz Chairman, Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. He is currently University Professor of the Columbia Business School. Evan Davis Presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today Programme; BBC Economics Editor from 2001-2008.