2025-07-07
40 分钟Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet.
I'm producer Mia Sorrenti, and I'm joined today by Head of Programming, Conor Boyle.
Conor, what can we expect from today's episode?
Well, today we have a treat for our listeners.
We recently hosted Michael Lewis in London, the acclaimed author of books including Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Liar's Poker, to discuss the theme of his new collection of essays, which is called Who is Government?
The Untold Story of Public Service.
The argument he's really making is that government is under attack across the world, whether it's Elon Musk's Doge department in the United States, whether it's Keir Starmer here in the UK looking to crack down on the so-called flabby state and fire lots of civil servants.
The whole concept of government is really under attack, and he's trying to remind people of some of the things that government do, which... makes all our lives better by telling stories such as the story of a coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, to the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, fighting tax evasion to ensure corruption doesn't become rife in the United States.
So it's a really interesting concept.
And he was in conversation with the FT's Gillian Tett, who people will know as well.
An increasingly relevant topic as well for us here in the UK as Nigel Farage's reform looks to emulate Elon Musk's Doge department in the US.
And we'll see what that means for our local councils as well.
So unfortunately relevant for us here across the pond as well.
So let's get into the conversation now, live at London's Emmanuel Centre.
Which character would you like to make a movie about?
So the first, I mean, tell me, just tell a story that the first, so I assign, I let these, I get these writers, it's Dave Eggers and Kamau Bell and Casey Sepp and Geraldine Brooks and John Lanchester and Sarah Val.
I get them out there and they all find stories in a hot minute.
Like it was not hard for them to find material.
We could have done five of these and with equally good material.
And then I realized, oh shit, I've got to write something.