This episode is brought to you by Oracle. AI may be important, but it needs a lot of processing speed, and that gets expensive fast, upgrade to the next generation of the cloud.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. of the AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber 8 by 8 and Data

breaks mosaic. Take a free test drive at oracle.com

slash enhance.

Hello and welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Senior Producers

Connor Boyle.

2023 is nearly at a close so we've been looking back on a great year for

Intelligence Squared and enjoying some of the brilliant listens we've heard across all of our

podcasts and live events over the past 12 months and we're hearing from the people and make them happen to

today we're talking to Matt McAllister, CEO of Intelligence Squared, and Hannah Kay, our executive producer.

And it's a bittersweet one this, as Hannah having been the beating heart of the company for the last 17 years,

right from its early days up until this year's great year of events that she's

been an integral part of, is leaving us soon to explore some exciting new things.

So let's hear from both Matt and Hannah now with their favorite picks of 2023.

Hannah, it's been another great year at Intelligence Squared and a fascinating one in the world.

And I can say that because I have almost nothing to do with what gets made and you have an awful lot to do with what gets made and have

done for years. So I'm really excited to learn what you enjoyed this year.

Well it's a strange end of year for me

Matt because I'm leaving Intelligence Square not entirely but I won't be

working full time for Intelligence Square anymore but as always it's really great to

look back and remember some of the fantastic events that we produce and obviously it's not just me it is the whole team.

What are some of your highlights? Well for me I particularly enjoyed the event we did with Nick Cave where he talked about love, loss and religion and said that what defines us as human beings is loss, which I find very touchy.

...