Hello, I'm Rory Stewart, and I'd like to tell you about an intelligent squared event

I'm doing with the classicist author and broadcaster Mary Beard. Together we'll be discussing

politics and power from the Caesars to Sunack, who gets to Winpar, who is excluded,

does power always corrupt, or other examples of leaders who've maintained their integrity while

an authority. And how does the nature of power vary across different times and cultures?

These are just some of the questions that Mary and I will be trying to answer.

In person tickets are now sold out, but you can still watch online on the 13th of November

at 7pm BST. Put your questions first live as we discuss power and politics down the edges.

Just this week, the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, jetted into space on his blue

origin spaceship. Nine days earlier, Richard Branson, a fellow billionaire, went into space on his

virgin galactic space plane, with Elon Musk's SpaceX following not too far behind.

Billionaires seem to be engaged in a commercial space race, leading many people to ask questions

about what the role of billionaires are in our society, and whether they should be focusing

their attention on solving problems here on Earth. So this week, we decided to stage a bait,

bringing together Lindsay McGoy and Ryan Bourne to go head-to-head on the question of whether we

should abolish billionaires. It's a really fascinating debate, and if you do enjoy it, you can find links

for both their books with the intelligence-squared discount in the podcast description.

The debate was chaired by Ben Chu, the economics editor at BBC NewsNight, and we hope you enjoy it.

Now let's go to the episode.

A fantastic timely topic for a debate. The first thing to say is that there are a lot more

of them than there were last year. Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires puts the total

number worldwide at 2,755. That's 660 more than last year, and it also estimates their collective

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