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

to us live as we discuss power and politics down the ages. Hello podcast listeners, I'm Connor

and welcome to this week's episode of Intelligence Squared. Today we're joined by the world-renowned

psychologist Robin Dunbar, who explains the science of friendship from the different types of

friend and family relationships, to just how complicated the business of making and keeping

friends can actually be. It's a particularly pertinent episode in the midst of the COVID-19

pandemic, and if you do enjoy it and want to dig a bit deeper into the themes discussed,

you can find a link for Robin Dunbar's excellent new book Friends in the episode description.

But now I'll hand you over to the host, British Oceanographer and physicist Helden Chersky.

Welcome to this Intelligence Squared event this evening. We are going to be talking about

friends, how many of we got, how many of we need, how many do we need, and what has not seen them

for a year done to us all. Robin Dunbar is a fantastic person to discuss all of these things with.

He is an evolutionary psychologist, the former director of the Institute of Cognitive and

Evolutionary Anthropology, in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University,

who go in for very long job titles and department titles. He's known of course for the Dunbar

number, which is a good approximate number, it's around 150, and that's about how many friends

...