Rory Stewart on Trump, Nationalism and The Value of Rural Life (Part Two)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Serenti. For this episode, we're rejoining for part two of our live event with co-host of The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart. Stewart joined us recently at Friends' House in London to discuss the state of Britain and the world today, with Caroline Lucas, the former leader of the Green Party. Drawing on his new book, Middle Lispatches from the Borders, Stewart argued that to truly create a better future for all, we must understand the tensions that exist between rural and urban, between farming and the natural world, between the need to preserve and to grow, and between local and national politics.

If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed. Let's rejoin the conversation now, live at Friends House in London. I wanted to talk about rewilding because I was so interested in in one of the reasons that you cite for concern about rewilding. And obviously you've explained that you don't just kind of dump it somewhere, it depends where it's the right place to do it. But what really interested me was that you were saying that rewilding is not a gentle return to a natural past.

And and the reason for that was not just because of um you know concerns, for example, about about food security, but you say because it leaves so little place for human culture. And I was genuinely really interested in that. And and it just got me thinking about the role of of human beings in nature and to the extent that we are part of nature or we're not part of nature. And there's a wonderful campaign, I don't know if you've come across it that's being um being uh fought around trying to change the Oxford English Dictionary definition of nature because the OED says nature is life except for humans and there's this campaign that wants to try and re-vivify an obsolete uh definition which is life including human beings.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (31 minutes, 5,147 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.