Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. On today's episode, we're speaking to Max Richter, acclaimed composer and pianist whose work spans film, dance, opera, television, and more. Here in conversation with critic and broadcaster Shahid Abari, he discusses his life and work, what inspires him, his new studio in rural Oxfordshire, and his latest album, In a Landscape. Let's join our host, Shahid Abari, with more.

Hello, welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Shahid Abari. My guest today is Max Richter, the acclaimed composer. His ethereal, evocative soundscapes enhance the screen and the stage in distinctive ways, freighting the works they accompany with emotion. No wonder he's admired by directors like Denis Villeneuve and Ari Folman, for whose films he's composed memorable music.

But his sound has also seeped into the heart of mainstream cinematic pop, too, exercising a deep influence. The epic sounds of Seagull Ross, or at times Radiohead, could be described as Richter-esque. And along the way, Max has worked with partners ranging from author Haruki Murakami to actor Tilda Swinton.

His latest album is called In a Landscape. It was recorded at his new studio built in rural Oxfordshire and has been described as a fleeting self-portrait of the musician. It follows more recent conceptual works such as the 2015 Sleep, an eight and a half hour listening experience that extends to encompass a full night's rest, and 2021's Exiles, a ballet score about the refugee crisis.

Most recently, Max has collaborated with choreographer Wayne McGregor to score and produce a theatre adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Mad Adam for the Royal Opera House. We're thrilled to have him join us now to talk about it all. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Max.

Great to be here. Thank you for joining us. I know that describing music in language must be, for a musician, a very difficult thing to do. But can you tell us a little bit about what you've been trying to do within a landscape? Yeah, so I guess this project comes out of a period of thinking and writing over the last couple of years and reflecting on the world that we find ourselves living in.

The world is very polarized right now. So I wanted to try and make a piece which speaks to the potential to reconcile dualities and to try and do that musically. So I take a lot of elements which appear to be different, maybe like electronic music, instrumental music, natural sounds, composed sounds,

human sounds and sounds of the natural world, and to try to put these into a kind of a fruitful relationship. And the title of the record maybe hints at that a little bit. In a landscape, you know, you can hear it both as in a landscape and in a landscape. And that sort of interior exterior is another of those dualities.

So, yeah, that's the sort of overall picture of the project. That sounds super interesting. It also sounds extremely thoughtful and it sounds responsive to a particular political moment, maybe our own political moment. Has it been a long time coming, this project? It has in a way. I mean, every piece of writing really joins up with every other piece of writing, I think. You know, the individual projects...

really only have sort of dotted lines around them. I'm always writing, you know, every day I'm, you know, in the studio, I'm making something. Sometimes things have a longer station. And there are certainly things in this project, which have, you know, they've been sort of kicking around in my mind for years. And then there are other things which come very fast and which feel like a kind of a moment to moment response to

Things that are happening around us. So it's a mixture of things, I think, in this case. Max, this record is the first to be written and recorded at your serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire. In fact, is that where you are now? Yes. What's it like? What's your new studio like? It was formerly an alpaca farm. And it's just one of those big metal sheds that you see all over the countryside full of tractors or bales of hay.

And we just scooped the inside out and replaced it with a bunch of studios. It's a recording studio, we've got a cafe, a few edit rooms, my room where we are now, Julia, my partner's art studios.

And yeah, whole collection of things. Is a big metal shed a good space acoustically for a musician? Well, we've kept the outside that way because we had to really for regulations. But so the inside has all been completely transformed. So it has a really beautiful acoustic actually. And I can see you've got lots of books in the background and a piano behind you. Yeah, I'll show you around. So yeah, I'm a big reader. I will ask you about that.

So there's the piano, little telescope, those woods, all kinds of machinery. Wow. Oh, it's like the TARDIS. It's huge. It is. Yeah, it's a big space. It's, I guess the impetus behind that is we're trying to make a creative space which felt good to be in. This comes from, you know, me having spent years and years in lots of recording studios, which are, you know, maybe they sound great,

But they sort of forget that we're organic living creatures. So, you know, they don't have nice air. There's no natural light, all these kinds of things. And actually, we wanted to make a space which had a kind of a more, maybe a more complete vision of what a person is, what a creative person is. So, you know, we've got a kind of a...

a space here which just feels nice to be in. When you're recording in your own space, in your home, as it were, rather than on the road or in other studios, does that feeling of...

comfort or whatever it is does it translate into the music in some way in the way that it sounds or the way that it feels yeah i mean i think the new record definitely has the sonic fingerprint of the room that it was recorded in you know it's a very woody sounding sort of quite dark sounding record and that's that's to do with the space i think beyond that you know working in your own space it has a kind of um

transparency maybe, you know, the space sort of doesn't get in the way of the material quite as much as it often does if you're kind of having to adapt to a space which you're not so familiar with. So yeah, it's like learning an instrument, right? So if we've built a new instrument,

and learning how to play it and discovering its properties. Oh wow, that sounds glorious. I wish we were recording in your studio almost. This new album, it's described as a self-portrait and I was wondering about that. Does that mean that it's more personal than others of your works or is there something very specifically autobiographical about this?

Yeah, I mean, you know, this project for me is, it feels like quite a sort of first-person project. Over the last few years, you know, I've been working on kind of bigger canvas projects, you know, Voices, it's a 70-piece orchestra, Recomposed is orchestral, Exile is a symphony orchestra, Wolfworks, these are large-scale projects. In a Landscape returns to the kind of smaller canvas landscape,

solo strings, solo piano. So it's a process of like really reducing to the fundamentals and trying to rediscover my relationship with those fundamentals. A bit of a reset in a way. The Blue Notebooks, which is maybe the first of those small scale projects, that's 20 years old.

So it's going back to that palette and seeing, you know, what those colours mean to be now. That's super interesting. Your music historically has moved between different art forms, film, theatre, ballet. Are each of them different kinds of challenges for you? They are, yeah. Obviously the solo projects are, you know, me just sitting in a room. That's it. But, yeah, ballet...

film, installation projects, these things are fundamentally collaborative.

They're collective puzzle solving, collective experimentation. And that's very different. So you have a kind of a conversational process with your creative partners, you know, whether that's a director in the case of a film or choreographer for a ballet, you know. So you get a kind of a series of feedback processes, which are just really fascinating to be around. Is that gratifying? Because I'm wondering how that works in practice with a collaborator like Wayne McGregor. Is it...

And what does that look like, that feedback process and that collaboration? I mean, the work I do with Wayne has always been really fantastic fun. I mean, he's just such a bright mind, you know, so thoughtful and kind of playful and very open to experiment and that sort of voyage of discovery quality, you know, that he brings to everything.

So we have always just worked on a very informal conversational process, really. You know, we just push ideas around until things start to stick. And they, you know, this wonderful feeling that,

probably, you know, novelists talk about often is that the material starts to take on a sense of intention and it starts to do things. That's very much the case with music too. You know, you start to feel like you're onto something, you've got something going on, you know, suddenly this sort of object just starts to develop properties and intentions and

And yeah, you can discover that in collaboration with other creative partners. And that's kind of how we work. That sounds utterly magical. I mean, when that happens, when that moment, do you both know? What's that like when you know that the thing is working? It's super exciting, isn't it? That's a really super exciting thing because...

You know, a big project like Wolfworks or like Mad Adam, which we've been working on recently, I mean, this is a big thing. It's an hour and a half of music, right? It's a lot of material. So at the beginning of a project like that, you're standing at the foot of this enormous mountain. And what's worse is it's a mountain you can't even see. You have to climb it, but you don't even know what it is.

So as you start to sort of put energy and thought and material into this space, you start to discover its properties.

Yeah, it's super satisfying to work in that way. I think you were talking earlier about sort of pushing a work between you to and fro, but is there pull as well? Are there moments of where you're moving in different directions and how do you work through those? Sure, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it sometimes happens that one of us will think, no, this is how it should be.

And actually that's really useful information. You're learning a lot about the situation, about intentions, about what the potential of a moment might be. And then it's worth trying it, right? So let's try it and then let's see. And we sort of test all of these different ways of assembling and connecting materials.

Until it all starts to feel inevitable. It starts to feel like it could only be that way. And that's really the test. Are some briefs trickier than others for you? What are the challenges? Yes. I mean, I suppose. I mean, I'm very fortunate, but I probably really only take things on that really get me excited that I fall in love with.

I think that's really the best way to sort of go about it because, you know, unless there's a kind of immediate sympathy with the material in some way, then it's going to be difficult. Yeah.

Yeah, you're very lucky in that way, I think. You've composed music for runway shows, including the Dior show in January, having worked with Kim Jones previously. Composing for clothes must be interesting. How does a project like that unfold and develop? Honestly, it's very similar to all my other collaborations. You know, I mean, Kim is obviously a brilliant artist and a visionary artist.

And he works exactly like other artists. You know, it's a sort of incremental searching and discovery process. Incredibly high level of sort of craft and attention to the aesthetics. And yeah, the musical grammar, the way the music is interacting with the other materials,

Honestly, we treat it exactly as we do a piece of cinema or a ballet or just the same level of seriousness and thoughtfulness. Yeah. Do you get to take any of the clothes home afterwards? I do occasionally, yeah.

That's a very lucky gig. That's a great gig. You're clearly very much in demand by film directors. But I was wondering if there were any classic films, old films, that you wish you had been invited to compose for, or you could recompose for, rescore? Wow, I mean, that's an interesting question. That's a really interesting question. I mean, I guess the films that I really love

have mostly got amazing scores. So you kind of wouldn't want to. You wouldn't change them. Yeah. It's part of the reason I love them. The score's so incredible. What are those? What are the scores that you love? Well, I mean, there are so many, you know, going all the way back to, you know, sort of classic, like Ennio Morricone's work or, you know, all those Sergio Leone films.

Films of Robert Altman, you know, like there's so much, isn't there? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's impossible to even begin. That was a terrible question to ask you. But it came from my thinking that I wonder for someone like you, your work being what it is, whether it's difficult to...

listen watch and listen to films without reflecting on the score as a practitioner thinking about you know assessing and thinking about what you would have done and does it affect your own consumption of films yeah I mean I think for me

If I'm watching a movie, then I'm always sort of rooting for the composer inside some level. I want that composer to have absolutely smashed it out of the park. That's what I'm hoping for. And very often, the standard of filmmaking now is very high. So very often, it does happen. Occasionally, if there's a bit of a miss for whatever reason, then...

Maybe I notice the music more, but in maybe not a good way. It does happen occasionally. But we're all human, aren't we? I wonder if you think that the status of composers for film has changed, the nature of film composition has changed. There's more attention to it perhaps.

I mean, there was definitely, you know, a moment maybe, I don't know, 15, 20, 30 years ago where a film composer was a film composer. And that was that. Now, I think particularly maybe with the emergence of online media and the online space generally, there's been a kind of a blurring of borders and boundaries. So, you know, someone like me who's maybe starts in concert music and making records can also, you know, do film.

And vice versa. And I think that's cool, actually. I also think, you know, directors are a bit more, maybe a bit bolder with their decision making. You know, they want artists whose records they love to do their movies.

That's, you know, that's what they want. Why not? It's cool. Yeah. It sounds like there's a very fluid and quite free relationship for you between the commissioned work that you do and your own composition, your own musical practice, as it were. And I wonder if there's ever any tension. Is having set parameters in the way that you do important?

frustrating? Or is it disciplining and helpful for you to have kind of a criteria almost? Yeah. I mean, for me, I really appreciate the particular properties of the different disciplines. You know, a solo project, that's just me, you know, just trying to sort of follow the material. A concert music commission, yeah, you know, if somebody commissions a

you know, violin concerto, they're not going to want a brass band piece. They're just not going to want that. So there are parameters, you know. And with a piece of cinema, the parameters are, you know, relatively speaking, more narrow, more constricted. A film score is not a symphony. It's not the whole game. It's part of the game. And actually, you know, part of the, you know, the kind of pleasure and excitement of working in film is sort of discovering the

the kinds of relationships, the kinds of musical objects that can feel like they belong in the world of that film, they emanate from the world of that film in this kind of inevitable way. So there's a kind of a process of integrating music within the kind of overall language of the film, which is super satisfying. And it's technically quite challenging. You know, you have to be, you know, you...

You know, you have a cue and that cue has to go from one person's point of view to another person's point of view and then make time pass more quickly for a bit and then shift. You know, it's very technical. And if you can do that, then, you know, you're getting a sort of lot of technical training for free. It's fascinating hearing you talk about that.

entering into the world of a film or project that isn't specifically yours. So I wonder what it's like then...

to step out of that and back into your own world? I mean, do you do projects simultaneously or do you have to wash a film or a ballet out of your hair before you do your own work? How does that, how does the transition work? Yeah, I find personally, I mean, I know, you know, some artists really like to take sort of big breaks between things. But actually I find that the starting of a new project sort of erases the previous one pretty much immediately. It's almost like,

you know, it's like having a, you know, a glass of water after a meal. It's just like immediately there's something, there's like a new space opens up. Each project has its own little world. Yeah, that's super interesting. This episode is sponsored by NetSuite.

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I wanted to ask you a little bit about the political context of your work, because several of your works have been overtly political, in fact. But parts of your 2002 debut, Memory House Tackles, the Kosovo conflict, the follow-up 2004, The Blue Notebooks, was a

a protest about the Iraq war and more recently Voices and Voices 2 were paying tribute to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Exiles, which you mentioned earlier, about refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe. Perhaps this is a difficult question, but one I think I'm compelled to ask you, which is why is composing...

a political medium for you? How is it political? What I'd say is, you know, composing is my way of talking. I'm better with notes than I am with words. And, you know, like everyone, we talk about the world, right? We talk about the world to one another, about the things that mean something to us or that we feel are important. And I'm really no different. It's just that for me, my sort of first language is music.

So just like everyone talks about, you know, what's going on, so do I. And I think that's quite natural for an artist, really, I have to say. Yeah, I can understand that. I know the ecological crisis for you, as for many people, feels very urgent. How is that manifesting in your work? Well, for us, actually, this building, in a way, is part of our response to that. So this building is...

It's recycled from an old farm building. It's solar powered. We grow the food that we feed in the cafe, that we eat in the cafe, in the garden.

You know, it's heat, it's sort of got, we're using heat pumps and all of these kind of latest tech really to try and minimize the impact of the work we do. And that is something that's very important for us. It's very important for us to kind of, you know, express our aspirations and our values in a concrete way. Beyond that, I think, yeah, creativity itself, I think can have an elevating effect on people.

Interpersonally, just on a kind of personal level and societally. I mean, for me, I sort of deeply believe that. If I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is make a cup of tea, stick the radio on, and on comes some bit of Beethoven or something that I love, that makes my day a tiny bit better after that moment. It's like 1% better. But that 1%, that's very valuable.

I do believe in that. Yeah, maybe that's something to aim for, a day that is just 1% better than it would have been. Yeah, modest ambitions, but enough. Some of your work is very personal. I was thinking about Sleep, which is an eight-hour lullaby. I was reading that it's had over 500 million streams already.

That sounds to me almost impossible to imagine. Tell us a little bit about how that project came about and what you wanted for it. Yeah. So this project is a little over 10 years old now. This was really catalyzed by a couple of things. First of all, Julia and I were talking about how

At that time, 4G internet had suddenly moved into our pockets. So we had, you know, the entire world's information on tap constantly. And that was new. So obviously, yeah, you know, that's kind of fun and exciting, but also, yeah, significant psychological load, right? A lot of psychological pressure to be kind of on all the time.

And as we know, that leads to exhaustion. So we're thinking about, you know, maybe creative works can act as a sort of roadblock to that kind of a process or like a mini holiday or a pause button. And I think they can, you know, a big novel transports you, takes you out of the everyday and presents a kind of alternate reality, you know.

It's a place to rest, actually, in a way. Or, you know, a big painting of Rothko, say, you know, you stand in front of it and the rest of the world just sort of recedes into the distance, doesn't it? And a piece of music can do that, too. So sleep is functional music. It is a kind of a place to rest. It can be listened to.

But in a sense, it's more to be inhabited. And it can be slept through or, you know, just used as a kind of environment.

an opportunity or kind of invitation, I guess, to kind of switch off. So that was really the beginnings of that project. Do you sleep? You strike me as the kind of person who works a lot. You're busy. You must have a busy working day. I do work a lot, but I do sleep a lot. I work and sleep. You know, for me, sleep has always been...

almost like my religion. I really, really appreciate it so much. And I'm very fortunate in that I've always slept well. But I absolutely don't take that for granted. And I see that as being really fundamental to my ability to do anything else, really. I think perhaps more of us should own to being members of the sleep religion now.

I think there's a lot to that. Tell me a little bit more about the things that inspire you, because I can see from the view behind you that you have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, it looks like, a lot of books. And they look thumbed. They are all quite thumbed, yeah. That is not just display, it is the use. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, for me, literature has always been a great tool

companion, inspiration, solace, stimulus, everything, you know. It's all those wonderful people who came before us who thought all these things. And one of the things that's so beautiful about creative work is it allows us to experience how somebody else felt being alive, how somebody else felt, you know, walking on the earth, how it is for them. And so it's, yeah, it's exciting to be able to experience that and

a book, a piece of writing gives us a little glimpse into that, doesn't it? Same way as a piece of music does or a piece of theatre or whatever. You read very widely, though. I was reading from romantic poets like Keats to contemporary writers like Anne Carson. I mean, does it bleed into your work? Does it nourish you? Is it rest? What is it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably all of those things. Yeah, I've been going back to the romantics because...

Keats and Wordsworth kind of sit a little bit in the hinterland of this new record because of, well, first of all, there's a specific Wordsworth poem, which is a sort of critique of social media, which I think is rather amazing, which he wrote in 1805. Which one's that? He says, the world is too much with us. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

And then he talks about how, you know, he would rather be this sort of pagan who knows nothing because he'd be more in touch with the natural world, with reality, rather than the constructed world. He was talking, I guess, you know, about the Industrial Revolution and, you know, the coming of mechanization and all that stuff. But I thought, he's talking about social media. So that really spoke to me. I mean, Keats, I kind of have always loved Keats, but actually living out here now where we do...

seeing the sort of the way that the kind of cycles of nature are sort of very present for me. It's made me sort of go back to it and appreciate it in a different way. Well, we can look forward to something good from you for this season of mellow fruitfulness, right, Max? Who are the writers who interest you right now, contemporary writers that you're reading? Well, you just mentioned Anne Carson. I think Anne Carson's the most amazing kind of multi-dimensional, intellect, incredible writer, extraordinary writer.

And what I love about her work is, you know, that kind of deep connection into, obviously in her case, you know, ancient Greek literature and classical literature and the way that she, her work is, although her work is completely modern and of the minute, it still has this kind of deep root into a kind of a cultural legacy. Yeah.

And that for me is a wonderful kind of model of creativity. You know, something which is engaging with what's gone before. I mean, all music is about other music in a way, but something which is also of the here and now. If all music is about other music...

Who do you listen to? Do you listen to a lot of music as part of your own creative practice? I do listen to a lot of music. I, yeah, I listen to music as much as possible. The only thing that I sort of don't like about composing is the fact that you can't listen to other music while you're actually writing music, which is kind of frustrating, really frustrating. But yeah, I listen to a lot of different things. Obviously,

I'm sort of deeply connected to classical music, Western classical music. That's my sort of my kind of home base, I guess. You know, that's kind of where it all starts for me. But a lot of other things, you know, electronic music. Yeah. You know, you name it. Are there particular composers that excite you right now? Yeah. I mean, there's so many. I think.

One thing that's happened right now, and I think this is, you know, if there has been a benefit from streaming, is that, you know, while streaming has obviously caused a lot of financial challenges for artists, the one benefit of it is the fact that people can just kind of explore their enthusiasms. So there's no risk. You don't have to put your money down to hear a record. You can just click. And that means people can follow the material.

And that applies to composers too. So genre definitions and sort of boundaries have just kind of melted away. And I think you hear that now in a lot of contemporary composers. They've just got this kind of open-eared sort of dogmatic sound world, which is really, really exciting.

So, yeah, I mean, there's some wonderful stuff around. Has the technology democratized the... I think it has. Yeah, I think it has. I mean, I think, you know, now, you know, everyone's got a laptop, you know, and, you know, you just download a couple of apps and there you are making music, right? Yeah.

I mean, it's crazy. I mean, this little laptop I'm talking to you on has got more. Okay, so see that gray box over there? Okay, so that's an EMU sampler. And that was, this is about 90, it's old. I mean, it's 25 years old. But that could play 16 notes. And it was, it cost about 4,000 pounds in the 90s.

And if you wanted to make orchestral music, you needed about 10 of those. So, you know, that's a problem. That's a big, big problem. Whereas now this little laptop can do all of that. And I think there's like a sound app on there for free. So, you know.

It's different. So you're saying I could be Max Richter if I really... Yes. So hearing you say that makes me wonder, why keep the EMU sampler? If it's all in your laptop, why keep these artefacts? Funnily enough, that EMU sampler, a friend of mine found in their loft. And they said, what's this box? I think it's yours. Oh, I think it is. But yeah, I mean, a lot of the...

kind of earlier analog equipment, it has special characteristics, right? Like, you know, if we're looking over there at that little synthesizer there, that's a Moog, a mini Moog Model D, and next to it is a Moog System 55. So those are from the early 70s. Right. So they're like at the birth of the synthesizer. Yeah. That's what was happening.

So I see those a little bit like the equivalent of, you know, old Italian violins, Stradivarius, Guarneri. Yeah, it's the same. It's like this is the kind of authentic...

or text of the synthesizer, you know? Yeah. So they really are special and they've got very special personalities because of that. Yeah. Obviously, you know, we've got the computer now and it can do everything and all kinds of things that those instruments can't do, but they are very special and they've got very distinctive voices. So does that mean there's still an analogue, a strong analogue component to your work and your composition? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the record...

The record in a landscape, this was made, recorded on tape. All the instrumental music is recorded on tape. All the synthesizers and processing is analog. Of the composed music, as well as the composed music, there is also, there are 10 live studies. Those are recorded on the phone. Me just walking around recording on the phone. That does sound amazing. Have you got a favorite piece of tech, piece of equipment?

How very cool. You're on tour now, so is there a lot of equipment on tour with you? What's it like? I've tried to keep it relatively sane, the touring. It's not too bad. We have it under control. It's me, it's five string players, a string ensemble of five players, and I'm playing the piano and some keyboards. It's fine. How do you feel about touring? Are you happy to do it? Is it hard work?

I love playing music in real time, in a real place with real people. It is the best thing. It's a community experience. There we are on the stage. There's a community of players and then the greater community of us and the audience. We're going on this journey and it's unique. This time it will never happen again exactly this way. This is it. And it's really special. Yeah, it's a great privilege to be able to

Yeah, play music in front of people. I mean, it's wonderful. What can the audience expect to see and hear at a Richter show? On this tour, we're playing the new record, In a Landscape Complete. And then we're connecting that with the Blue Note books. So two halves of a show played straight through. It's very simply done, just focusing on the music itself.

And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. And it's all over. It's going across the UK, Europe, North America, Canada, Australia and Asia as well. Yeah, we're going all over the place. It's a kind of nine-month, six to nine-month project, by the way.

That sounds amazing. What's next for you? What's on the horizon after you recover from? After I recover? Well, I have a new ballet, which is just starting in Covent Garden. So this is a collaboration with Wayne McGregor again. It's a piece called Mad Adam, based on the Mad Adam trilogy of Margaret Atwood. So this is a piece which had a long gestation. We started it

before the pandemic and then ironically because actually the subject matter is the pandemic it got cancelled because of the pandemic. So we picked it up again afterwards and we premiered in Toronto last year I guess and now it's coming to London. So we've done a little bit of nip and tuck to it and you know revisited some things and this new version has come to London

Yeah, really exciting. So that happens next month. And then next year I'm looking at some film projects. So, yeah, a lot of different things going on.

That's amazing. We have so much to look forward to. I hope, well, I know you'll get lots of sleep after the tour and you will be in great form. We'll look forward to it all. Thank you so much, Max Richter. Your new release is In a Landscape. Max is on tour throughout November and December 2024 and into 2025 across the UK, Europe, North America, Canada, Australia and Asia. Head to maxrichtermusic.com for more information.

I've been Shahid Abari. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared.