The Weekend Intelligence

Episodes

• The Weekend Intelligence: Fear and doping in Las Vegas 2026-07-04
  It’s a simple idea on the surface; host a rival to the olympics in which people can take performance enhancing drugs. But as The Economist’s Natasha…
• The Weekend Intelligence: How to Retire at 30 2026-06-06
  Do you worry about a future where your job is replaced by AI? Are you a high earner but never seem to have any money? Would you like to work less…
• The Weekend Intelligence: The spy who lived downstairs 2026-05-30
  After years of conflict reporting and manic episodes, journalist Ayman Oghanna was aiming for a quiet life—one that looks boring from the outside.…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Meet the “Jailscraper” 2026-05-23
  Jails on New York City’s Riker’s Island have been in crisis for decades. Violent and unsafe, its remote location makes it hard for inmates to get to…
• The Weekend Intelligence: The Curious Case of the Missing Milk Supply 2026-05-16
  When health correspondent Slavea Chankova struggled to breastfeed her daughter, she went looking for the latest research on human lactation. What…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Don’t Panic! (But be prepared) 2026-05-09
  In February The Weekend Intelligence reported from Lithuania where civilian society is gearing up to defend itself from attacks across the border;…
• The Weekend Intelligence: 17 siblings and counting 2026-05-02
  Sperm and egg donation is increasingly common: nearly one in five births following IVF treatment in Britain involves a donor.  But what happens…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Georgia's swansong 2026-04-25
  The last two years have been turbulent ones in Georgia. After mass protests against the government began in November 2024, hundreds were detained…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Meet the passport bros 2026-04-18
  The passport bros share a simple message: dating in the West is broken — so go somewhere your money stretches further and your chances improve.…
• The Weekend Intelligence: In search of Lithium Valley 2026-04-11
  Reporter David Weinberg takes us to the desert of Southern California, where geologists have discovered half a trillion dollars worth of lithium…
• The Weekend Intelligence: A life less Earthly 2026-04-04
  Talking to space architects and scientists, real astronauts, and secret wannabes, Jessica Camille Aguirre set out to discover the blueprint for a…
• The Weekend Intelligence: The red-state psychedelic 2026-03-28
  Ibogaine, a potent psychedelic, is coming to red-state America. Tamara Gilkes Borr meets one of the movement’s most determined advocates, an…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Screwed by AI? 2026-03-21
  At one of the stands displaying AI-powered sex dolls at the Adult Video Network expo, there is a robot holding a handwritten sign saying, “You can…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Kidulting 2026-03-14
  The toy industry has a problem: there aren’t enough children. Its solution? Adults. Rosie Blau reports on the rise of the " kidult ". Is there…
• The Weekend Intelligence: The last whales at Marineland 2026-03-07
  Last autumn, a shuttered amusement park in Niagara Falls, Canada, tried to export its 30 remaining belugas to China. When the Canadian government…
• The Weekend Intelligence: How to prepare for an invasion 2026-02-28
  Just one generation after they gained independence, people in the Baltic States are watching the threat from the Kremlin creep closer and closer. In…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Inside Nepal’s Gen Z Revolution 2026-02-21
  Nepal’s youth took to the streets last September when the government banned social media. It became a protest about corruption. Police killed 19…
• The Weekend Intelligence: The assassination that changed Japan 2026-01-24
  When Yamagami Tetsuya fired the bullets that killed Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, he set off a chain reaction that upended Japanese…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Hair peace 2026-01-17
  In the outer suburbs of Istanbul, the Elithair clinic operates nearly round the clock delivering hair transplants to a seemingly endless stream of…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Honouring the dead 2026-01-10
  While walking around a national cemetery, it can seem like memorialising the war dead is a given, but governments have not always honoured their…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Sweating It Out 2026-01-03
  Britain is getting hot and steamy. From railway arches in Peckham to windswept beaches in Fife, public saunas are popping up across the country,…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Re-run: The last boat 2025-12-27
  We asked the head of podcasts to choose his favourite Weekend Intelligence from 2025 to play during the Christmas period. He chose our host Rosie…
• The Weekend Intelligence: 2025, a year in the making 2025-12-20
  This week we’re taking a different approach, returning to some of our most compelling episodes from the past year. We’ll discover what’s happened to…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Return to Iran 2025-12-13
  In July 2019 Nicolas Pelham, The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, received a rare journalist’s visa to Iran. On the day he was due to fly…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Operation Midas 2025-12-06
  Ukraine has been hit by a corruption scandal. One that strikes at the core of the political establishment in a way never before seen—and this in a…
• The Weekend Intelligence: Mise en masse 2025-11-29
  Chef Gary Thomas has a lot on his plate. That’s because he’s in the business of feeding thousands of people a day on a ship in the middle of the…