Paul Collier on Regional Inequality and Economic Recovery

February 3rd, 2026 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
World-renowned development economist Paul Collier has spent his life working in neglected communities. In this interview, we discuss his new book Left Behind, where he offers his candid diagnosis of why some regions and countries are falling further behind, and a new vision for how they can catch up. In…

 

César Hidalgo on The Laws of Knowledge

September 16th, 2025 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
In this interview, I speak to Professor César A. Hidalgo, a physicist and global leader in the field of economic complexity. He leads the Center for Collective Learning at the Toulouse School of Economics and Corvinus University of Budapest, is the founder of DataWheel, and author of Why Information Grows.…

 

AI Safety: Controlling Humanity’s Most Important Invention

August 29th, 2025 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
In these conversations, I spoke with three of the world’s foremost thinkers on AI safety, risk & governance —Clark Barrett (Professor of Computer Science at Stanford and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for AI Safety), Nick Bostrom (Founder of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and the Macrostrategy…

 

Harvey Whitehouse on Evolution of Social Complexity

June 8th, 2025 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
In this interview I speak to Professor Harvey Whitehouse, one of the world’s foremost anthropologists- whose research focuses on the evolution of social complexity. Harvey is one of the founders of the cognitive science of religion and has spent decades studying how beliefs and rituals have shaped, and reshaped human…

 

War Reporter Trey Yingst on Covering Global Conflict

October 20th, 2024 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
In this interview I speak to Trey Yingst, one of the world’s most accomplished foreign correspondents & war reporters who has covered the Israel-Hamas War, Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and secured interviews with everyone from the leaders of Hamas, the Haqqani Terror Network and Islamic Jihad to the Presidents, Prime…

 

Leading Through Outrage: Karthik Ramanna on Polarisation

October 4th, 2024 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
In this interview, I speak to Professor Karthik Ramanna, one of the world’s foremost experts on governance and leadership in crisis. We discuss the reasons why our world feels so outraged- and how leaders can build resilient organisations which can make sense of outrage, turn down the temperature, progress through…

 

Renée DiResta on Disinformation & Online Manipulation

September 16th, 2024 · by Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL
Renée DiResta is a highly regarded expert and speaker on adversarial abuse online – in other words, on how bad actors manipulate the digital public square. From spammers and scammers to state sponsored trolls, she investigates how social media platforms and technologies (such as generative AI) are used for evil. Although…