Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL Interviews the world's leading thinkers, and the people shaping the century.

For over 40 years Penn & Teller have defied labels—and at times physics and good taste– by redefining the genre of magic and inventing their own very distinct niche in comedy. Penn Jillette is the magician, actor, musician, inventor, television personality, and author who forms half of this incredible and…

 

Formula One (F1) racing is an incredible sport.  Some of the brightest minds in the world of engineering and human performance, equipped with multi-billion-dollar budgets, create staggeringly high-performance cars, run by similarly high-performance teams and drivers.  Nico Rosberg raced in Formula One for eleven years, claiming the title of World…

 

Hamdi Ulukaya is the founder and CEO of Chobani, one of the fastest growing food companies of the last decade.  The company has annual sales of US$2billion and has become the gold standard for corporate social responsibility.  30% of Chobani’s 2,000 employees were born outside the United States, and several…

 

Chip Wilson is the entrepreneur & philanthropist who is widely credited with the creation of ‘athleisure’ as a retail category (now worth over $400-billion globally).  He is perhaps best known for being the founder of luluemon, the yoga-inspired technical athletic apparel company he started in 1998 which- today- has over…

 

Dr. Mario Capecchi has had a remarkable life. At four-and-a-half years old, during World War II, his mother was sent to Dachau concentration camp leading-eventually- to Mario living as a street child for nearly four years, coming in and out of orphanages and almost dying of malnutrition. From this hugely…

 

Martin E. Hellman is a remarkable man.  He is perhaps best known for his invention, with Diffie and Merkle, of public key cryptography- the technology which (amongst other uses) enables secure internet transactions and is used to transfer trillions of dollars each day.   His work has been recognised by numerous…

 

Jocko Willink is a retired US Navy SEAL officer, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, Dichotomy of Leadership, host of the top-rated Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he serves as Chief Executive Officer, leadership instructor, speaker and…

 

Brian Grazer is a true renaissance man, he is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy award-winning producer and #1 New York Times bestselling author. His films and television shows have been nominated for 43 Oscars® and 195 Emmys and he won the Best Picture Oscar for A Beautiful Mind.   Grazer has been…

 

India is a beautifully diverse place. It is a place where 1.4 billion inhabitants share thousands of years of history, speak over 19,000 mother tongues, and express life and culture through a stunning array of food, dance, ceremony, faith, music and literature. It is perhaps no surprise that a country…

 

In this exclusive interview, I spoke to Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and the first person to tweet from space. Mike is one of the most accomplished astronauts of the US space program, a best selling author, Professor of Engineering at Columbia University and Senior Adviser for Space Programs…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

It's a myth that both sides of a negotiation have to be equally happy or unhappy. A great relationship is where people are happy- not just with how things are but with how they got to be.

— Chris Voss
Former FBI Hostage Negotiator & Author of "Never Split the Difference

My early experience as an unaccompanied child refugee on the Kindertransport brought me to England in 1939, evading Nazi Europe. That really had an enormous impact on me, everything was different. It was such a big change, that change doesn't throw me anymore. I've learned to enjoy change, I like to do new things, make new things happen.

— Dame Stephanie Shirley
Pioneering Software Engineer & Founder of Freelance Programmers Ltd

It certainly plays a much bigger role than was ever intended to. A number of financial institutions and contracts rely on LIBOR as the benchmark by which other rates are set. I don't think it was ever intended that LIBOR would play such a central role between so many institutions and contracts.

— Andrew Lo
MIT Finance Professor & Pioneer of Quantitative Finance & Behavioral Economics

There's no real creativity in AI, since every path is governed by an algorithm. In other words, you can trace every step to see exactly why the computer produced a given output. It remains absolutely deterministic.

— Federico Faggin
Co-Inventor of the Microprocessor & Founder of Zilog

I remember at Netflix, after we went public, the parking lot changed from old Volvos and station wagons to Mercedes' and BMW's. That really made me happy; not the cars per-say, but the fact that all those families could now send their kids to school and college.

— Mitch Lowe
Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO

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Long-form Interviews with the World's Leading Thinkers — Thought Economics


The Wisdom Series

Ten in-depth articles distilling insights from over 550 interviews with the world's leading thinkers, creators, and changemakers.

The Wisdom of Leadership The Wisdom of Entrepreneurship The Wisdom of Creativity The Wisdom of Technology The Wisdom of Meaning The Wisdom of the Mind The Wisdom of Justice The Wisdom of Science The Wisdom of Geopolitics The Wisdom of Health
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