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

Perez Hilton is one of our world’s foremost commentators on celebrity culture.  Since launching PerezHilton.com in 2004, his site has grown to receive over 300 million hits per month – making him a celebrity in the process!  The LA Times calls Perez, “like US Weekly, the Star, the Enquirer and…

 

It took the unconscionable horrors of two World Wars to bring the international communities together to meaningfully define the rights of all individuals that existed from birth, irrespective of any factor such as race, sex, language, religion or nationality. We may feel intuitively that these are rights that should be shared…

 

In this exclusive series of interviews from 2015-today, I spoke with the world’s foremost experts on inequality: Kate Gilmore (United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights), The Rt. Hon. The Lord Bird MBE (Founder & Editor in Chief, The Big Issue), Harry Leslie Smith (1923-2018 Activist, Survivor of the…

 

Referred to as “the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong,” Colonel Hadfield was selected as a NASA Mission Specialist, and three years later he was aboard the Shuttle Atlantis, where he helped build the Mir space station. In 2001, on Shuttle Endeavour, Colonel Hadfield performed two spacewalks and in 2013,…

 

In this exclusive interview series, we speak to Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Edmund Phelps (Director of the Columbia University Center on Capitalism & Society and the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University), Professor Lawrence ‘Larry’ H. Summers (Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University.…

 

David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL and the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces ever to complete SEAL training, U.S. Army Ranger School, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. Goggins has competed in more than sixty ultra-marathons, triathlons, and ultra-triathlons, setting new course records and regularly placing…

 

In these exclusive interviews we speak to Jüri Ratas (Prime Minister of Estonia), Guy Verhofstadt (Former Prime Minister, Belgium & EU Chief Brexit Negotiator), Vicente Fox Quesada (Former President of Mexico), Noam Chomsky (Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who - with over 150 books…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

Right now, it's a bit like the early stages of the universe. Lots of hot plasma gas everywhere, but structure takes time to emerge… We have the opportunity to re-imagine this, it's not a deal that's been done, and it's not too late to imagine a different way of organising, regulating, collecting, contributing and benefiting.

Those cycles don't exist – that's not what history is like. Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed... That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.

— Niall Ferguson
British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

Having a plan, feeling confident and being competent are the greatest antidotes to fear. If you're just trying to deal with the unknown by crossing your fingers and hoping, you will be utterly helpless when a situation finally manifests. In reality, you're rarely (if ever) completely helpless, you allow yourself to be helpless.

— Chris Hadfield
Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

The price of technology comes down every year, year after year, and I see no immediate end in sight to that process. What this means is that the poorest people in the world will soon have the possibility to access the Internet in some form, and eventually will have 'ordinary' access to it.

— Jimmy Wales
Co-Founder of Wikipedia & Online Encyclopedia Pioneer

If you go to any rave, or any football event, you will find people chanting in a rhythm- human beings do that. We have this sense to participate and organise- Music lets you rediscover your humanity, and your connection to humanity. When you listen to Mozart with other people, you feel that somehow- we're all in this together.

— Hans Zimmer
Acclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception

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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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