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

There is little doubt that taxation is an economically necessary and ethically valid part of society’s structure.  “Taxes” stated Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “…are the price of civilisation.” Many cite taxation as having four ‘key’ roles in society, The generation of revenue for the state to provide infrastructure, education, defence,…

 

In this interview, we speak to Professor Charles Wyplosz who is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he is Director of the International Centre of Money and Banking Studies and an Independent Economic Advisor to the President of the European Commission. We…

 

In April 2010, the Economist reported, ��One of the lessons from TV is to accept change and get ahead of it. Broadcasters� initial response to the appearance of programmes online was similar to the music industry�s reaction to file-sharing: call in the lawyers. But television firms soon banded together to…

 

Professor Ronald Arkin is one of the world’s leading roboticists.  In 2009, he published a book entitled “Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots” which (as one review quoted) is, “….the most serious attempt to date to set out how to build an ethical robot.” The review continues, “This timely book…

 

April 20 (Bloomberg) “Stranded flyers created a surge in demand for travel industry Web sites and remote conferencing services as a shutdown of many flights in Europe continued through a sixth day.” Nothing Broke… That’s Important. The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull really caught the world off-guard, and created the levels of…

 

In the fields of political science and economics, you will commonly see discussion of the “Principal-Agent Problem” (also known as agency dilemma) which deals with the outcomes of situations of conflicted interest, or asymmetric information, where (for example) an agent (such as an investment manager) acting for a principal (such…

 

On March 29th 2010, The Economist reported that, “When the trials of four Rio Tinto employees opened in Shanghai last week, their guilty pleas to the first of the charges, of bribe-taking, dampened hopes that the matter might be settled without any severe penalties. Even so, the harshness of sentences…

 

In a statement issued on March 22nd 2010, Human Rights Watch said, “Google’s decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine is a strong step in favour of freedom of expression and information, and an indictment of the Chinese government’s insistence on censorship of the internet…” They continued, “China is…

 

In this interview, we speak to Sir Richard Feachem, who is Professor of Global Health at both the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Global Health Group. Sir Feachem was also the founding Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight…

 

Recent economic events have brought the concept of financial bubbles from academic texts to the forefront of economic and commercial thought.  Whereas economies used to be slow laborious creatures, the globalisation of capital markets, and growth of technology within them, has increased the ‘speed’ of economies to a pace never…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

The heart is dramatic. Many of your other crucial organs – your liver, your kidneys- do their work in bureaucratic silence. Your heart is dramatic and reacts to how you feel. Your heart moves with your emotions, it quiets down when you're about to sleep, or when you're relaxed.

— Haider Warraich
Cardiologist and author specializing in heart disease and public health

We are now living with a great deal of uncertainty, which will increase. As a society, we have to be prepared for threats we cannot conceive, we must build resilience not just in developed countries, but particularly in conflict areas.

You can think of habits as a 'set and forget,' we set the habit, we set the behaviour, and we forget about the details. That frees up our brain to learn new things throughout the day.

— Judson Brewer
Neuroscientist & Expert on Habit Change and Mindfulness-Based Treatments

Bill Gates spoke at Davos in 2008, about the need for creative capitalism. Michael Porter started talking about shared value capitalism, John Mackey of Whole Foods started talking about conscious capitalism and Marc Benioff started talking about compassionate capitalism. It was the beginning of a time when everybody felt the need to put a modifier in front of the word 'capitalism,' it was clear the incumbent version wasn't working as well as it could.

— Alan Murray
Editor of Fortune Magazine & Wall Street Journal columnist

Mirroring is a crazy skill, it's so insanely effective. If you explain mirroring to people, they're like nah, that shit'll never work – but it's huge. Just repeating the last 3 words of what someone said or picking out 1-3 words from the middle of the statement, can get you the outcome you need. Using mirroring, you feel like you can work Jedi mind tricks!

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

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


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