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

As Foreign Policy Magazine reports, “Equatorial Guinea’s economy depends almost entirely on oil, which generated revenues last year of well over $4 billion, giving it a per capita annual income of $37,900, on par with Belgium.” While this has given the country’s ruler (Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo) an estimated net…

 

“The Federal Reserve Board sent its most explicit signal yet that the emergency supply of liquidity to financial markets is done and the most aggressive monetary policy easing in its 96-year history will eventually reverse.” – February 19th, Bloomberg. Citing “continued improvement in financial market conditions”, the US Federal Reserve…

 

As I write this, my Bloomberg feed shows that, “Euro-region leaders [have] ordered Greece to get the bloc’s highest budget deficit under control and said they are prepared to take “determined” action to staunch the worst crisis in the currency’s 11-year history.”, with the FT adding, “Under an agreement hammered…

 

In this interview, we talk to Gigi Sohn, President and Co-Founder of Public Knowledge (a highly influential Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working to defend citizens’ rights in the emerging digital culture) and Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge. We talk about how digital technologies…

 

In recent weeks, we have seen uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Jordan where members of the populous have taken to the streets, demonstrating and disrupting a country over issues ranging from food inflation, corruption, freedom of speech, living conditions and basic human and economic rights.  Most notably of…

 

In this article, we talk to John Brynjolfsson, Managing Director of Armored Wolf LLC, a global macro hedge fund. Previously, Mr. Brynjolfsson was a Managing Director with PIMCO, firm with in excess of $750 billion of assets under management. Mr. Brynjolfsson discusses the risks, opportunities and the future of the…

 

The industrial revolution created the archetypal businessman, characterized by their ruthless attitude towards commerce. In a controversial paper, Jerry Bergman discusses the Robber Barons’ (a pejorative term used to describe businessmen in America) attitude to workers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. He describes how, “The robber barons’ lack…

 

In this article, we talk to Professor Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, discussing the profound changes humanity could experience over coming years including artificial intelligence, machine consciousness, the direction of human evolution, and risks to humanity itself.

 

In this article, we have an enlightening talk to a world expert on Bioethics, Professor John Harris (Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics at The University of Manchester). Professor Harris discusses the philosophy, practicality and laws surrounding bioethics, covering areas including genetics, human engineering, stem cell therapies, assisted suicide, the economics…

 

In this article, we talk to Susan Payne, CEO of Emergent Asset Management and discuss Agriculture, a keystone industry for Sub-Saharan Africa, a region which is home to almost a billion people and presents one of the greatest humanitarian challenges and economic opportunities of modern civilisation. In this exclusive interview,…

 

In this article, we speak to Kristiina Rintakoski, Executive Director of the Crisis Management Initiative (launched by Nobel Prize winner President Martti Ahtisaari) about global conflict, its relationship with economic inequality, climate change and energy. We talk about the dynamics of conflict and crisis situations, and how organisations like CMI…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

Top-tier companies, Toyota being a prime example known for its operational excellence, are well-acquainted with the value of slack. A fundamental lesson taught to MIT Sloan students in operations classes is that in any system with variability, it's not ideal to operate at 100% capacity utilisation.

— Zeynep Ton
MIT Professor & Author on Retail Operations & Low-Wage Work

Our culture is one of compensation, it's bullshit. We have so many cars, so many houses and so much sex, we lose track of who we are. We need to get back to the core. Through removing stimulation, we've disconnected ourselves from nature, from our innate capacities, and we have to reawaken ourselves.

— Wim Hof
Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

You may have gone to the best business school in the world and learned that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location- but it's just not true! It's relationship, relationship, relationship.

In our modern world, everyone has an opinion about everything; and it's powerful to step back and go, 'you know what… I genuinely don't have an opinion about that…' – taking that position is seen as most terrible in today's day and age, but if you really work to dismantle all the things you think you are, you'll probably find you don't have an opinion about so many things.

— Fearne Cotton
British Radio & TV Presenter, Model & Wellness Author

I would essentially start by abandoning everything Osborne set out to do. I would be cutting taxes, not raising them. I would immediately reverse the VAT raise that he had. I would impose those within an hour of taking office.

— David Blanchflower
Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

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


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