Culture

I can't advertise chewing gum to my children because it's unethical, but I can feed them all sorts of narratives that will have a profound impact on their personal trajectories. It's quite an extraordinarily hypocritical position.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

We are creatures of history, yet we have this idea that we are alienated from our past – and that's a deep problem. Language is a product of thousands of years of history. The words that we speak are not our own. The ideas we have are not our own. They come from many other sources, stretching back hundreds, and thousands of years. The past is extremely alive in the present moment.

Author of "The 48 Laws of Power" & Strategist

Our world today is not only superficial, but also very cynical, almost to the point of nihilism. There's a cynicism that masquerades as intelligence, but which- in reality- is a form of despair, a kind of excuse for not having to do anything.

Author & Stoicism Expert; Marketer & Media Strategist

If you don't place any emphasis on the development of character, or any belief that character is a reality; If you don't believe in the utility of courage and truth as the means of making your way through life; then you're left with – well – celebrity.

Clinical Psychologist, Author of "12 Rules for Life," Public Intellectual

Our world needs a more reflective way of communicating, something which the media are not promoting. We need an antidote to the current shooting-from-the-hip, and outrage sparking emotive content that is causing mutual incomprehension, it's a tragedy.

Curator of TED Talks & Author of "The Long Tail

Western civilisation has veered off course; we have de-sacralised the world in which we live. We are collectively insane, and we need to mount our own intervention.

Author of "A Return to Love" & Spiritual Activist

Many of us think that you should only believe things that are true, not just things that rally your coalition, sect, or tribe. That belief is by no means universal, but it is a gift of the enlightenment.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

It's become synonymous with clothing but ultimately fashion is anything popular in a culture at any given time.

Supermodel and fashion icon of the 1990s

Only relatively recently in our own culture, five hundred years or so ago, did a distinction arise that cut society in two, forming separate classes of music performers and music listeners.

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

Throughout most of the world and for most of human history, music making was as natural an activity as breathing and walking, and everyone participated.

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

We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. We integrate all of these and 'construct' music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music.

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

I've described celebrities as being 'double agents of the patriarchy,' and whilst things are getting better- and language is changing, we are still not always calling out those who fat shame or age shame women.

Actress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place

It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny. It is because we haven't been given the opportunity to exercise these facets of ourselves in the media that we've started to doubt our ability.

Actress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place

Images are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings 'ex-ist,' i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible.

Pioneering British fashion photographer who revolutionized 1960s portrait photography

When you're behind a camera, you have this incredible power to freeze a moment in time. But with that power comes responsibility. You're not just taking a picture, you're creating a narrative, you're telling a story.

Scottish photographer and filmmaker known for provocative social documentary work

Photography has become the universal language. It doesn't matter what country you're from, what language you speak, we all understand images. That's what makes it so powerful and so dangerous.

Scottish photographer and filmmaker known for provocative social documentary work