Digital technology and instant news cycles, together with the aggressive marketing of fear-mitigating products and services, are certainly driving fear in contemporary society. Today, fear is closely related to the problem of misinformation and disinformation, and to the erosion of trust in political institutions.

There is then a second order overconfidence where someone recognises a bubble but feels they will escape it when other people don't.

It's only when you look back that you can connect the dots to where we are right now. Looking back, I learned that it was those red and yellow lights that revealed those solar-powered green lights.

The objective was to engage with endeavors so unique that they defied categorization, the pioneering ideas born on the fringes, among the mavericks.

Interestingly, the same hormonal cascade occurs when we feel excitement. Essentially, whether we're excited or stressed, our physiological response is similar. The key differentiator is our perception of these sensations. Reframing stress as our body's way of gearing up to tackle challenges can be a potent tool.

We can use the pain of our past as a catapult propelling us forward. As the saying goes, 'the best revenge is a life well-lived.' So, the most gratifying way to spite all those who tried to harm me during my childhood is to say, 'Look at me now; I'm speaking to Vikas Shah, 50 years later.'

Consider a car with malfunctioning brakes; it's unsafe to let it on the street, as it could cause harm. You'd need to confine it, but you wouldn't punish it or moralize its malfunction. Instead, you'd seek to understand why its brakes failed.

There are various forms of hostage-taking, each with distinct characteristics. Broadly speaking, one can categorise them into political and criminal hostage-takings. Political hostage-taking involves abducting someone to gain a political leverage—this is the first type. The second type is criminal hostage-taking, where the motive is ransom.

I don't think it was inevitable until the point where the tanks started rolling-in. It was unstoppable at that point… But 20 years ago, would we have realised this was going to happen? My sense would be absolutely not.

It's not enough to lead yourself, you need to tune into the people you work with- the people that you know- your family. You need to pick up non-verbal cues, facial expressions, tone of voice.

For the people I documented, money was secondary… They knew absolutely they would make money, but changing the world and doing cool stuff was the primary goal; that was their mission.

Consciousness is the most troubling because it's so hard to deny its existence. With all these other tricky, troubling phenomena, it's at least an option to say maybe it doesn't exist, maybe we're not really free in the way we think we are. But with consciousness, it seems hard to make sense of the idea that nobody's ever felt pain. Nobody's ever seen colour.