From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I told my dad from the beginning, we're fighting both disease and doubt, and we have to tackle them simultaneously.
When I was a journalist, you had to always have three sources, or they would not run the story. Now, according to 'sources', not even on-the-record, is good enough. Everyone wants to be first and often that leads to mistakes.
The world of celebrity offers an escape from the real world, and offers different things to different people. To many, the celebrity world is aspirational, they imagine themselves living that lifestyle and dream of how it would be to go to that premiere, have that fancy house, or that expensive vacation. For others, the world of celebrity is like watching a car-wreck.
When our original participants reached approximately 80 years of age, we asked what are your greatest sources of pride, and what are your deepest regrets? The predominant regret was the disproportionate time spent working and the inadequate time spent with loved ones.
We are living longer and measuring GDP growth is not the way to decide whether a society or an economy are flourishing.
Consider the adoption rates of various technologies: for telephone and electricity, it took approximately 15 years to jump from a 50% to 75% market share. With the advent of the internet and computers, that span dropped to 10 years. Television achieved this in only 5 years. But smartphones? They shattered all records with a mere 3-year period.
By founding my own charities, I solved that problem. Charity occupies around a third of my life, it's a big challenge and a big responsibility. Around eight years ago, I decided to donate at least half my wealth to charitable causes during my lifetime or upon my death.
In our market-economy, consumers have the power. I also believe that almost every consumer has an element of compassion in herself or himself.
It's hard to predict risks, but easy to understand resilience, and frighteningly, we're living in a world that is less resilient than I've ever experienced in my lifetime.
Much of our learning, expansion, and deepening as humans occur within the realm of connectivity, particularly through the conversations we dare to have when we are most vulnerable and authentic. These discussions change us profoundly.
We have created a society that gives us more access to comfort. We have the ability to push much further than we think is possible, but the brain wants us to rest to allow the body to recover.
We are now living with a great deal of uncertainty, which will increase. As a society, though, we have to be prepared for threats we cannot conceive, we must build resilience not just in developed countries, but particularly in conflict areas.