From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
My hands have been known mostly for the leather gloves that I've used as an instrument to punish opposing fighters. Outside the ring, though, I want my legacy to be the man with bare hands that offered kindness and hope to those in need.
Salman Abedi, Khalid Masood, Khuram Butt, all of these people and the people in ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab… We tend to think sometimes that they are extremism. But the reality is they didn't breed extremism. Islamist extremism bred them.
We have turned life into a business model- and have somewhat forgotten the reciprocity we have with nature rather; we just see it as a resource. We have maintained societies for thousands of years based on a reciprocal relationship with nature, and we need to.
What really characterises the experience of poverty is emotional stress. Stress is a natural human response to emotional strain, and whilst it can be useful in short doses as a catalyst, a motivator, a wake-up call, in the long term it can impact development, damage relationships and lead to self-defeating compulsive, addictive behaviours.
What crises actually do is expose the underlying fragility and structural flaws within an economy and society. Some of this is endemic – financial markets are fragile because they are giant pools of sentiment and leverage at their heart.
I think the people who are larger or those who have more resources like to think they're the ones who have greater power… and they have benefited from that illusion.
Once released, former hostages encounter a myriad of practical issues—closed bank accounts, lapsed insurance, and the need for specialised medical and dental care that isn't readily available. They might also require physical therapy among other medical treatments. It's not just the hostage who suffers, but their entire family. In some cases, families endure greater agony, living in uncertainty about their loved one's fate.
The conversation I want us to have is, 'This could be any one of us.' Frequently, when we point out 'them', we're referring to the corporate, narcissistic, aggressive, high-achievers, often the deliberate culprits. Their stories pervade our movies and crime podcasts, enabling us to distance ourselves because we can't necessarily identify with their actions.
We are one big, beautiful, dysfunctional and incredible family, tearing itself apart over something as inconsequential as our hue.
So many of the things our culture pushes us to pursue for happiness don't actually work the way we think they will. Material possessions, more money—if you're on social media, you get this strong sense that you should go after more of everything and then you'll feel better.
We live in a very unethical society. We don't teach ethics at home, schools or university. As a consequence most businesses don't have a code of ethics or conduct.
When considering the prevalence of this disease, we're speaking of 7 million diagnosed patients in the US. But how many Americans currently have the initial stages of Alzheimer's already festering in their brains? I concur with the higher estimates, suggesting around 40 million people.