From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
All modern humans share a common ancestor. We all emerged from Africa, 200,000 years ago, as our species moved across the Earth, adapting to the differing climates and conditions of our planet. We are one big, beautiful, dysfunctional and incredible family, tearing itself apart over something as inconsequential as our hue.
What we give to alleviate the need, suffering and sorrow of others, whether we know them or not, is charity. What we give to prevent and correct social and environmental problems and improve life and living conditions of people and creatures we don't know and who have no claim on us is philanthropy.
The number one thing I've discovered is that people deny that they have any of these traits. We always want to say it's that other person who is a narcissist, the other person is aggressive, they have envy, but no…. not us. We deny we have these qualities and make out as if we are the exception.
the printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.
I used to keep a pair of lizards in an aquarium and fed them live crickets. At the time, I didn't think twice about it—I didn't believe crickets had any inner life at all. But now I wonder if I was actually creating the worst moments of their existence by feeding them to my lizards.
We advocate for a 'feminist moonshot' approach, symbolized by the dandelion. Its seeds, spread by children, represent the spreading of our positive narrative towards a cleaner, healthier, more equitable world on the brink of a clean energy revolution.
We do not operate like cameras, capturing a 1:1 replica of the external world. Our sensory faculties are not conduits of raw data; they are gateways to a world laden with meaning.
I have anxiety and depression, I don't 'suffer with them' as the description would normally go. I have them in the way I have arms, legs, eyes and a mouth, they are a part of me.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The question I always ask them is '…what has our foreign policy got to do with Muslims travelling thousands of miles to go and kill other Muslims in Iraq and Syria?'
To me the question is, why are we denying them the obvious rights they should have? They are flesh and blood, they feel pain as we do, they experience joy, they have their own behaviours and their own languages among themselves that they understand and we don't.
There is nothing really so bad about a recession. A recession is very much an economy pausing for breath to re-evaluate where it stands and to assess where to go next.