From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
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.
Classic economic theory simply will not allow governments and regulatory bodies to deal with bubbles effectively, as they will grow to tremendous sizes immensely fast, meaning that the amount of support needed when they burst vastly exceeds the value of most economies.
The more people that must be involved, the less likely the theory is to be true. A couple of people could pull it off, hundreds or thousands of people would have to be involved, and it's not likely because we would hear about it.
It's hard for people to defend democracy when it cannot defend them against social injustice.
The French Revolution really is this incredible hinge in the story of Western political thought. For a long time, it was just taken for granted that the French Revolution was the starting point of political modernity.
If history has taught us anything, it's that women rarely win anything without a fight!
Pakistan has sought to reassure international donors that funds to help victims of its devastating flooding will not fall into extremists' hands. The Taliban would not be allowed to take advantage of the crisis to increase its support.
We live in a deeply connected world, and if we want stability and prosperity in our connected world, we have to look after the weakest links as well as the strongest parts.
A significant hurdle is the underestimation of our collective power. The fossil fuel sector and its substantial influence through lobbying and misinformation, spending $4 billion annually to challenge scientific consensus.
Our contemporary society uses this statistically insignificant variation to support the 'reasoning' behind cultural, social, economic and political practices that cause hundreds of millions of people, every day, to face discrimination.
The sad reality is that if we tried to pass that declaration today, the UN General Assembly would fail to do so. Firstly, we don't have someone like Eleanor Roosevelt as an advocate for human rights, and where previously the US played a leadership role, Trump would no doubt block virtually every human rights pillar associated with the declaration.
Politically and practically, the Euro Zone nations cannot be seen to bail-out Greece. Not only would this set a potentially dangerous precedent, but it could also affect the overall financial stability of the system itself.