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In this interview, I spoke to Michelle Gielan, positive psychology researcher, former CBS Morning News anchor and author of Resilient Optimism, about why optimism is a set of behaviours rather than a…
In this interview, I spoke to Major General Arthur Denaro, who led his regiment through sixteen kilometres of minefield to liberate Kuwait and was Chief of Staff of UN forces in Bosnia.…
In this interview, I spoke to Professor Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, about when individual leaders genuinely change outcomes. We discussed discretion, timing, his Hamlet Test for…
In this interview, I spoke to Ian Proud, a former British diplomat and Foreign Office crisis expert, who drove nine hours into the 2004 tsunami zone on Boxing Day. We discussed what…
In this interview, I spoke to Professor Anthony Kaldellis, who argues the eastern Roman Empire was no absolutism but a polity governed by consent, where rulers who misread the public mood were…
In this interview, I spoke to Dr Tom McClelland, the Cambridge philosopher who argues we should be agnostic about AI consciousness. We discussed why language models have broken humanity's tools for detecting…
In this interview, I spoke to Professor Michael Levin, who argues that cognition came before life rather than after it. We discussed bioelectric "cognitive glue", xenobots and anthrobots, why six lines of…
In this interview, I spoke to Victor Vescovo, one of only two people to have stood at Earth's highest peak, descended to its deepest trench and looked back at the planet from…
In this interview, I spoke to Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup method and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who argues that corporate corruption is structural rather than moral. We…
In this interview I speak to author Turi Munthe, who argues that climate, geography, genes, brain shape and ancestral agriculture quietly script our deepest beliefs. He explains why polarisation thrives on a…
In this interview, I speak to Professor Jens Juul Holst — co-discoverer of GLP-1, the gut hormone now powering the most consequential drug class of the century. He talks about how a…
In this interview, I spoke to Nobel laureate Alvin Roth about his book Moral Economics and the repugnant transactions at its centre: exchanges willing parties want but others would ban. We discussed…
In this interview, I speak to Professor Andrés Velasco — Dean of LSE’s School of Public Policy, Chile’s former Finance Minister, and co-editor of The London Consensus. He argues that ideas, not…
In this interview I speak to Dr Leanne ten Brinke - an award-winning psychologist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia, where she directs the Truth and Trust Lab. Drawing…
In this interview I speak to Dr. Richard Socher — pioneer of neural NLP, inventor of widely used word vectors, and founder of You.com. He discusses his journey from contrarian Stanford researcher…
You know what to do. So why aren’t you doing it? In this interview, I speak to NYT bestselling author Nir Eyal — the man who wrote the book on habits, then…
What 89 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about health and human longevity
What 160 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about war, peace, and geopolitics
What 190 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about the nature of reality
What 207 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about the fight for justice
What 161 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about resilience and mental strength
What 190 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about life's deepest questions
What 280 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about our technological future
What 363 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about the creative impulse
From the archive
Optimism isn't just a private belief. It is information that we are sharing with other people that becomes evidence of progress and possibility.
— Michelle GielanIf you do not speak up, your optimism has no effect on the room.
— Michelle GielanSometimes we fight so hard against the negative. But if we can bolster the positive, we can sometimes get to the same place.
— Michelle GielanResilience is not how you endure, it's how you recharge.
— Michelle GielanIt doesn't ask, was today good? It asks, what was good in today?
— Michelle GielanOptimism is the expectation of good things to happen. Resilient optimism is optimism that is built on a set of behaviours and stays strong when it's tested.
— Michelle GielanYou need to be able to hold two truths at the same time. Yes, this is difficult, and there's something we can do here. Yes, I don't know how the story ends, and I believe that my behaviour matters in this moment.
— Michelle GielanToxic positivity aims to edit out the problem.
— Michelle GielanWhat I study in the research is rational optimism. It's how you take a realistic assessment of the present moment while maintaining a belief that your behaviour matters, especially in the face of challenges.
— Michelle GielanOptimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us. It doesn't stop reality from negatively affecting us.
— Michelle GielanIt was not a psychological operation. It was good communication. And of course, so many of these things come back to good communication.
— Arthur DenaroPeople should recognise, before they enter a conflict, that there has to be an end state. There has to be, first of all, an exit plan, which will depend on what your aims are in the first place. Because if you have not got any aims, it is difficult to see how to come out of it.
— Arthur DenaroSoldiers do not like killing. Yes, of course we are trained to do it effectively and properly and professionally if necessary - but far better to win and defend our country in a better way.
— Arthur DenaroI always say it was the cruellest war I have ever been involved in.
— Arthur DenaroKilling the enemy is half as effective as recruiting him.
— Arthur DenaroGeography has a big effect on long-term, large-area history, whereas leaders have a big effect on short-term, small-area history.
— Jared DiamondThe intrinsic disadvantage of a dictatorship is that a dictator does not get feedback, and so there is not a chance to make corrections.
— Jared DiamondHe was born at the right time. He was born at the right place. If he had been born 20 years earlier and 200 miles to the south, nobody would ever have known about Genghis Khan.
— Jared DiamondBill Gates was a very successful leader, but he doesn't pass the Hamlet Test.
— Jared DiamondLife is complicated, and usually the single most important thing is to avoid looking for the single most important thing.
— Jared DiamondNobody is winning in this situation. Humanity is not winning. We are all losing from it.
— Ian ProudIt's not a nine-to-five job. It's a lifestyle more than a career — and by lifestyle, I don't mean a pink gin-sipping lifestyle. It's a commitment to public service.
— Ian ProudIt is a feeling of intense loneliness, isolation and helplessness that can only be resolved by negative habits which you believe will take away the pain, but which don't.
— Ian ProudWe can't make people feel better. What we can do is ensure that, through our kindness and our practical help, we don't make the situation a great deal worse for them.
— Ian Proud
