Arthur C. Brooks is the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. Prior, he was the president of the American Enterprise Institute for ten years, where he held the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Free Enterprise. He has authored eleven books, including the bestsellers Love Your Enemies and The Conservative Heart, and writes the popular How to Build a Life column at The Atlantic. He is also the host of the podcasts How to Build a Happy Life and The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on happiness. His new book, from Strength to Strength, was described by The Dalai Lama as a book that ‘…helps people find greater happiness as they age and change.’ In this interview, I speak to Professor Arthur C. Brooks on how we can find purpose, meaning and success as we age. We talk about how to understand and fight our demons, and how to overcome the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies ageing. In our conversation, he helps unlock happiness in a meaningful, and beautiful way.

Thought Economics

More than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James dubbed the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Denial of Death, arguing that the terror of death has a pervasive effect on human affairs. In The Worm at the Core, Sheldon Solomon shows that this knowledge of our own death guides our thoughts and actions from the creation of our greatest works of art, to the devastating wars we wage. He hows conclusively that the fear of death and the desire to transcend it inspire us to buy expensive cars, crave fame, put our health at risk, and disguise our animal nature. Through his research, he and his colleagues also developed terror management theory- which proposes that human culture infuses our lives with order, stability, significance, and purpose, and these anchors enable us to function moment to moment without becoming overwhelmed by the knowledge of our ultimate fate. In this exclusive interview, I speak to Professor Sheldon Solomon about the role of death in life and how we must reconsider and rethink our lives in the face of the inevitable.

Thought Economics

In these exclusive interviews we speak to Sir Antony Gormley (One of the world’s most influential sculptors), Bear Grylls (Adventurer, TV Host & Author), Marina Abramović (internationally acclaimed performance artist), Sir Ken Robinson (widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on creativity, innovation and human resources in education and business), Sadhguru (visionary, yogi & mystic), Sir Anish Kapoor (Internationally renowned artist and sculptor), Captain Alan Bean (NASA astronaut and artist, fourth person to walk on the Moon), Dan Pink (bestselling author and expert on human behaviour), Susan Cain (Author, Chief Revolutionary and Co-Founder of Quiet Revolution), Dr. Eric Thomas (World Renowned Author, Speaker, Educator and Pastor) and Robin Sharma (Leadership Expert, Author & Speaker). We discuss the essence of our life long journey of understanding our purpose, and who we are.

Thought Economics

Sometimes a change in perspective is important. World War II was a turning point for our civilisation. This was a war which left a mark on most of our planet’s inhabitants, and saw more than 40 million people killed in just 6 years. Even now, half a century later, this…

Thought Economics

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