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1st August 2023 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Bjørn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His new book Best Things First brings together 12 new, peer-reviewed studies which highlight how to make the world a better place, in the best [and most cost-effective] way. These studies show that by spending $35 billion a year (the same as the increase in annual global cosmetics spend in the last 2 years), on 12 specific policies, we could save 4.2 million lives a year, and generate over $1.1 trillion in new wealth. For every dollar spent, these policies generate $52 in global benefits. In this interview, I speak to Bjørn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus. We discuss the 12 most impactful solutions to some of our world’s most pressing challenges – saving millions of lives, generating trillions in economic gains, and huge returns in the process.

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01-08-2023 10:37:21
Thought Economics

25th May 2023 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

General H.R. McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the US Army for thirty-four years. He retired as a Lieutenant General in 2018 after serving as the United States 26th National Security Advisor. Today, McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. McMaster designed the future army as the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the deputy commanding general, futures, of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). As commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, he oversaw all training and education for the army’s infantry, armor, and cavalry force. He has commanded organizations in wartime including the Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force—Shafafiyat in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2010 to 2012; the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq from 2005 to 2006; and Eagle Troop, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. McMaster also served overseas as advisor to the most senior commanders in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is author of the bestselling books Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. McMaster is the host of Battlegrounds: International Perspectives on Crucial Challenges and Opportunities In this interview, I speak to General H. R. McMaster, Former National Security Advisor to the United States. We discuss the current state of global security, the security and foreign policy challenges facing our world, and whether we should be hopeful for the future of global peace.

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25-05-2023 12:14:05
Thought Economics

19th November 2022 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Lord Simon McDonald spent over four decades in HM Diplomatic Service. Sir Simon joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1982 and served in Berlin, Jeddah, Riyadh, Bonn, Washington, and Tel Aviv, and in a wide range of jobs in London. He served as the British Ambassador to Berlin from 2010 to 2015. He was the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser and Head of Foreign and Defence Policy in the Cabinet Office from 2007 to 2010. From 2003 to 2006 he was British Ambassador to Israel. His government career culminated with him being Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and Head of the UK’s Diplomatic Service. He is Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge. In his first book, Leadership: Lessons from a Life in Diplomacy, Lord Simon McDonald shares his observations from working in close quarters with ministers, diplomats and leaders – on some of the most complex issues faced by our world. In this interview, I speak to Lord Simon McDonald, Former Ambassador & Head of HM Diplomatic Service. We discuss the nature of leadership, how diplomats work to resolve challenging and complex situations, and what his life in diplomacy can teach us all about leading.

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19-11-2022 17:44:35
Thought Economics

2nd November 2022 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. In this interview, I speak to him about conspiracy theories, conspiratorial thinking and why the rational believe the irrational.

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14-11-2022 20:20:35
Thought Economics

30th June 2022 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

It’s easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It’s also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen—and most of the time it doesn’t. Around the world, there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a fraction erupt into violence, a fact too many accounts overlook. Christopher Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the University of Chicago. He is co-lead the university’s Development Economics Center and the Obama Foundation Scholars Program. In his new book, Why We Fight, Christopher Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. War is too costly to fight, so enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it for everyone or struggle over thin slices. In those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: What kept rivals from compromise? He combines decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation. In this interview, I speak to Professor Christopher Blattman about why we fight, the root causes of war, and how we can effectively move to peace. We talk about how to build resilient societies, how best to detect fragility, and the remedies that shift incentives away from violence and get parties back to dealmaking.

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30-06-2022 13:59:17
Thought Economics

3rd April 2022 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

In late 2022 or 2023, the 8th billionth person will be born on Earth. Yet as history has shown, the thinning of valuable resources necessary for sustaining not only life, but a good life, continues to drive wars, disease, and poverty. How can we use the 8 billion people we have on the planet today to shape the world we want tomorrow? In her provocative and penetrating new book 8 BILLION AND COUNTING, political demographer Dr. Jennifer Sciubba mines a long academic career, including a stint as a Department of Defense demographer, to show how a deeper understanding of fertility, mortality, and migration trends point us toward the investments we need to make today to shape the future we want tomorrow. The challenges that besiege our interdependent, interconnected world easily touch us all: disease, climate change, economic crisis—but so do the good fortunes for all 8 billion of us. In this interview, I speak to Dr. Jennifer Sciubba about how demographic trends (age, structure and ethnic composition) can signal crucial signposts for future violence and peace, repression and democracy, poverty and prosperity.

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04-04-2022 9:54:14
Thought Economics

27th January 2022 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies? To answer these questions, I spoke to Dr. Brian Klaas, who is Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, a columnist for The Washington Post, and who has advised governments, US political campaigns, NATO, the European Union and multi-billion dollar NGOs. In his latest book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us, Brian combined decades of research with over 500 interviews with leaders including presidents, philanthropists, cult-leaders, dictators and entrepreneurs. In this interview, I speak to Dr. Brian Klaas about why our societies concentrate power into hierarchies and why our power systems attract certain types of leaders. We also talk about how we can design systems that can prevent corruption and abuses of power together with how we can attract, and empower, a better class of leader.

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27-01-2022 11:38:54
Thought Economics

15th December 2021 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Joe Zammit-Lucia is an entrepreneur, investor, leadership advisor and commentator. He is an investor and Non-Executive Director in entrepreneurial ventures and advises senior business and institutional leaders on leadership in contemporary culture and writes for many of the world’s most prestigious newspapers. In this interview, I speak to Joe Zammit-Lucia about whether business can ever be apolitical. We discuss how modern businesses must be the visible reflection of social values and cultural trends (which shape the environment in which businesses operate), and how an increasingly politicised stakeholder group (from customers to investors) are expecting companies to have perspective on political issues. Markets themselves are politically constructed, and investors increasingly focus on corporations’ political positions – be they environmental or societal.

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21-12-2021 13:41:57
Thought Economics

3rd December 2021 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Glenn Hubbard is the Dean Emeritus of Columbia Business School and former Chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers. In The Wall and the Bridge, Hubbard proves that walls never lead to prosperity and almost always portend collapse. While change can be extremely difficult, it is inevitable. Ultimately, the only way to propel ourselves towards tremendous technological, cultural, and economic progress is to build bridges—accessible to and created by all. Bridges level the playing field by preparing those needing the skills for the new economy while providing the infrastructure for them to reconnect with today’s workplace. It is because walls delay needed adaptations to the ever-changing world, they are essentially backward-looking and ultimately destined to fail. In this interview, I speak to Glenn Hubbard about our economic model, why we need to build bridges instead of walls, and how we can create an inclusive economy that allows everyone to flourish and grow.

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03-12-2021 22:05:55
Thought Economics

1st October 2021 · Articles & Interviews by: Vikas Shah MBE

Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding – and appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that doubled its lifespan, sequenced its genome, and developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures, conspiracy theories, and “post-truth” rhetoric? In this interview, I speak to Professor Steven Pinker about rationality. We discuss how he rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions (after all, we discovered the laws of nature, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself). We discuss how we (as a species) think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we’ve discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others
. Steven also takes time to discuss how the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology can add up to crippling irrationality in a society.

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03-12-2021 8:15:16
Thought Economics

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