3 Takeaways™

Contrary to conventional wisdom, we are not living in an age of dwindling resources. Generations of people have been taught that the world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate. But after analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities and products over the last 100 years, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. 

To their surprise, they found that we create ever more value out of natural resources, and that now is a time of superabundance and human flourishing. Don’t miss this compelling rationale for optimism.

The world as we know it relies on computer chips, and the most important ones are made largely in Taiwan. This renders the U.S. shockingly vulnerable as China continues saber rattling in the region. Don’t miss this enlightening talk with economic historian and author Chris Miller.

Congressional gridlock has created a vacuum that undermines key principles of the Constitution, raising concerns about the country’s future. Yet constitutional expert extraordinaire Kannon Shanmugam believes our future is bright. Learn why.

Hiding what we really think can have devastating social consequences, and helps explain the rise of Donald Trump, why Harvey Weinstein got away with it for so long, the unreliability of election polls, and much more. Don’t miss this eye-opening conversation with Duke’s Timur Kuran.

Countless people knew what Harvey Weinstein, Elizabeth Holmes, and the Catholic Church were doing – but remained silent. Why do good people allow the horrific behavior of others?  Harvard professor Max Bazerman explores this complicity and offers solutions.

Our brains run the show and determine how we relate to the world. Discoveries from the front lines of neuroscience show our brains are creators (as opposed to spectators) of reality and also creator of our emotions. Don’t miss this enlightening talk with Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of the world’s most cited scientists for her groundbreaking research in psychology and neuroscience.

Why will tech and automation never lead to the demise of human work? What qualifies as “good” work? What role will robots and AI play in the fast-approaching future? David Autor, MIT professor and co-chair of the MIT Task Force on The Work of The Future, provides answers in this riveting and enlightening conversation. 

It’s counter-intuitive but true: letting go of being a good person is key to becoming a better one, and often times it starts with acknowledging our unconscious bias. Social scientist and best-selling author Dolly Chugh offers phenomenal insight that can benefit us both at home and in the workplace.

Harvard economics professor and former IMF Chief Economist Ken Rogoff is one of the world’s preeminent economic thinkers. Here he brilliantly dissects today’s U.S. economy and bluntly explains what must happen to tame inflation and sustain growth – and the major role China may play. 

He is the co-author of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

Learn how scarcity of anything - money, food or social connections - affects our daily lives and leads us astray. Scarcity reduces both intelligence and control. Having too little preoccupies and taxes the mind, making life much harder. "Even smiling and being pleasant is hard when your mind is taxed. The employee snaps at rude customers ... The parent snaps at the child ... The server rings up the wrong item.” 

Find out about the latest cutting edge behavioral science and how we can all manage scarcity for better satisfaction and success with Princeton behavioral scientist Eldar Shafir.