Latest Interviews

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury: Talks at GS Session Highlights

Justin Welby

Archbishop Justin Welby outlines a strategy for the non-hierarchical Anglican Communion focused on reconciliation and discipleship while addressing global crises ranging from religious persecution to the refugee emergency. The leadership highlights critical demographic shifts, noting a significant aging within the Church of England contrasted with a young, female, and Sub-Saharan majority in the wider Communion. To navigate these challenges, the church advocates for long-term economic engagement in host nations, improved inter-faith integrity against radicalization, and a renewed focus on practical love for the poor and enemies.

Ross Kemp, Documentary Maker: Talks at GS Session Highlights

Ross Kemp

Former ITV actor Ross Kemp transitioned to documentary filmmaking after a pivotal interview in Compton revealed the human costs of gang violence, leading to the creation of the BAFTA-winning "Ross Kemp on Gangs" series. Operating a small, unarmed production team through Freshwater Films, Kemp relies on local fixers and hostile environment training to access dangerous zones, a methodology tested during tense confrontations with tribal leaders in Papua New Guinea and refugee camps in Calais. His current portfolio addresses child sexual exploitation, alcohol industry harms, and immigration integration, driven by a philosophy to reveal the social circumstances behind global headlines rather than exploiting fear.

John Kufuor, Former President of the Republic of Ghana: Talks at GS Session Highlights

John Kufuor, David Freeman

This address examines Ghana's pivotal role as the first independent sub-Saharan nation while detailing the economic transformation achieved between 2001 and 2009 through market-oriented reforms that stabilized currency, doubled cocoa output, and eliminated extreme poverty. The narrative highlights the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal decades of military instability, successfully restoring confiscated assets and ensuring political accountability. By contextualizing these domestic successes within the broader evolution of the African Union toward democratic governance, the speaker presents Ghana as a benchmark for continental progress toward transparency and sustainable development.

John Amaechi, Former NBA Player, Author and Executive Coach: Talks at GS Session Highlights

John Amaechi

After a stranger's unexpected encouragement led John to basketball despite zero prior experience, he overcame a catastrophic hand injury by retraining as an ambidextrous player. His career strategy evolved from a naive focus on athletic height to a disciplined approach designed to counteract his own laziness and align with a broader goal of becoming a psychologist. John now leverages his unique background to advocate for workplace inclusion, arguing that teams only achieve greatness when members feel safe revealing their full identities beyond their professional roles.

Solar technology that will shape the future

Elon Musk, Alison Archambault, Chuck Boggs

Earthspark International and Tesla are deploying off-grid solar microgrids and battery storage to address the global energy crisis, as demonstrated by Les Anglais' 100% renewable transition and Appel Steel's industrial independence. Innovations in perovskite cells promise to drastically increase efficiency and enable building-integrated power, while Richard Branson's Carbon War Room advocates for this decentralized shift to bypass fossil fuel dependence. Although currently representing only 1% of global supply, these scalable solutions aim to meet an 80% projected demand surge and eventually achieve financial viability without subsidies.

Neil Berg, Composer, Lyricist and Producer: Talks at GS Session Highlights

Neil Berg

Neil Berg, a playwright who abandoned a planned career in law to pursue musical theater after an emotional breakthrough during his university years, discusses the rigorous demands of the industry and the necessity of treating art as an unavoidable calling. His current project, the rock musical "The 12" about the apostles, won the 2015 Henry Award following a difficult collaborative evolution with Tony winner Robert Schenken that required discarding existing compositions to align on a strict book-first structure. Berg further outlines essential mechanics for musical storytelling, emphasizing that successful productions rely on the precise alignment of approximately 50 collaborators and the strategic use of opening songs to establish character desires within the first ten minutes.

Prison: how to break the cycle of reoffending?

Olly Matthews, Hans Petter Hansen, Bobby Frances, Bill Kleiber, Alex Garcia

A comparative analysis of the United States and Norway's justice systems reveals that while American reentry programs face high recidivism due to inadequate resources and harsh decision-making transitions, Norway's Bastøy Prison achieves a 16% recidivism rate by fostering inmate autonomy and self-sufficiency. Retired Texas Judge Bobby Francis exemplifies a shift in the U.S. toward specialized reentry courts that balance strict accountability with rehabilitation, contributing to a 16% reduction in state incarceration rates since 2001. Despite these reforms, experts warn that without prioritizing rehabilitation over punitive measures, the current system remains insufficient to prepare the millions of inmates for sustainable reintegration into society.

What is consciousness? | The Economist

Leading neuroscientists and philosophers such as Francis Crick, Christoph Koch, David Chalmers, and Daniel Dennett continue to debate whether consciousness is an objective neural mechanism or a subjective "hard problem" that resists reductionist explanation. Recent breakthroughs, including the discovery that electrical stimulation of the claustrum can temporarily induce unconsciousness, are helping researchers identify specific neural correlates to solve the binding problem of integrating sensory inputs. Despite these advances in mapping brain mechanics and evolutionary theories regarding self-awareness, the scientific community has not yet bridged the gap between explaining physical processes and accounting for the subjective experience of being.

Why does time pass?

John Archibald Wheeler, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Arthur Eddington, Ludwig Boltzmann

This discussion explores the dual nature of time as both a philosophical concept and a physical dimension governed by Einstein's relativity, where gravity and velocity fundamentally alter the flow of time relative to the observer. The event details how the Second Law of Thermodynamics establishes the unidirectional "arrow of time" through increasing entropy, distinguishing physical law from the human perception of a perpetual present. While theoretical physics permits future travel through extreme gravitational time dilation or speculative wormholes, practical constraints and the irreversibility of entropy currently prevent backward time travel or the stabilization of shortcuts in spacetime.

Nick Bollettieri, Tennis Legend: Talks at GS Session Highlights

Nick Bollettieri, Antonio Estevez

Founded in 1978, the Bollettieri Tennis Academy established the world's first full-time boarding school model by fusing intensive court training with a military-inspired academic curriculum to cultivate elite athletes. Legendary coach Nick Bollettieri attributes the success of ten world number ones, including Serena and Venus Williams and Andre Agassi, to his psychological mastery and the evolving necessity of peak physical fitness in modern tennis. Bollettieri now asserts that while innate talent remains irreplaceable, contemporary dominance relies on multidisciplinary support teams and strategic adaptation to equipment changes.

What caused the Cambrian explosion?

Approximately 542 million years ago, the Cambrian explosion marked a sudden diversification of animal life from simple marine organisms to complex, predatory ecologies following the Ediacaran period. While hypotheses for this trigger range from rising oxygen levels and mineral availability to ecological feedback loops driven by bilateral symmetry and the evolution of vision, significant debate persists regarding the specific role of sensory systems in initiating the event. Ultimately, this biological "big bang" established the evolutionary trajectory that led to modern humans, as primitive fish and other ancestral forms emerged from this rapid diversification.

Bob Colacello, Journalist: Talks at GS Session Highlights

Bob Colacello

Former *Vanity Fair* correspondent Bob Colacello recently presented his biographical works on Andy Warhol and the Reagans during a Goldman Sachs "Talks at GS" session, dissecting the strategic construction of Warhol's celebrity and Nancy Reagan's pivotal behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War diplomacy. Colacello reveals that Warhol leveraged his commercial art background and religious aesthetic knowledge to secularize icons like Marilyn Monroe, while simultaneously exposing how Nancy Reagan orchestrated the personal rapport between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that facilitated the Geneva summit. The presentation concludes by ranking Nancy Reagan among history's most influential first ladies, comparable to Edith Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt, for her quiet but decisive management of her husband's political agenda and inner circle.

What is the universe made of?

Current cosmological models indicate that the universe is composed of approximately 5% normal matter, with dark matter forming 27% of its mass-energy content and dark energy comprising the remaining 68%. While dark matter acts as the gravitational "master builder" through invisible halos that allow galaxies to form, dark energy serves as a uniform force driving the accelerating expansion of the cosmos, a discovery first made by observing distant supernovae in the late 1990s. Ongoing research at facilities like the Large Hadron Collider and various direct detection experiments seeks to identify the nature of these components, which could ultimately determine whether the universe faces a Big Rip, a Big Crunch, or indefinite expansion.

Do we live in a multiverse?

Dr Tegmark, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Max Tegmark

MIT physicist Max Tegmark categorizes multiverse hypotheses into four distinct levels, ranging from distant regions of an infinite universe to separate quantum branches and self-sustaining bubble universes with different physical laws. While proponents argue that observational evidence for cosmic inflation makes the multiverse a logical extension of modern cosmology, the hypothesis remains controversial due to the fundamental inability to empirically verify structures beyond our cosmic horizon. Accepting this framework would necessitate a profound paradigm shift in our understanding of reality, comparable to the historical transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism.

Life in the universe

Frank Drake, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Yuri Milner, Jack Szostak

Recent astronomical data reveals billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, prompting expanded searches for extraterrestrial intelligence through projects like Breakthrough Listen and the upcoming James Webb Telescope. Researchers are simultaneously investigating local habitability on Mars, Europa, and Enceladus while laboratories such as Jack Szostak's attempt to synthesize life from primordial chemicals. These dual efforts aim to determine whether life is a cosmic inevitability or a rare phenomenon by analyzing biosignatures and achieving spontaneous self-replication in protocells.