Dave will give an overview of the current state of the climate crisis and the prognosis over the coming decades, followed by a comprehensive strategy based on 4Rs: Reduce emissions deeply and rapidly; Remove excess greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and to come; Repair those parts of the climate system already tipping; and generate Resilience in all cities and regions of the world against the inevitable impacts.

How can the West deal with the geopolitical and ideological threats posed by what Ferguson calls the axis of ill will – Russia, China and Iran? With localised wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the threat of a crisis next year over Taiwan, are we sleepwalking towards a Third World War? And what are the likely consequences of the ongoing conflicts for the world economy?

Christiana, live in conversation with Paul Polman, discusses her continued fight to keep the world below 2 degrees of warming, cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, and protect and repair ecosystems. She is an advocate for stubborn optimism: an attitude which rejects fatalism in the face of impending catastrophe and instead embraces the very real opportunity we have to forge a future in which humanity can not merely survive, but thrive.

Is net zero by 2050 possible? What would it take to get there? On the one hand, the stock of renewable power generation and electric vehicles continues to grow rapidly; on the other hand, China continues to build new coal fired generation, citizens appear to be starting to push back against net zero policy, and the reality of reconfiguring our supply chains and the structure of the economy is starting to hit home.

Marco joins us post COP28 and Davos to discuss what it takes to achieve a nature-positive future, what it requires of our society and how it connects to the existential challenges our civilisation is facing from climate change to pandemics.

Gerald Butts has spent a lifetime working on environmental issues both in the public sector and now the private sector. Gerry will be discussing the impact of geopolitical events on climate change and what it means for the future. How Russia-Ukraine provided a wake-up moment for food/water insecurity that will become a larger issue over the next few years. Additionally, Gerry will discuss the regulatory outlook and policy setting agenda for “pollutant” industries across key regions and countries.

By 2025, two-thirds of the global population will face water shortages and two-thirds of companies will face substantial water risks along the value chain. To make matters worse, current policy efforts are either inadequate or insufficient. Fixing the crisis will require greater collaboration between public- and private-sector actors. We will discuss what it looks like practically across regions and sectors.

Val joins us to discuss breakthroughs in zero emission aviation and how quickly we can expect this to be the norm.

Understanding how past shifts in natural patterns have shaped history, and how our own species has shaped terrestrial, marine and atmospheric conditions is not just important but essential at a time of growing awareness of the severity of the climate crisis.

Richard courageously explores the increasingly awkward realities of the socio-economic challenges facing boys and men, leaving many of them adrift and underpowered. He ameliorates how the basic social constructs defining masculine maturity and success have been undermined, and how they can — and must — be reinvented.

Ian joins us to talk about the key themes shaping the world today and the Top Risks that we face as we head into 2023.

Hear from Simon Daniel, founder of Moixa, Pierre Paslier, co-founder of Notpla and Sarah Chapman, CEO of My Solar Roof, three UK based entrepreneurs developing climate tech solutions to support a greener future – the challenges, the successes, the impact and the opportunities.

The thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Martin believes that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans.

Johan Rockström is one of the world’s leading climate and sustainability experts. A fierce advocate for deep and rapid cuts in carbon emissions, he points to the need for an ‘exponential carbon roadmap.’ He is best known for his groundbreaking 2009 work on Planetary Boundaries, nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system. If we remain within these, humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come; breaching them – as we are increasingly doing – poses serious threats to our future.

Hot on the heels of his two weeks in Glasgow at COP26, Simon joins us to analyse the outcome, good and bad, and to share highlights from his recently published book, Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis.

Bernard-Henri will share his investigative trips taken before and during the COVID pandemic, from the massacred Christian villages in Nigeria to a dangerously fragile Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban talks, from an anti-Semitic ambush in Libya to the overrun refugee camp on the island of Lesbos.

Most important of all, he will argue that a truly humanist philosophy must necessarily lead to action in defence of the most vulnerable, issuing a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us.

As co-founder and Chair of IMAGINE, a for-benefit organisation and foundation that mobilises businesses around the UN Global Goals, Paul joins us to expand on his soon to be published book, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take.

In conversation with Professor Ngaire Woods, Bill will focus on Breakthrough Energy, a network of investment vehicles, philanthropic programs, and policy advocacy committed to scaling the technologies we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He will also discuss ideas from his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which offers a wide-ranging, practical plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Combining his signature humour and brash style with razor-sharp business insights, Galloway offers both warning and hope in equal measure as he joins Mark Evans to cut through the biggest stories in tech & business. Expect unfiltered insights, bold predictions, and memorable perspective on many current topics.

At 16, Clover was lobbying decision-makers at the Paris climate meeting when she realised that the threat greater even than climate change was the universal feeling of powerlessness in the face of it. She made it her mission to mobilise mindsets, helping young people to turn anxiety into agency. Through virtual classrooms and campaigns, she and her team work to activate a global network of young activists ready to change the world from their living rooms.

The internationally bestselling author and podcaster joins us with a tale of innovation, obsession, and dreams gone awry with terrifying consequences.

In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past?

Malcolm tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. He will share the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill’s forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War.

Fired as the FBI Director by Trump in 2017, James Comey knows better than most what a force for good the US justice system can be – and how far afield it has strayed.

From prosecuting mobsters as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of anti-terrorism work as the Deputy Attorney General in the early 2000s to, of course, his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, James Comey has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth and justice.

Comey joins us at this pivotal time in his nation’s history to explore the past, present, and future of justice in America.

The future of humanity is bound to the future of science, and our prospects hinge on how successfully we harness technological advances to address the challenges to our collective future. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long-term future.

Project Brazen, recently launched by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, uncovers extraordinary true stories from around the globe, telling them without fear or favour via podcasts, books, documentaries, television series and films.

We are fortunate to have both Tom and Bradley join us to unveil the slate of new projects they are working on.

Bill has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide toward certain environmental disaster.

To celebrate the release of his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, he will explain not only why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.

In conversation with Diana Fox Carney, Sandrine will talk about Europe’s climate ambitions and the tools and mechanisms that it will employ to achieve them (including the EU Green Deal and the EU emissions trading system). What needs to happen to get us to net zero greenhouse gases by 2050 and how can the EU play a leadership role in the transition?

This event is brought to you partnership with SYSTEMIQ.

What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question many of us do not give much thought to, and yet there are more than 25 million refugees in the world. To be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.

Talia Lavin is every fascist’s worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic young Jewish woman, with the online investigative know-how to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hate-mongers. Outspoken and uncompromising, Talia uncovers the hidden corners of the web where extremists hang out, from white nationalists and incels to national socialists and Proud Boys.

In collaboration with how to: Academy, celebrating the release of his new graphic novel, Sapiens: A Graphic History – The Birth of Humankind, Yuval will explore the ways in which biology and history have defined us, to challenge us to reconsider accepted beliefs, to connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and to share the journey of radically adapting his bestselling book into a visual format.

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one-homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Leon Ford was shot five times and paralysed by a Pittsburgh police officer, after being mistaken for another black man with a similar name. He lost the ability to walk – but has chosen not to lose his spirit. Days after a U.S. election campaign riven by race tensions, Leon will give Pi Capital his insights on how his country may begin to heal.

In conversation with David Rowan, Leon shares how working to develop an understanding of the U.S. policing system led him to compassion and also to ideas to improve the system and to educate others.

The goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 has become the benchmark for climate ambition. While small but growing number of governments have formally adopted the target, a much bigger group of companies, investors and local governments are setting climate neutrality goals.

Launched in June, the Race to Zero campaign sought to galvanise climate action around the 2050 goal at a time when the world locked down to halt infections from Covid-19 and the global economy slumped.

Steve is the author of Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief, foreword by Ai Weiwei. At a time when protest seems to be everywhere, Steve will talk about what works and what doesn’t when seeking lasting change. As policy director at Freedom from Torture, he will also talk about the growing challenge when even elected leaders seem ready to throw away the moral compass.

Rohitesh Dhawan, MD of Eurasia Group, in conversation with Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, Senior Advisor at Eurasia Group, exploring the path to a sustainable society and planet by 2030.

In conversation with Sophie Hackford, Ian will be drawing on themes from his new book Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years and his BBC Series, The Pandemic That Changed The World, to provide perspectives on global change to enable leaders to navigate in an increasingly uncertain world.

In this event, co-hosted by Pi Capital and RUSI, Sir David Lidington, Chairman at RUSI and a former cabinet minister, will be speaking with retired US Army general and former CIA Director, David Petraeus. They will be reflecting on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on some of the key geopolitical trends for the future.

James Manyika, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, will be interviewing Sir Richard Haass about his latest book, The World: A Brief Introduction, a New York Times bestseller. The book provides anyone, expert and non-expert alike, with the essential background and building blocks they need to make sense of the global era we live in, in which what happens thousands of miles away can affect our lives.

Universities have been deeply affected by the Covid shutdown. What happens next remains very unclear, given uncertainty around student and faculty travel as well as the economic hardship with which the sector is wrestling.

Join Diana for a discussion about high education in the Covid era with Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope.

Join Diana for a conversation with Lord Jim O’Neill about how the virus will change thinking about the role of government, how much we invest in our health systems and how we live and work.

Join Diana for a conversation with Peter Frankopan about the state of the world and, in particular, the impact of the virus on the rise of Asia and Asia’s global influence.

Dame Cressida Dick is the first woman to hold the post of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, the UK’s largest police service. She is the Met’s 28^th Commissioner.

At this event she will be in conversation discussing her role and the challenges of policing in London.

There are only two ways of making the global fossil fuel industry compliant with net zero carbon dioxide emissions. We could shut it down, or we could require it to dispose of all the carbon dioxide generated by its activities and products safely, meaning no further net dumping into the atmosphere.

The first option, even if practicable, raises ethical challenges: if we wind down the fossil fuel industry over the next 40 years and then discover we need to go further and scrub carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, who will pay for that scrubbing?

A safer and fairer approach would be to require the industry to dispose of a fraction of the carbon dioxide generated by its activities and products, progressively increasing to reach 100%, or net zero emissions, by a target date such as 2050.

A variety of options have been proposed, but to offset the burning of fossil carbon (an effectively permanent, irreversible activity), disposal must also be essentially permanent, for which the only scalable option at present is geological sequestration.

Join Myles to hear about where we are with carbon sequestering technology and what needs to happen for this to be implemented, at scale.

From climate change to migration, populism to human rights abuses, the crises of the 21st century are global in magnitude, revealing the delicate web of connections that bind nations and citizens, individuals and ecosystems. Faced with tyranny and violence, to say nothing of the inordinate complexity of our times, can an artist really hope to make a difference? Does human creativity truly have the power to change our world for the better?

Ai Weiwei is living proof that it does. Raised in a labour camp and later beaten, surveilled and imprisoned on trumped-up charges by the Chinese state, Ai has dedicated his life to the struggle against corruption and oppression of all kinds. As a conceptual artist and activist fighting for justice, he has become an icon in his own lifetime, renowned world-wide for his work promoting freedom of thought and expression, compassion, and humanitarian values.

Ian is credited with bringing the craft of political risk to financial markets – he created Wall Street’s first global political risk index – and for establishing political risk as an academic discipline.

At this event he will talk about the three key themes shaping the world today (the rise of China, AI and climate change) as well as other Top Risks that we face as we head into 2020.

To coincide with the new BBC series on biodiversity (Seven Worlds – One Planet), we are hosting a lunch to explain what is at stake in the battle against biodiversity loss.

Recent reports from the UN show that around a million species are now threatened with extinction. What are the main drivers of biodiversity loss? What does this loss mean for the human species? And how might we think of halting – and eventually reversing – this downward trend?

Samantha Power is widely known as the moral voice of her generation. A relentless advocate for promoting human rights, she has been heralded by President Barack Obama as one of America’s “foremost thinkers on foreign policy” as well as one of Time’s ‘100 Most Influential People.’

In her new book, The Education of an Idealist, she provides a unique perspective on government, taking us from the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the Situation Room and out into the world of high-stakes diplomacy. Her writing illuminates the messy and complex worlds of politics and geopolitics while laying bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life (including what it’s like to juggle the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children).

Whether gene editing or AI, we live in a time where our individual and societal worlds are being engineered to change right before our eyes. How do we humanize innovation when it is occurring so fast that there are no models to predict the social changes it will bring?

Hear from Jodi Halpern, whose foundational work on clinical empathy has helped make medical care more patient-centered and whose work on the ethics of AI and gene editing is helping to define the boundaries of these new fields of research.

With the rise of the Tea Party and the election of Donald Trump, many middle- and lower-income white Americans threw their support behind conservative politicians who pledged to make life great again for people like them. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the right-wing policies that resulted from this white backlash put these voters’ very health at risk—and in the end, threaten everyone’s well-being.

​Physician and sociologist Jonathan M. Metzl travels across America’s heartland seeking to better understand the politics of racial resentment and its impact on public health. Interviewing a range of Americans, he uncovers how racial anxieties led to the repeal of gun control laws in Missouri, stymied the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and fueled massive cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. Although such measures promised to restore greatness to white America, Metzl’s systematic analysis of health data dramatically reveals they did just the opposite: these policies made life sicker, harder, and shorter in the very populations they purported to aid.  Thus, white gun suicides soared, life expectancies fell, and school dropout rates rose.

The climate crisis is the single biggest threat to human survival. And it is happening right now. We all understand that time is running out — but do we truly believe it? Caught between the seemingly unimaginable and the apparently unthinkable, how can we take the first step towards action, to arrest our race to extinction?

In this event, hosted by how to: Academy, best-selling author, Jonathan Safran Foer, will demystify climate change. Previewing the ideas of his new book, We are the Weather, Jonathan will explore how the task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves — with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future.

General Sir Richard Barrons will talk about how digital technologies are changing the way in which states confront and conflict with each other. This is happening both in the physical arena of war, with new types of military hardware, and in the cognitive arena where cyber attacks and fake news are being deployed to great effect.

Citizens, enterprises and institutions are – as much as governments and armed forces – at the front line of this new field of combat. Homelands and the daily way of life of millions are the target once more, at the speed of missiles and the click of a mouse.

Advances in facial recognition are proving very controversial. On the one hand this technology allows for better interfaces with other systems, can significantly increase security and holds much promise for law enforcement. On the other hand, it appears to pose a meaningful threat to our rights, our privacy and our sense of self.

Banned in San Francisco, but increasingly deployed elsewhere, facial recognition technologies can not only detect who we are, but also ascertain how we are feeling. What scares us most about them? Errors? Bias? Or just the realisation that our personal privacy is rapidly ebbing away? And what can and should be done?

Today’s unprecedented pace of change leaves many people wondering what new technologies are doing to our lives. Has social media robbed us of our privacy and fed us with false information? Will we all be terrorised by autonomous drones that can identify and kill us, one by one? And has our demand for energy driven the Earth’s climate to the edge of catastrophe?

In his latest book, John Browne argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance. Civilisation is founded on engineering innovation; all progress stems from the human urge to make things and to shape the world around us, resulting in greater freedom, health and wealth for all. He argues compellingly that the same spark that triggers each innovation can be used to counter its negative consequences.

The uncomfortable truth is that we are all, to some extent, enemies of social mobility. Far from acting as the great social leveller, the education system in the UK has been commandeered by the middle classes to retain their advantage.

In his recent book, co-authored with LSE economist Stephen Machin, Lee Elliot Major concludes that the dream of just doing better, let alone climbing the income ladder, is dying for young people today. The book calls for radical steps to address Britain’s low social mobility. Failure to do so, it warns, will lead to deeper societal divides and the prospect of social unrest.

In conjunction with Intelligence Squared, we present Jared Diamond, ‘the master storyteller of the human race’. A Pulitzer Prize-winning polymath who speaks 12 languages, his work has drawn on history, geography, economics and anthropology to transform our understanding of how civilisations rise and fall.

In this talk he will show how countries as diverse as Japan, Chile, Indonesia and Germany have survived major upheavals in the recent past through a process of self-appraisal and adaptation similar to the ways in which individuals learn to cope with personal trauma. And looking ahead to the future, he will voice his concerns about the potential shift of the United States and other successful countries away from democracy.

At the start of each year, Eurasia Group publishes its Top Risks report. This report identifies the most challenging political and geopolitical trends and stress points for global investors and market participants. It also calls out a few red herrings — issues that, despite media attention, are unlikely to pose a significant threat or drive instability in the coming year.

At this evening talk, president and founder of Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer will discuss 2019’s risks and how he sees these evolving over the course of the year.

Liberal democracy is under threat. Trust in the institutions of government and society is at a new low. What role has the traditional media played in this shift and – looking forward – how can it help right the wrongs?

Hear from James Harding, former Director of News and Current Affairs at the BBC and Rachel Botsman, expert in trust and the flow of this valuable resource within our modern societies.

In conjunction with how to: Academy we bring you Anand Giridharadas – author of the acclaimed new book, Winners Take All.

Anand takes the view that philanthropy simply isn’t working, and in many cases does more harm than good. He argues that global elite’s efforts to fight for equality and justice fail to change the world. Instead they address the symptoms, preserving the status quo and obscuring the elites’ own culpability.

Rather than relying on the whims of the winners, we must take on the gruelling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions, fixing the core social infrastructure problem, and insisting that elites give up some power along with their money.

John oversees editorial content across all Bloomberg platforms, including its news, newsletters, magazines, opinion, television, radio and digital properties, as well as its research services including Bloomberg Intelligence.

Bloomberg News has over 2,400 news and multimedia professionals that produce more than 5,000 stories daily. These are distributed on Bloomberg.com and syndicated to over 1,000 media outlets in more than 60 countries.

Paul is Chief Technology Officer at Ocado, the world’s largest online-only grocery retailer. Ocado Technology, with its 1,300 software engineers and other IT specialists, is responsible for building all the software and IT infrastructure that powers Ocado’s end-to-end e-commerce, fulfilment and logistics platform.

Hear Paul talk about next generation logistics, the non-linear impact of AI/robotics and what the UK needs to do to prepare itself for the future it must embrace.

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various prospects for the future – good and bad – are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism.

In his latest book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s future depends on our taking a very different approach to thinking about and planning for tomorrow.

The future of humanity is bound to the future of science, and our prospects hinge on how successfully we harness technological advances to address the challenges to our collective future. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long-term future.

Money laundering is a huge issue globally – estimates put the sums involved at 2-5% of global GDP. European legislation has been tightened to address the problem, but it is not operating effectively. Not only does it not keep pace with the perpetrators but it also does not achieve what it sets out to do, being focussed more on compliance than on identified problem flows of money.

Sir Rob Wainwright, former Executive Director of Europol will talk about the problem and how we can make progress towards meeting our real goals in this area.

Enduring economic stagnation and increasing mistrust of politics is fuelling populism, nationalism, and cultural and religious clashes. It is indicative of increasing scepticism in government and bureaucracy among many Western democracies and youth especially. 

It would be a mistake, however, to overestimate the recent surge in nationalistic sentiment across Europe and North America, as deteriorating global crises and time itself may yet provide conditions for greater institutional enforcement and legal structures at the global level.

How does the ICRC get access in a climate of mistrust and work across frontlines, armed groups, and country borders to help those most in need?

Two days before Christmas of 2008, General Motors’ oldest operating assembly plant, in Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, shut down in the midst of the Great Recession. Thousands of jobs vanished from this small, proud city.

Amy Goldstein spent years immersed in Janesville to illuminate the human consequences of one of the nation’s biggest political issues. She takes readers deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians and job re-trainers to show why it’s so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a prosperous, healthy working class.

Janesville: An American Story was the 2017 winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Best Business Book. It also won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for narrative nonfiction and was named one of President Barack Obama’s top books of 2017.

The American presidency is at a crossroads. Significant turning points present themselves today – not just to President Trump and his team, but also to recent and future presidencies.

While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump promised to be a disrupter – to “shake up” American politics and policy – both at home and abroad. To what extent has this taken place? How have domestic and international forces shaped American politics? From NAFTA to TPP, what are the effects of a Trump presidency on global trade? What is America’s role in a changing international landscape?

Populism, the rise of an “us” and “them” mentality and technological “progress” are threatening democracy in unprecedented ways.

How close are we to slipping into a new political phase and what can we do to change the direction of travel? These are the questions that Elif Shafak – award-winning novelist, public intellectual and political commentator – will address as she seeks to answer the question: “Should we fight for democracy?”

China may well be the next economic and military superpower. In building that status, China’s leaders and people don’t just draw on visions of the future – they also look to the past.

China has been learning lessons from its searing experience in World War II when more than 10 million of its citizens died. It is rediscovering the thought of Confucius, the sage who gave China its cultural DNA. Its experience in the Korean War shapes its relationship with Kim Jong-un. And its Communist  Party will mark its 100th anniversary in 2021 by showing how it has changed from a tiny band of rebels to a machine that rules all China and influences the world.

In conjunction with Intelligence Squared we present James Comey in conversation with Emily Maitlis.

When President Trump sacked James Comey as FBI Director in May last year, he ignited a political firestorm with huge implications for American democracy. Comey’s dismissal led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to look at possible links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — an investigation which may bring to light dark secrets about President Trump and his close associates.

In today’s era of fake news, polarised politics and ‘alternative facts’ — when the truth itself often seems under attack — integrity, honesty and ethical leadership seem more important than ever. Comey, who served under four very different presidents, has witnessed and experienced the struggles that arise when patriotism and principles careen headlong into the partisanship that has gripped American politics.

In collaboration with how to: Academy we present an evening conversation between Former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright and award-winning journalist, Emily Maitlis.

The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left countless millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era.

In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright, draws on her own experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that very assumption. Fascism, as Albright shows, not only endured through the course of the twentieth century, but now presents a more virulent threat to international peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II.

To historians, the present-day rise of China and the re-emergence of other Asian countries is not something new, but a return to the patterns of the past.

In this event, Oxford Professor and international best-selling author, Peter Frankopan, will discuss how the world’s centre of gravity is moving back to where it lay for millennia, and what this means for the West.

Described as having “something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times Magazine, Joan C. Williams has played a central role in reshaping the conversation about work, gender, and class over the past quarter century.

In White Working Class she explains why so much of the elite’s analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in assumptions of what she has controversially called “class cluelessness”. She presents a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force.

News today is rife with stories about ‘big tech’, Russian hackers and Facebook’s growing role in politics – much of it well-trodden and repetitive – but underneath it all is a simple truth: digital technology and our democracy are incompatible. We must reform democracy and rein in digital disruption within the next twenty years or risk losing democracy for good.

In his latest book, Jamie Bartlett offers twenty bold, radical proposals on how to do this and reveals a comprehensive and often shocking roadmap of where democracy is heading: a techno-dystopia where freedom is traded for security and efficiency. Examining six ‘pillars’ of democracy he vividly illustrates how each is under threat from big data, AI, connectivity and smartphone addiction.

Those who championed globalization once promised a world of winners, one in which free trade would lift all the world’s boats, and extremes of left and right would give way to universally embraced liberal values. The past few years have shattered this fantasy, as those who’ve paid the price for globalism’s gains have turned to populist and nationalist politicians to express fury at the political, media, and corporate elites they blame for their losses.

Ian Bremmer shows in his eye-opening new book that populism is still spreading. Globalism creates plenty of both winners and losers, and those who’ve missed out want to set things right. They’ve begun to understand the world as a battle for the future that pits “us” vs. “them.”

When human beings feel threatened, we identify the danger and look for allies. We use the enemy, real or imagined, to rally friends to our side. This book is about the ways in which people will define these threats as fights for survival. It’s about the walls governments will build to protect insiders from outsiders and the state from its people.

And it’s about what we can do about it.

Modern warfare is a war of narratives, where bullets are fired both physically and virtually. Whether you are a president or a terrorist, if you don’t understand how to deploy the power of social media effectively you may win the odd battle but you will lose a twenty-first century war.

David’s book “chronicles the transformation of conflict via social media into an entirely new kind of struggle at home and abroad. It’s a thrilling headlong tide of real-life stories with genuinely profound moments of perception for our time.” (Forbes)

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a multilateral development bank with a mission to improve social and economic outcomes in Asia and beyond. Headquartered in Beijing, it commenced operations in January 2016 and has now grown to 84 approved members from around the world.

AIIB offers sovereign and non-sovereign financing for sound and sustainable projects in energy and power, transportation and telecommunications, rural infrastructure and agriculture development, water supply and sanitation, environmental protection, and urban development and logistics.

In collaboration with how to: Academy we present two of the greatest thought leaders of the 21st century coming together for an urgent conversation about the future of humanity.

In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari compressed 70,000 years of history into a single book, arguing that one species rose to dominance over all others because shared beliefs enabled collaboration.

In Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, he argued that the centre may be shifting once more, as we transfer our faith in ourselves to the gods of data and the algorithm.

Thomas Friedman has argued that the beginning of this century will be remembered not for conflicts or political events, but for the globalised ‘flattening’ of the world and the explosion of advanced technologies.

The cognitive revolution has already happened. What will our restless and aggressive species do about it?

How do we create a framework for government oversight of Big Tech that protects consumer and societal interests, curbs growth-dampening monopoly power, and allows us to keep the internet services we depend on?

Rana argues that we need to focus on the principles of transparency, simplicity and size. At this Pi event she will talk about what she means and what she believes should be the way forward.

Janan Ganesh is a columnist and associate editor for the Financial Times. He was previously political correspondent for the Economist for five years.

He has published a biography of George Osborne, the former chancellor of the exchequer, and is writing a novel about London.

Misha Glenny is a British journalist who specializes in south-eastern Europe and global organized crime. He is the author of McMafia, an exhaustive look at global organized crime and a critique of globalization’s dark side. His most recent book was DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You.

After university he joined The Guardian as its Central Europe correspondent and later the BBC. He specialised in reporting on the Balkans independence wars in the late 1980s and early 1990s that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. While at the BBC, Glenny won 1993’s Sony Gold Award for his ‘outstanding contribution to broadcasting’. He has also written three books about Central and Eastern Europe.

Glenny advised the US and some European governments on policy issues and for three years ran an NGO helping with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. He sits on the Global Witness Advisory Board.

Julia Gillard is Board Chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the only global fund solely dedicated to education, working with more than 80 developing countries. She accepted the role in 2014 after a distinguished career in public service in Australia, serving as Prime Minister between 2010 and 2013.

In her earlier ministerial roles, Ms Gillard delivered nation-changing policies including reforming Australia’s education policies at every level from early childhood to university education. In October 2012, she received worldwide attention for her speech in Parliament on the treatment of women in professional and public life.

Ms Gillard is Patron of CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education and is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.

If you can’t trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn’t the age of distrust – far from it.

In her latest book, Who Can You Trust?, Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history – with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their home to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot.

This is the age of ‘distributed trust’, a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired in the digital age.

At this time of heightened global tension, nuclear expert, Tom Plant, will talk about what is going on in North Korea and how the global community can best respond.

Robert Hannigan is a leading authority on cyber security, cyber conflict and the application of technology in national security.

As Director of GCHQ (2014-2017) Robert is credited with bringing greater openness, making the organization fit for the digital era and setting the Government’s ambition of making the UK ‘the safest place to live and do business online’.

He established the National Cyber Security Centre as part of GCHQ in 2016, having been responsible for the UK’s pathbreaking cyber strategy in 2009 and was also responsible for leading, with military colleagues, the national offensive cyber programme. He caused international controversy on his first day in office in 2014 by criticising Silicon Valley companies in the Financial Times, but he has also spoken at MIT in defence of strong encryption and US technology leadership.

Robert has spent much of his career in national security. He was the Prime Minister’s Security Adviser at No10 from 2007-10, with a particular focus on Islamist terrorism, and was responsible in the Cabinet Office for the Single Intelligence Account (covering MI5, GCHQ and SIS). He chaired ‘COBR’ through numerous crises and was a longstanding member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which he chaired in 2011-12.

He is a member of the Government’s new Defence Innovation Advisory Panel and one of the few foreign nationals to have been awarded the US National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, the leading global political risk research and consulting firm. He is a prolific thought leader and author, regularly expressing his views on political issues in public speeches, television appearances, and top publications. Dubbed the “rising guru” in the field of political risk by The Economist, he teaches classes on the discipline as Global Research Professor at New York University.

Bremmer has published nine books including the national bestsellers Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World and The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? He is a regular columnist for Reuters and the Financial Times A-List, and has written hundreds of articles for many leading publications.

Bremmer earned a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1994 and was the youngest-ever national fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2007, Bremmer was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, where he is the founding chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk.  He is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and serves on the President’s Council of the Near East Foundation, the Leadership Council for Concordia and the Board of Trustees of Intelligence Squared.

Andrew McAfee (@amcafee), a principal research scientist at MIT, studies how digital technologies are changing business, the economy, and society.

His most recent book, written with Erik Brynjolfsson, is Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future.  Their 2014 book on these topics, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Financial Times / McKinsey business book of the year award.

McAfee has written for publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall St. Journal, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. He’s talked about his work on The Charlie Rose Show and 60 Minutes, at TED, Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and in front of many other audiences.

He was educated at Harvard and MIT, where he is the co-founder of the Institute’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

On the morning following the first US Presidential debate, Ian will share his thoughts on the US election and what it means for investment and the global economy, as well as provide a broad geopolitical update.

Is Wall Street bad for American business? According to Rana Foroohar, eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned—and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. She argues that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis, and that the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly toppled the global financial system have come to infiltrate all American businesses, putting us on a collision course for another cataclysmic meltdown.

Drawing on in-depth reporting and exclusive interviews at the highest rungs of Wall Street and Washington, Rana Foroohar shows how the “financialization of America”— the trend by which finance and its way of thinking have come to reign supreme—is perpetuating Wall Street’s reign over Main Street, widening the gap between rich and poor, and threatening the future of the American Dream.

The world’s greatest superpower is at a crossroads. No longer defined by its part in WWII and the Cold War struggle, America’s role and identity are in flux – and with them, the balance of global power.

International foreign policies are often defined by their attitudes to the US, and according to political scientist Ian Bremmer, America is facing three options: become completely independent; be a moneyball that defends its interests wherever threatened; or stay internationally indispensable. As the 2016 elections approach, America must choose the road for its future – and so define a new era for international politics