As for climate change, it's by now widely accepted by the scientific community that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the Earth's climate is being radically modified by human action, creating a very different planet, one that may not be able to sustain organized human life in anything like a form we would want to tolerate.

The worst drug of all by far is tobacco; the death toll from tobacco is just overwhelming.

We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid.

People don't talk to each other. You're alone with your television set or internet. But you can't have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don't do it alone.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev's willingness to accept Kennedy's hegemonic demands.

One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of politics, as he calls it - very outstanding political economist - which essentially - I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.

It makes sense to work towards a better world, but it doesn't make any sense to have illusions about what the real world is.