Thriving in the Age of Acceleration
Presenter:
Thomas Friedman
Time:
1:25:14
Summary
He has been called ‘the most influential columnist in America’, and is read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama. As a star columnist of The New York Times, Thomas Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. Although he has been dubbed ‘the high priest of globalisation’, Friedman is well aware that it is the tensions created by globalisation which have paved the way for the election of Donald Trump. Nevertheless, when he comes to the Intelligence Squared stage, Friedman will argue that contrary to Trump’s promises of walls and tariffs, it is openness to trade and ideas that will allow us all to thrive amid the rapid, startling changes sweeping through the world. .
Transcript
How lovely to see everyone here. Um, nice of you to come. Ladies and gents. Normally, I suppose we would kick off an evening like this with an introduction that broadly said “Thomas Friedman is a three times Pulitzer Prize winner. He's described as America's most influential columnist, and he's a best-selling author as well”, but as befits the time.
So I think it's better for me just to say that we've got the best speaker. He's fantastic. Thank you. You'll never hear a better speaker than this. Thank you. He's genuinely; he's the best. The others were losers. They're sad. They're dead now. And this building has never been fuller. We've never seen a bigger crowd.