Thought Leaders

Is This the Rights' Fight? Wrong Turn on Right 5: Charlie Kirk Case, Prosecutor Disqualification, and Israel Debate
Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security attorney based in New York and Connecticut. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in National and Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006, followed by a Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She operates a boutique national security law practice. She serves as President of Scarab Rising, Inc., a media and security strategic advisory firm. Additionally, she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider, which focuses on foreign policy, geopolitics, security, and human rights. She is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the American Bar Association’s Energy, Environment, and Science and Technology Sections, where she serves as Program Vice Chair in the Oil and Gas Committee. She is also a member of the New York City Bar Association. She serves on the Middle East and North Africa Affairs Committee and affiliates with the Foreign and Comparative Law Committee.
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen13 days ago in Interview
Urban Designer Sakshi Nanda Discusses Her Roots and the Inspiration Behind Her Work
Urban designer Sakshi Nanda carries a unique perspective when it comes to city planning. Having grown up in the vibrant, densely populated streets of Mumbai her views have been honed by her experiences in the sprawling city of Atlanta and planned city of Portland. During her formative years, Nanda witnessed the transformative power of efficient public transportation through Mumbai’s famed local train system, and now, in her professional life, she strives to recreate that sense of a connected, sustainable community.
By Lisa Rosenberg14 days ago in Interview
Inside Oprah Winfrey’s Anti-Aging Lifestyle: How She Slows Time Through Habits, Not Age
There’s a certain stillness to Oprah Winfrey that people notice before they ever comment on how she looks. A steadiness. A calm authority that doesn’t rush to fill silence. When conversations turn to aging, this is usually where they land—not on numbers, not on years, but on presence.
By Darryl Hudson14 days ago in Interview
William Stern on Community, Jewish Values, and Leadership at Cardiff
William Stern is a finance entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Cardiff, a B2B financing firm operating in North America, Portugal, and Israel. He launched Cardiff in 2004 after seeing many small and lower-middle-market businesses struggle to secure timely, cost-effective capital. Stern emphasizes transparency in rates and margins, relationship-based underwriting, and “ethical financing with a soul,” often using phone conversations rather than purely automated decisions. He describes leadership as a series of consistent, small actions that compound over time. Inside Cardiff, he favours frequent check-ins over annual reviews to support employees as whole people and to protect trust with customers, applicants, and stakeholders.
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen14 days ago in Interview
10 Minutes with Bill Gates
Introduction Spending 10 minutes with Bill Gates may sound brief, but even a short conversation with one of the world’s most influential innovators can offer insights that last a lifetime. As the co-founder of Microsoft, a philanthropist, an author, and a global thought leader, Bill Gates has shaped how the world uses technology and how it addresses some of its most pressing challenges. In just ten minutes, one could explore decades of experience in innovation, leadership, failure, success, and global responsibility.
By shaoor afridi22 days ago in Interview
Fumfer Physics 36: Proto-Thoughts, Context, and Memory Hooks
Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks whether it is naïve to look for a discrete “unit” of thought, given that thoughts vary in informational content and rarely arrive as neat sentences. Rick Rosner argues that language captures only a thin slice of cognition: perception, background knowledge, self-critique, and half-formed associations run in parallel as “proto-thoughts.” He uses the example of viewing a painting to show how sensory input and contextual inference accompany any sentence-like notion. Most thoughts, he adds, pass without leaving retrieval “hooks,” much like dreams. Without deliberate encoding—or a later contextual trigger—mental material vanishes, because recall depends on activating the right associative patterns.
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen26 days ago in Interview
Igor Finkelshtein: What Long-Term Builders Know That Fast-Growth Founders Often Miss
In today’s entrepreneurial culture, speed is often treated as the ultimate indicator of success. Founders are encouraged to move fast, launch quickly, and scale before competitors catch up. But after years of building businesses in industries where reliability and trust matter more than headlines, I’ve learned a different lesson.
By Igor Finkelshtein28 days ago in Interview
Fumfer Physics 35: Cognitive Limits, Big Data, and AI’s Role in Human Reasoning
In this exchange, Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks what human consciousness cannot process adequately. Rick Rosner argues that people hit hard limits with big data, large parameter spaces, and even simple mental representations like number grids. Computers can find correlations, but humans struggle to hold enough information at once to test whether patterns are causal. Rosner suggests AI could surface correlations and generate wide-ranging analogies across culture at superhuman scale, while humans remain responsible for interpretation and meaning. He extends the point to scientific imagination—alternative cosmologies and modified-gravity ideas—and notes AI may help break cognitive ruts, even if it is not yet a top-tier theoretical mathematician.
By Scott Douglas Jacobsenabout a month ago in Interview
T. Michael W. Halcomb on Disillusionment, Community, and Accountability in the Modern Church
T. Michael W. Halcomb is an American professor, author, podcaster, and stand-up comedian. He is the author of around 30 books, an educator with five degrees (including a PhD), and a frequent academic presenter with nearly 100 conference presentations. He co-founded GlossaHouse in 2012, a publishing house focused on language-learning resources, especially biblical languages. He gave a TEDx talk, "Silent no more: Resurrecting dead languages," in Evansville, IN in October of 2015. His comedy work has been featured in outlets such as Yahoo! Entertainment, TheWrap, and The Mirror US.
By Scott Douglas Jacobsenabout a month ago in Interview
E-commerce prototyping with generative AI
The trouble with most ecom prototypes is that they either illustrate a concept but fail to generate decisions. A good prototype offers a quantifiable journey that shows where buyers drop off, what they don’t understand, and what they’re willing to pay for.
By Joseph Morrowabout a month ago in Interview
Ben Sasse Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis: Former Senator's Stage 4 Health Update
In a raw and deeply personal announcement that has resonated far beyond the political arena, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse revealed a devastating health update: he has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The 53-year-old Republican stated plainly, “I’m gonna die,” framing his prognosis within a universal truth about mortality. This news about the Ben Sasse pancreatic cancer battle has shifted conversations from political tactics to profound human vulnerability.
By Waqar Khanabout a month ago in Interview
Susie Wiles Speaks Out: Inside the Vanity Fair Interview That Sparked Headlines. AI-Generated.
Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, recently made headlines after a candid interview with Vanity Fair. Parts of that interview were shared in an ABC News video and quickly spread across major news outlets. Her comments drew attention because she spoke openly about powerful people in the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
By jamali shahzaib2 months ago in Interview