A Whirlwind Week in New York City

I returned to London this morning after a tremendous week in New York, where I’ve been talking non-stop about my new book Make, Think, Imagine. 

Over the past four days I have criss-crossed Manhattan Island, from Battery Park in the South to Columbia University high up-town and Hudson Yards in the west to the lower East Side. I’ve been in at least a dozen studios, recording 6 live TV shows, 2 radio shows and 4 podcasts, conducted 4 events as well as numerous business meetings. This has all been against a tumultuous backdrop of international news, from the unfolding madness of Brexit to the escalation of events in Hong Kong and the US/China trade war. All of this chaos and complexity only served to reinforce my will to emphasise my book’s simple core message: engineering is a huge force for the good. It is the lifeblood of civilisation and the key to solving all of our world’s biggest problems.

Tuesday morning started with a great conversation with Prof Jason Bordoff at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. Then it was to the NPR studios in midtown for a free-ranging interview with Joshua Johnson, host of the 1A show. Listen here. After that it was across the Hudson River to the enormous CNBC studios in New Jersey for Power Lunch, where as well as talking about the book, I did my best to decode Brexit for anchors Kelly Evans and Melissa Lee. You can watch it here. 

I was up long before dawn on Wednesday for an hour long segment on Bloomberg TV Surveillance with Tom Keene and Nejra Cecic (watch part of it here). After that fast-paced and news-focussed session, the detailed interview for Bloomberg’s Masters in Business podcast was a welcome contrast. As well as talking about Make, Think, Imagine, the insightful Barry Ritholtz and I explored themes from all of my previous books and drew all the threads together to see the bigger picture. The link will appear here when it is out.

Next, the segment at Yahoo! Finance was probably the most efficient piece of TV I’ve ever done. I was in and out the studio building within about ten minutes, with all the key messages delivered! Watch here.

It was then back up north to Columbia University for an event hosted by Prof Jon Elkind. A packed room, great questions and all books available sold out. You can watch again here.

Thursday morning was an event at Citi in their newly-refurbished HQ and then an interview with BNN Bloomberg, Canada’s major business and finance TV network. Watch here.

A new experience next at a new TV station: Cheddar TV, which is aimed squarely at millennial audience. My segment was sandwiched between interviews with the ghost hunters Colby and Sam (who are a YouTube sensation with millions of viewers) and the intriguing Dr Pimple Popper (yes, she really does make dermatology into live TV). Great fun! Watch it here.

Then there was just time for a quick radio interview with the Joe Donaghue on WAMC before being interviewed by Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Yergin at IHS Markit.

First thing Friday was another detailed and well-paced interview with Antony Currie for the Reuters Podcast The Exchange. You will be able to get it here when it goes out later this month.

After that another interview and another podcast with the American Society for Mechanical Engineers, before the day’s biggest event.

The week ended with a bang with my interview with Christiane Amanpour for CNN. Incisive and rigorous as ever, Christiane focused the discussion on climate change. As you may have seen on Twitter, I am indeed in full agreement with a key point made by Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren this week. In my book reducing carbon dioxide and methane emissions is the bottom line and everything else, be it better lightbulbs or bans on plastic straws, is peripheral to this central issue. I hope I made it totally clear that this is a problem we really can solve though. We have the engineered tools we need to confront it and we now need public policy – ideally in the shape of progressive carbon taxation, at a sufficiently high level – to incentivise massive deployment of low carbon and carbon-negative technologies. I’m confident that these policies will be put in place as society at large becomes ever more concerned about the changing climate. Watch it here.

Am I exhausted after such a hectic week? Maybe a little, I must admit. But much more than that I feel enthused and reinvigorated. New York City is as dynamic and inspiring as ever and wherever I went I found people receptive to the important ideas I discuss in my book. Engineering has been the engine of human civilisation in the past and we must use it to power even more dramatic progress in the years to come.