Tyler Cowen is one of today’s foremost communicators of economic ideas, and is the author of several books including The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. Cowan argues Americans are in a period of stagnation because they are doing less and less of what made them successful in the past.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game. Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments and propagate religious faiths. He is Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU and a scientific advisor for Universa Investments.

Have smartphones destroyed a generation? Dr Jean Twenge examines the positive and negative effects of phone use and social media, and argues that millennials’ everyday experiences are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a few years before them.

Up until recently, US antitrust laws have been ambivalent about “data-oplies”. Maurice Stucke is a tenured law professor at the University of Tennessee with 20 years’ experience handling a range of competition policy issues in private practice and as a prosecutor at the US Department of Justice.

Creative tour de force Jonathan Taplin is Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, and a former tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band, as well as a film producer for Martin Scorsese. An expert in digital-media entertainment, Taplin will share takeaways as captured in his book, Move Fast and Break Things.

Data scientist at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Michal Kosinki focuses on studying people through the lenses of digital footprints left behind while using digital platforms and devices. His recent work covers deep neural networks and facial recognition that expose humans’ sensitive traits.

Award-winning roboticist, filmmaker and UC Berkeley engineering professor Ken Goldberg combines compelling images and videos in a dynamic presentation on emerging AI and robotics technologies, sharing insights about what isn’t new, what is new, and how we can prepare for the future.

The uniform failure of recent drug trials in Alzheimer’s disease has highlighted the critical need for a more accurate understanding of the fundamental nature of this debilitating disease. Dr Dale Bredesen’s research has transformed the understanding and treatment of the disease. He is the author of The End of Alzheimer’s.

National Security Correspondent for The Washington Post, Souad Mekhennet shares from her evocative memoir, I Was Told To Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad, of her compelling and often chilling account of how she reached out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates.