Prospect's List of Top Public Intellectuals

World thinkers 2015: the results | Prospect Magazine

© MAJA ERIKSSON / DN / TT/TT News Agency/Press Association Images

1. Thomas Piketty
2. Yanis Varoufakis
3. Naomi Klein
4. Russell Brand
5. Paul Krugman
6. Arundhati Roy
7. Jürgen Habermas
8. Daniel Kahneman
9. John Gray
10. Atul Gawande

For me, the utility of the list is in identifying where I've got blind spots, because there are six names on that list I couldn't enter into a discussion about. So, I'll do my homework, and a few weeks from now and I'll be able to speak, at least minimally, off-the-cuff about what each contributes to our public dialogue.

Elizabeth Warren, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Sam Harris are three I'd have started with along with Piketty, Brand (well, honestly, I'm not sure I would've listed Brand on my own -- not because he doesn't articulate an important worldview, but because the trappings of celebrity distract from it), Krugman, and Gray.