Universal basic income. A 15-hour work week. Open borders.

These ideas may strike you as crazy, fantastical, maybe even utopian... but that’s exactly the point.

My guest today is Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, whose book Utopia for Realists is not only about utopian visions but about the importance of utopian thinking. Imagining utopia, he writes, “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.”

He’s right. And so this isn’t just a conversation about his utopia, or mine. It’s a conversation about how to think like a utopian, and why doing so matter most when the days feel particularly dystopic.

Citations:

The Lost Boys by Gina Perry

"Socially Useless Jobs" by Robert Dur and Max van Lent

"Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" by John Maynard Keynes

"I was a fast-food worker. Let me tell you about burnout." by Emily Guendelsberger

Book Recommendations:

Bullshit Jobs and Debt by David Graeber

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato

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The Ezra Klein Show has been nominated for best Society- culture podcast in this year’s People’s Choice Podcast Awards! Cast your vote for The Ezra Klein Show at https://www.podcastawards.com/app/signup before July 31st. One vote per category.

Please send guest suggestions for our upcoming series on climate change to ezrakleinshow@vox.com

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The History of a Lie

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