A Historical Perspective on Progress and Human Agency

This week’s guest is best known for hijacking a panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, where he told a room full of billionaires to stop avoiding taxes. He now claims that this form of protest has been proven ineffective in the struggle for progress. The last 25 years have seen some of the biggest protests in history, yet we’ve seen wars erupt and inequality widen.

With his new book, ‘Moral Ambition’, Rutger Bregman lays out a history of how societal change actually happens, and how we can learn from the agentic groups of thoughtful individuals who improved our civilisation.

In conversation with Aaron Bastani he discusses the true origins of abolitionism, what the left gets wrong about Elon Musk and why we might actually see the end of history.