'The Interview': Rutger Bregman Wants to Save Elites From Their Wasted Lives

Summary

Summary of "The Interview: Rutger Bregman Wants to Save Elites From Their Wasted Lives"

Episode Release Date: May 17, 2025
Host: David Marchese
Guest: Rutger Bregman
Podcast: The Daily by The New York Times

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Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, host David Marchese engages in a profound conversation with Rutger Bregman, a renowned historian and author known for his optimistic views on humanity and his advocacy for social change. Bregman discusses his latest book, "Moral: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference," which aims to inspire high-achieving individuals to transition from conventional, often unfulfilling careers into roles that contribute meaningfully to society.

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1. The Core Message of "Moral: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference"

[02:48] Rutger Bregman:
"I wanted to learn more about them. But as I was studying some of their biographies, I experienced this emotion that I sometimes like to describe as moral envy, where you're just standing on the sidelines and you're just wishing like, gosh, wouldn't it be awesome to actually be in the arena, to actually have some skin in the game?"

Bregman's new book addresses his personal frustration with advocating for social good without actively participating in it. He introduces the concept of "moral ambition," urging privileged and talented individuals to leverage their skills for societal benefit rather than pursuing lucrative yet morally hollow careers.

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2. Transitioning from Awareness to Action

[04:12] Rutger Bregman:
"We like to see ourselves as the Robin Hoods of talent. Robin Hood famously took away the money from the rich. Well, we take away the talent from the rich."

Having recognized the limitations of merely raising awareness, Bregman took concrete steps by co-founding the School for Moral Ambition. This institution serves as an incubator for fostering positive social impact, encouraging individuals from prestigious backgrounds (e.g., Harvard) to redirect their careers toward pressing global challenges instead of traditional corporate paths.

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3. Overcoming Materialism and Redefining Success

[05:25] Rutger Bregman:
"If people really desperately want to work for McKinsey and their main goal in life is to go skiing as often as possible and to have that nice little cottage on the beach, sure, fine. People have the right to be a little bit boring."

Bregman acknowledges the allure of material success but emphasizes the untapped potential of those who might feel unfulfilled by their corporate roles. He draws historical parallels with British abolitionists and American reformers like Theodore Roosevelt and Elva Vanderbilt, illustrating how affluent individuals can pivot toward morally ambitious endeavors that effect significant societal change.

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4. Cultural Shifts and the Decline of Moral Ambition

[07:30] Rutger Bregman:
"The numbers have basically reversed. For me, that shows that this is not human nature, it is culture. It can change."

Citing the American Freshman Survey, Bregman highlights a troubling trend: the prioritization of financial gain over meaningful life goals has intensified over the past few decades. He argues that this shift is culturally driven and not an inherent aspect of human nature, offering hope that societal values can be realigned toward greater moral ambition.

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5. Measuring Success and Choosing Cause Areas

[09:01] Rutger Bregman:
"So, fighting Big Tobacco came out on top. A lot of people think that we've already won this fight. That, you know, that was something we did in the 90s, which is not true at all."

In determining the effectiveness of the School for Moral Ambition, Bregman emphasizes the importance of selecting cause areas that are tractable, neglected, and significant. Contrary to popular belief, fighting the tobacco industry remains a critical and underserved area, prompting the organization to deploy dedicated teams to reduce smoking rates and enforce stricter regulations.

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6. Defining Morally Ambitious Behavior

[10:03] Rutger Bregman:
"It’s a mix of idealism and vanity... you might as well not have existed."

Bregman delves into the complexities of moral ambition, using the example of Thomas Clarkson, a British abolitionist who exemplified unwavering dedication despite personal costs. He acknowledges the risk of burnout but posits that channeling one’s efforts into meaningful work is preferable to unfulfilling careers, even if it demands significant personal sacrifice.

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7. Left vs. Right: Moral Ambition in Political Movements

[15:59] Rutger Bregman:
"Ralph Nader in the late 60s and the 70s built this incredible movement... They had their fingerprints on at least 25 pieces of federal legislation."

Bregman contrasts the moral ambition seen in historical left-leaning movements with the strategic perseverance of contemporary right-wing movements. He admires the latter's ability to build extensive networks and ecosystems, citing efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and likening them to campaigns led by Ralph Nader. He challenges the left to adopt similar strategies to amplify their impact.

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8. Reimagining Masculinity and Broadening Moral Narratives

[17:24] Rutger Bregman:
"I think there is something like that. I would call it heroic masculinity... using what you have, your power, your privilege, whatever, to help others."

Addressing the lack of positive male role models, Bregman advocates for "heroic masculinity"—a form of masculinity that harnesses power and privilege to aid others. He emphasizes the need for diverse and inspiring narratives to counteract toxic masculinity and engage younger men in morally ambitious endeavors.

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9. The Role of Intellectual Honesty in Moral Advocacy

[19:26] Rutger Bregman:
"If you're really morally serious, then you don't care about your own purity or your own opinions. No, you actually want to do good."

Bregman underscores the importance of intellectual honesty and openness to revising one's beliefs in the pursuit of genuine social good. He highlights the necessity of abandoning ineffective or harmful initiatives, drawing attention to the ethical responsibility of recognizing and rectifying mistakes.

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10. The Urgency of Addressing Global Inequality and Preventable Suffering

[35:57] Rutger Bregman:
"We live in a world where kids die from easily preventable disease every single day. That's outrageous."

Bregman passionately addresses global inequalities, pointing out that vast portions of the world's population live in extreme poverty and suffer from preventable diseases. He calls for leveraging technological advancements, such as AI, to distribute resources more equitably and eliminate poverty, envisioning a future where such systemic issues are resolved.

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11. Personal Journey and Moral Shifts

[37:44] Rutger Bregman:
"I was a very lazy boy in high school... my definition of success changed once again once I achieved those first dreams."

Reflecting on his personal evolution, Bregman shares his transformation from a disengaged student to a passionate advocate for social change. His experiences with education, wealth, and writing have continually reshaped his understanding of success, driving him to seek greater societal impact beyond personal achievements.

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12. Overcoming Tribalism and Building Inclusive Coalitions

[21:13] Rutger Bregman:
"Building coalitions is absolutely essential to getting things done."

Bregman emphasizes the necessity of transcending tribalism to effectively combat injustice. He draws parallels with historical movements, where alliances across differing groups led to substantial legislative and societal advancements. He advocates for inclusive and strategic coalition-building to enhance the efficacy of moral advocacy.

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Conclusion

Rutger Bregman's interview on The Daily offers a compelling exploration of moral ambition and the imperative for society's privileged individuals to redirect their talents toward meaningful social change. Through historical examples, personal anecdotes, and strategic insights, Bregman outlines a roadmap for fostering a more equitable and purposeful world. His emphasis on intellectual honesty, coalition-building, and redefining success serves as a call to action for listeners to engage actively in shaping a better future.

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Notable Quotes:

• Rutger Bregman [02:48]:
  "I quit that project and was like, okay, I'm going to write almost like a self help book that will make my own life more difficult because once I've finished it, you know, I'm going to be the first person who will actually follow its guidance."

• David Marchese [07:30]:
  "Tax the rich and kill the patriarchy gets you a lot of likes on Instagram, I guess. But do you actually achieve anything?"

• Rutger Bregman [19:26]:
  "If you're really morally serious, then you don't care about your own purity or your own opinions. No, you actually want to do good."

• Rutger Bregman [35:57]:
  "We live in a world where kids die from easily preventable disease every single day. That's outrageous."

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For full access to this episode and more insightful conversations, subscribe to The New York Times podcasts at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Transcript

[Lulu]

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[David Marchese]

Before we get into today's episode, I.

[Lulu]

Want to let you know about something really exciting we have coming up here at the Interview.

[David Marchese]

It's our first ever live show.

[Lulu]

It'll be at the Tribeca Festival in New York City on Thursday, June 12. I'll be talking with actor Sandra oh. You might know her, of course, from Grey's Anatomy or Killing Eve. I'm really looking forward to it. And I'm really looking forward to seeing you there. Tickets are on sale [e-mail] theinterview okay, now onto the show. Here's David.

[David Marchese]

From the New York Times. This is the Interview. I'm David Marchese. I bet we all know plenty of smart, accomplished and ambitious people whose ambitions start and stop with themselves. For Rucker Bregman, those people represent a potentially world changing opportunity. Bregman is a historian and writer who has written best selling books arguing that the world is better than we're typically led to believe and also that making it even better and more equitable is within our reach. Sounds a little off these days, doesn't it? Even Bregman is willing to admit that the arguments in his first two books, which are 2020's Humankind and 2017's Utopia for Realists, land a little less convincingly today than when they were first published. But his new book, Moral Stop Wasting youg Talent and Start Making a Difference is his attempt to meet the current moment by redirecting self interest into a kind of social good. He's trying to incentivize the kind of people I mentioned earlier, society's brightest and most privileged, to turn away from what he sees as meaningless and hollow, albeit lucrative white collar jobs in favor of far more exciting and even self aggrandizing work that has the possibility of changing the world. That's also the driving idea behind a school he's co founded called the School for Moral Ambition, which you can think of as a kind of incubator for positive social impact. The big question for me, the source of some real skepticism is how exactly he plans on convincing people to make that change and rethink their own values. Here's my conversation with Rutger Bregman. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I appreciate it.

[Rutger Bregman]

Thanks for having me, David.

[David Marchese]

So your new book is essentially an argument for why and how talented, high achieving people should direct their energies toward doing more good in the world, towards more morally ambitious behavior. Do you see your writing as morally ambitious?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, look, the reason I wrote this book was that I actually became a little bit frustrated with myself. I had a little bit of an early midlife crisis because I was mainly spending time in this quote, unquote awareness business. You know, you write articles, you write books, you try to convince people of certain opinions and then you hope that some other people will do the actual work of making the world a better place. And at the time, I was working on a new book about the great moral pioneers of the past. You know, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the. I wanted to learn more about them. But as I was studying some of their biographies, I experienced this emotion that I sometimes like to describe as moral envy, where you're just standing on the sidelines and you're just wishing like, gosh, wouldn't it be awesome to actually be in the arena, to actually have some skin in the game? So that's when I quit that project and was like, okay, I'm going to write almost like a self help book that will make my own life more difficult because once I've finished it, you know, I'm going to be the first person who will actually follow its guidance.

[David Marchese]

So what steps have you taken since writing the book to get off the sidelines into the arena?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, I basically quit my job, so I'm now an entrepreneur. I co founded the School for Moral Ambition, which is an organization that helps as many people as possible to devote their career to some of the most pressing challenges we face as a species. So we like to see ourselves as the Robin Hoods of talent. Robin Hood famously took away the money from the rich. Well, we take away the talent from the rich. So, yeah. For example, we were recently invited by a couple of students at Harvard who are excited to start a Harvard chapter around the idea of moral ambition. And I think that's quite fitting because like, okay, here you have the most prestigious university in the world and 45% of graduates end up in consultancy or finance. Right. It's an extraordinary waste of talent.

[David Marchese]

I saw that statistic in your book. I was surprised that the Number was as high as 45%. But of course, materialism is real. Sure, a desire for status is real. People want to make money. They want to be well financially compensated. So how do you incentivize someone who might otherwise be tempted to go into, you know, a line of work that I think you see as basically morally vacuous at best? How would you incentivize them to instead pick a career that is morally ambitious?

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, well, look, it's a free country. So if people really desperately want to work for McKinsey and their main goal in life is to go skiing as often as possible and to have that nice little cottage on the beach, sure, fine. People have the right to be a little bit boring. But I think there are quite a few people out there who indeed may be working at, say, Goldman Sachs or Boston Consultant Group who have this nagging feeling, who are looking for a way out. One of the case studies in the book is about the British abolitionists. And it was really surprising for me when I discovered that of the British Society for the Abolition of the slave trade, there, 12 founders and 10 out of 12 were entrepreneurs. So these were people who had climbed the traditional ladder of success. They were quite wealthy, they were successful. But the reason we remember them today is because they became very morally ambitious. And there's another period where this happened in the U.S. the move from the Gilded Era to the Progressive Era is, I think, a really good example where you really had some figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, obviously Louis Brandes, or I was recently reading about Elva Vanderbilt, fascinating character, who at first was this very decadent woman, incredibly rich, but then later in her life, after she divorced her Vanderbilt husband, she became a pretty radical suffragette and one of the main financiers of the Women's Right movement. She reminded me a little bit of someone like Mackenzie Scott today, who divorced Jeff Bezos and now is one of the most morally ambitious philanthropists in the US So, like a decade ago, people like me were told to check our privilege, right? Which is important. It's important to be aware of how privileged you are. But I think it's also very important to actually use it.

[David Marchese]

You know, the sort of the dismissal of people's career choices as boring or the idea that, you know, if they're pursuing material wealth, you know, you're sort of holding your nose about them. And there is sort of that tone of light sarcasm or a snideness that shows up in the book also. And I was wondering, why make the choice to communicate that way?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, it works quite well, David. Does it? Yeah. So it's been funny. I've gotten most pushback actually from people on the left on this book. And not so much from, you know, these people stuck in a corporate job. They very quickly agree. Actually, these are people, you know, who wrote these application essays about how they were going to solve some of the biggest problems in the world. You know, they wanted to work at the UN solving world hunger, but then something happened along the way and many of them really wonder, how do I get out what has gone wrong here? And look, I agree with you that financial incentives obviously play a big role here, but it's not the only thing. And I would even argue it's not the most important thing. So if you go back a couple of decades in American history, students had a very different attitude. So there's this study called the American Freshman Survey. It's been done since the late 60s. And at that time, when students were asked about their most important life goals, about 80 to 90% said that developing a meaningful philosophy of life was their most important life goal. And today that's just 50%. Now in the 60s, only 50% said making as much money as possible was a really important life goal to them. Today, that's 80 to 90%. So the numbers have basically reversed. For me, that shows that this is not human nature, it is culture. It can change. And there are examples in history where it has changed. So that makes me hopeful that we can do it again.

[David Marchese]

Yeah. What are the metrics you'll use or how will you determine whether or not you're school is successful?

[Rutger Bregman]

So it begins with selecting cause areas. In Europe, we started with fighting the tobacco industry, which was a big surprise for me, actually. But our researchers convinced us that this is one of the most neglected challenges we face. So it's the single largest preventable cause of disease. Eight million deaths still every year. And the number is going up in quite a few lower income countries or middle income countries. And there are very few people working on it. So. Yeah, what does success look like? Well, making a substantial difference, of course. Smoking rates got to go down. We need stricter, better regulation. So we did start last year in Brussels. And we send two small SWAT teams of dedicated lobbyists, lawyers, campaigners to make a big difference there. And now the plan is to do the same thing here in the US and in Canada.

[David Marchese]

And how does one determine for themselves what counts as sufficiently ambitious moral behavior?

[Rutger Bregman]

So one of the main characters in the book is this guy called Thomas Clarkson, British abolitionist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's become sort of my personal hero, even though he's now dead. For two centuries, he participated in an essay contest at Cambridge University. And just by chance, he had to answer this question, is it okay to own other human beings? He had never really thought about the question, did his research, won first prize. And then after he had attended the prize ceremony in Cambridge, he went back on his horse to London where he lived. And he was still thinking about the essay and was like, if this is actually true, then shouldn't someone do something about it? And he steps off his horse and he's like, well, maybe I gotta be the one to do it. And you can clearly see this mix of idealism and vanity within him. On the one hand, Yassi deeply cares about the suffering of enslaved people. But yeah, he's also a little bit of a vain man. He likes to see himself as that historical hero who devotes his life to this great quest of abolishing slavery. And in the first seven years, he traveled 35,000 miles across the United Kingdom on horse.

[David Marchese]

This guy can't be the benchmark. That's really the heart of my question.

[Rutger Bregman]

I'm almost getting there. So after seven years of doing that, he had an utter and total nervous breakdown. What we would call a burnout today. So he was really gone, basically. And when I read that, I was like, okay, Thomas, you should have done your breathing exercises, right? So, yeah, he took it a little bit too far. But let's be honest. Today a lot of people get a burnout while they do jobs they don't really like all that much or that don't really contribute all that much to the welfare of the world. So if we're going to get a burnout anyway, we might as well do something useful.

[David Marchese]

But I think part of the question is I'll take myself as an example. So I do a handful of charitable or altruistic works, you know, all of which I do in my spare time. They don't really impinge on my life in any way. I am strategic about giving to charity, but not at a level where it affects day to day purchases I might make or something like that. And I think, presumably, certainly if someone like Thomas Clarkson is the model, that is wildly insufficient. If my goal is to in any way help bring about a better world, am I really prepared to do more than that? I don't know. But I would like someone, maybe someone like you to help me better understand, like, what is the level at which I can say I'm doing enough.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, yeah. I come Back to this quote from Margaret Mead again and again. You know, the very famous quote, Never doubt the power of a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. And that quote is usually being used by starry eyed idealists who say, look, we can do this. It's only a few of us now, but we can make a difference. But I always felt that it's a really brutal quote.

[David Marchese]

Why?

[Rutger Bregman]

Because she's basically saying that the vast majority of people don't change the world. The vast majority of people are just living their lives and not doing all that much. Look, I used to think about this quite differently. I used to have a more Marxist approach to history. If you would have asked me something like, oh, why was slavery abolished? In the end? I would have said, well, yeah, probably the Industrial Revolution, right? Probably it wasn't profitable anymore. Well, to the contrary, it was actually abolished at the height of its profitability and it was incredibly contingent. And if a couple of people like Thomas Clarkson would have fallen off their horse in the year 1786 or a little bit earlier, then that would have been very bad news. The history could have looked very differently.

[David Marchese]

And you know, the book also has this implicit idea that there is a deficit of moral ambition. But I want to press on that a little because one could say that the movement to overturn Roe versus Wade was a morally motivated movement.

[Rutger Bregman]

Oh, absolutely.

[David Marchese]

One could also maybe would take a little fancy footwork. But one could argue that, you know, what happened on January 6th was a morally driven movement. So what do you think would account for the possibility that moral ambition on the right seems to be more ascendant at the moment or maybe more effectively utilized than moral ambition on the left?

[Rutger Bregman]

So I've got one chapter in the book about Nader's Raiders. You know, Ralph Nader in the late 60s and the 70s built this incredible movement of young people who were like, we're not gonna go work for some boring corporate law firm. We're gonna go to Washington to lobby for the good cause. And there's one historian who estimates that they had their fingerprints on at least 25 pieces of federal legislation. The Clean Air act, the Clean Water act, that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It's really a beautiful example of what moral ambition can mean in practice. And at some point, a third of Harvard Law School applied to work for Ralph Nader, to just go and work 100 hours a week for a pretty small salary because it was just the very coolest thing you could do. Now, right wingers looked at that model very carefully, and, yeah, some historians would argue that that was like the beginning of the corporate takeover of America, where they built this huge network of think tanks, you know, the Heritage foundation and the Federalist Society and the Super PACs, and you name it. And I think it's pretty clear that I disagree with most of their goals, but I'm somewhat in awe of that perseverance, because that is really what it takes. Take the movement against Roe v. Wade. They built a whole network of 5,000 clerks and lawyers and did so many strategic lawsuits. And that all culminated in the moment of the Dobbs decision, of course. I mean, that's what it takes. It's about building a whole ecosystem.

[David Marchese]

Do you think there are reasons that would explain why the left still needs to learn the lessons that the right seems to have learned when it comes to affecting the moral changes it wants to see?

[Rutger Bregman]

Yes. So I think there's a real lack of ambition among progressives and the left these days. Take the environmental movement, for example. You've got so many people who are obsessed with their own footprint. And so there are all these commandments. You don't eat meat, you don't fly, you don't even have kids. You don't use plastic straws. But then in the best possible scenario, you will have reduced your footprint to zero, and you might as well not have existed. Right. And then death is the highest ideal. Not very ambitious, in my view. And the same is true for those who are called, quote, unquote, woke, often accused of going too far right. These people, well, I think they don't go nearly far enough. They're mainly obsessed with policing language and using the right words to describe all the injustices in the world. And they're very good at going viral. You know, tax the rich and kill the patriarchy. Gets you a lot of likes on Instagram, I guess. But do you actually achieve anything?

[David Marchese]

Do you think there are different ways that the left could be communicating its moral messages that might cut through, particularly for younger people and particularly for younger men, in the way that cultural conservatives seem to be reaching that same audience?

[Rutger Bregman]

Okay, so there's a lot to be said about that. So our daughter was born almost four years ago now. So obviously we bought all these lovely books about, you know, modern feminism and girls are smart, girls are powerful, girls are great, girls can be anything. And I loved all of that. Now, four months ago, our son was born, our second. And I was like, okay, now I want all the books about what young men can become Right. And yeah, you really see that there's a lack of that. We all know about toxic masculinity, which is very real. I mean, we know about people like Andrew Tate, but then what is the opposite of that? I think there is something like that. I would call it heroic masculinity. You know, using what you have, your power, your privilege, whatever, to help others, you know, to help those who need you.

[David Marchese]

Who would examples be?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, I would say that, you know, we've got a lot of older stories about this Joseph Campbell, who wrote the Hero's Journey that inspired Star Wars. You know, think about the Frodos, the Luke Skywalkers. Yeah. These are stories of young men who are.

[David Marchese]

It's a bad sign if we have to point a Frodo at Luke Skywalker.

[Rutger Bregman]

Okay, okay, well. Or take Thomas Clarkson, you know, young men who are motivated by a mix of vanity and idealism, but then do the work. And I think, yeah, those stories are very powerful, and we should get much better at telling them on TikTok to young men, because Andrew Tate is giving them a very different definition of success.

[David Marchese]

You know, for me, sort of one of the more fundamental questions is how might we determine whether or not the moral problem that we want to take on will end up being proved the historically right one? And, you know, so somebody could want to support the cause of Israelis, they could want to support the cause of Palestinians. They could be energized morally by Donald Trump. They could be energized morally by Bernie Sanders. But insofar as somebody might want to determine whether or not the side that they're energized by is the right side, how might they try to figure that out?

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, well, here it is so important to be intellectually honest. And if you're really morally serious, then you don't care about your own purity or your own opinions. No, you actually want to do good. So you always got to be open to the reality that you're working on the wrong things or your solutions don't work. I've got one example of a charity that, after a big rct, a randomized controlled trial, had to conclude that it just wasn't working. And so they abandoned the project, which is, like, very courageous and happens not nearly enough. I think there should be an annual award gala for people who made the biggest mistakes but were honest enough to admit it. At the same time, we also shouldn't lose ourselves in moral relativism. I think that there are some things that are pretty obvious. So the way we treat animals to Me, it's quite striking. And if you ask people from the left to the right today about, well, don't you think the way we treat animals might be one of the great moral catastrophes of our time? I'm always surprised how little pushback you get, even from people who eat meat and eat a lot of meat. But then they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's probably true. And then they lean back in their chair. So that is, like, for me, one of those clear examples where we've got so much knowledge now about how much suffering is going on in factory farms, how huge this industry is, 70 billion animals slaughtered every year. At some point you gotta make a choice and be like, okay, well, this is pretty clear.

[David Marchese]

Well, something that I think can complicate the choices that people make is the idea of us versus them.

[Rutger Bregman]

Sure.

[David Marchese]

Very often the moral side we're inclined to take is the side of people like us. So how do we get around the.

[Rutger Bregman]

Problem of tribalism in the fight against injustice? Winning is a moral duty. So you gotta recognize that building coalitions is absolutely essential to getting things done. And that is something, again, that leftists and progressives today really need to understand. I mean, I was posting on social media about the great spooch that Cory Booker gave, and then the comments are full of people. Well, actually, he's like, pro Israel and like, well, look, people, we can keep going on like this, you know, in our little bubbles, but that's really not the way how we win next time. So if you look at the abolitionist movement, initially, it was mainly driven by these Quakers who were very weird. You know, they had this deep belief in the equality of people. They believed that there's something of God in each and every one of us. So they were also the first who allowed women actually to speak in their meeting houses, their churches. And they didn't get much done, to be honest, because they weren't taken seriously. It was only when they started working together with the evangelicals that it really became a juggernaut for change. Now, these people, you know, they had to bite their tongue quite often, actually, because they disagreed on so many things. But that's what it means to be morally serious.

[David Marchese]

I want to go back to one of your earlier books for a moment. So you wrote utopia for realists 10 or 11 years ago. And in my mind, that book fit in with sort of an argument that somebody like Steven Pinker is maybe best known for making, which is, you know, hey, we can do all the doom saying we want. We're actually living in the greatest moment in human history to be alive when people are wealthier and healthier than ever before. You're smiling because you probably know where this question is going. But then also in your book, you have a sentence along the lines of, you know, politics has been reduced to problem management, and the differences between the right and left are really are about tax rates, you know. Yeah, none of that feels like it particularly describes the world in 2025. How do you account for the fact that in just 10 years, which is historically minute period of time, the world feels so different than the one that you were describing in Utopia?

[Rutger Bregman]

For real, it's really a totally different zeitgeist. I mean, I was a millennial, writing indeed my first book, and being mainly frustrated by the fact that politics, and maybe particularly so in the country where I was growing up in the Netherlands, had become so boring. It didn't seem like we had big utopian visions anymore. Every milestone of civilization, the end of slavery, democracy, equal rights for men and women. I mean, all these things were utopian fantasies once. And I was like, well, what's the next thing, right? Can we abolish poverty, maybe with the universal basic income? Can we move towards a much shorter working week? Like, come on, give me a bigger vision. And, yeah, I guess I got what I wished for, but it's been moving a little bit in the other direction. I think that still the argument holds that very often idealists mainly know what they're against. You know, they're against Trump, they're against autocracy, they're against austerity, they're against the establishment. But what are we actually for?

[David Marchese]

So what would you say you stand for?

[Rutger Bregman]

What do you mean?

[David Marchese]

Well, you said, what do we stand for? It's not just what are we against.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yes, sure.

[David Marchese]

So what are the things that you stand for?

[Rutger Bregman]

Oh, that's a good question. Like, what are the big utopian visions? A couple of things. So, obviously, I believe we can totally abolish poverty. Like, we're more than rich enough right now, especially with the rise of AI And I think we should use the bounty of AI and distribute it equally. That will be a dividend for all of us. It's a little bit like what Alaska has been doing since the 80s. So Alaska has this sovereign wealth fund. Yes, exactly. So they recognize that the oil in the ground is owned by everyone in Alaska. Right. And so they've been giving a basic income to everyone ever since. And I think we should do that in many other respects as well. And yeah, I think we should revive the dream of moving towards a much shorter working week as well. Up until the 70s, we were using a lot of our increased productivity, our economic growth, to work less. And back then, a lot of sociologists and psychologists were saying, oh my God, the great challenge of the future is going to be boredom. Like, what are people going to do.

[David Marchese]

With all that leisure time?

[Rutger Bregman]

Like, we got to find out what is the good life. And I would say that possibility is still there for us, especially now with another wave of automation that is about to happen. At the same time, we should never underestimate capitalism's extraordinary ability to come up with more BS jobs. Right? I cite one poll that found that around 25% of people in rich countries think that their own job is socially useless. Well, there's no reason why that can't go up to 30% to 40% to 50%. I guess my point in this long rant is that there's not just a dystopian possibility, there's also a beautiful utopian possibility of how we use our technological capabilities to make a much, much better world, just like honestly, we have done in the past.

[David Marchese]

You know, a couple weeks ago, after we scheduled this interview, I had emailed your publicist and asked if she could ask you for a selection of books that have been influential on you, and you were nice enough to send it. And I read them. And one of the books was Peter Thiel's 0 to 1. He says that when he interviews people for positions, the one thing he always asks is, what's an important truth that you believe that very few people agree with you on? What's your answer to that question?

[Rutger Bregman]

I think people find it really uncomfortable to acknowledge that there are these massive differences in how effective people are and how talented they are. This is something Peter Thiel talks about in his book, that there's this power law distribution going on. So some people are really 100 or a thousand or 10,000 times as effective as others. So then it makes a lot of sense to be hunting for those really talented entrepreneurial people who can get so much done. And I think that is sometimes uncomfortable for people who really like to believe that we're, you know, we're always in this together and everyone is equal and we can all contribute in our own little small ways. I think that quite a few people in my bubble, they find it hard to acknowledge and they say, oh, that's the great man theory of history that's been debunked long ago, right? That's that patriarchal, maybe even almost like racist idea that a couple of white men, that they changed the world. Well, it's obviously not just a couple of white men. It's like everyone can be morally ambitious in that regard, but it is often a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. And not everyone, I think at the point. At the same time, we got to acknowledge that it's very hard to predict in advance who's going to be that big builder. And moral ambition can be contagious. But I think that Peter Thiel is basically right that there are very clear power laws in the distribution of talent.

[David Marchese]

After the break, I talk to Rutger again about what really drives him.

[Rutger Bregman]

This is the world we live in. It's incredibly unequal and we could fix that. And even in wealthy countries, we're just at the beginning of history. We have so much progress ahead of us. Possibly, but it's up to us.

[Lulu]

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[Rutger Bregman]

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[David Marchese]

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[Rutger Bregman]

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[David Marchese]

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[Rutger Bregman]

Hey, David.

[David Marchese]

Hey, Rutger. How are you?

[Rutger Bregman]

I'm good. Good to see you.

[David Marchese]

Good to see you again. You're smiling impishly. Why is that?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, as always with these interviews, you've got a long list of things like, oh, I wish I would have said that and why didn't I say this? And blah, blah, blah. But this is great, you know, we have a rematch. Is that.

[David Marchese]

No, that implies a fight. That was not what this was.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't feel like that.

[David Marchese]

So I want to get right into this and I promise that I'm not raising this sarcastically, I mean it sincerely. So I could imagine someone coming across this interview and thinking, all right, Rutger, the school and your books sound noble and well intentioned. But isn't there something more morally ambitious that you could be doing?

[Rutger Bregman]

I like that. So I think this is going to be the last book for quite some time, actually, that. All right. As you know, books are a great excuse to go on a publicity tour. And if you're starting something like the School for Moral Ambition, then, yes, a book is very useful to have. Right. It's like this banner, a rallying cry that helps to bring a lot of people together. But the main reason why we co founded the school is indeed, we wanted to find the Thomas Clarkson of our time to work on some of the most pressing issues that we face. And if you ask me, like, okay, what is the moral equivalent of fighting slavery today? I guess I would say fighting factory farming. And a couple of years ago, that's actually what I envisioned doing. So here I was, a relatively successful author, and I was like, okay, people like me, I want to burn my reputation on something that's important. So I spent quite some time in the Netherlands going on talk shows, advocating for farm animals. And at some point, I was like, is this really the most effective thing? Right. Maybe I could build something much bigger and really scale it up, because now I'm just a one man's army. And people like Thomas Clarkson, they got a lot done because they brought many more people into the movement. So I honestly feel that I'm doing the most ambitious thing I could be doing. But if you have better ideas, David, then please push me.

[David Marchese]

Yeah. Earlier, when we were talking about how you would measure the success of the School for Moral Ambition, you talked about how in Europe, the organization has chosen the tobacco industry as a leading cause to fight against. And I have to say that surprised me a little, because of all the pressing causes in the world, if I made a list of the most urgent ones, I would think of things like climate change or rising authoritarianism or increasing oligarchical consolidation of power. I realize tobacco use is a serious problem, but I don't know that it would have been high on my list. So why is the tobacco industry at the top of your school's list? And is there an argument that maybe it could also be aiming higher?

[Rutger Bregman]

It surprised me a lot as well, honestly. So I didn't come up with this cause area. We went to our researchers, and we asked them to come up with a list of some of the most tractable, neglected, and important issues that we face as a species. And, yeah, in Europe, Fighting Big Tobacco came out on top. A lot of people think that we've already won this fight. That, you know, that was something we did in the 90s, which is not true at all. The cigarette is the deadliest artifact that humans have ever invented. You know, deadlier than atomic bombs or the machine guns. So maybe it's not very sexy. Maybe it's like, oh, it's a little bit weird. Like, why would you choose that? But for us, that's sort of the point. That's how you can make much more impact by convincing people to work on things that may not be most in fashion, but that are actually super important and very neglected.

[David Marchese]

Yeah, no, it's interesting because for me, it raises the idea of how one thinks about ambition because, you know, you could think about ambition in terms of, like, what is the most tractable problem to solve that's not being solved? Or you could think about ambition in terms of what is the problem that seems like it doesn't have an easy solution, but needs to be solved. Like, for example, climate change. It's an interesting question about how to direct one's energies.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, yeah, sure. So climate change, I would say, is super tractable. We've got the research, we've got the solutions, and luckily we've got many millions of people working on it right now. I would advise people to really look for the most neglected bits of the fight against climate change. That's why we chose to work on the food transition, because this is extraordinarily neglected. So, look, the fact that it's got to be tractable, that you have need to have some idea on how to actually make progress, that does not mean that it needs to be easy. Actually, if you think you can achieve your goals in this lifetime, then you're not thinking big enough. That is really what inspires me about the abolitionists, the suffragettes. I mean, of the 68 women who came together at Seneca Falls in 1848, the first women's rights convention in the United States, only one was still alive when women finally got the right to vote across the country and she was sick on the day of elections. So that desire and that commitment, you know, being part of something that is much greater than you are, that is moral ambition.

[David Marchese]

But this still raises for me the question of, like, what is so your issue, the equivalent one that you would accept that it was the fight to achieve, it would be going on after you died, is factory farming.

[Rutger Bregman]

A couple. A couple. Look, David, I'm not gonna choose. I'm not gonna say, like, this is the one.

[David Marchese]

I just wanna know, like, what really drives you. That's what I'm trying To get at, you know.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's just not. I'm not a one issue guy. We live in a world where kids die from easily preventable disease every single day. That's outrageous. We could fix that. We're like more than rich enough to fix that. We live in a world where 85% of the world population lives below the US poverty line. Half of the world population lives on less than $7 a day. And yes, that is adjusted for purchasing power. So don't talk to me about inflation or blah, blah, blah, or that you can buy more here or there. No, this is the world we live in. It's incredibly unequal and we could fix that. And even in wealthy countries, we're just at the beginning of history. We have so much progress ahead of us. Possibly, but it's up to us.

[David Marchese]

You know, I think it's fair to say that your target audience for the book and I guess for the, in a way, for the school also, it's younger people either early in their career or maybe still in the phase of considering what their career could be. And I did wonder.

[Rutger Bregman]

Can I interrupt that, David? Yeah. So that's not true. Oh, you don't think so? No, no, no. So if we look at our member base, we now have 7,000 members. It's really people from all walks of life and all ages. So we've got moral ambition circles of students. We also have moral ambition circles of CEOs, of people who have already retired. It's a very diverse bunch of people. And sure, it's true that if you're in your 20s, right. You haven't written the constitution of your whole life yet. So it's a more flexible period. You know, haven't you haven't been sucked up by the Bermuda Triangle of talent yet? Right. You haven't become a strategy consultant yet. So maybe it's easier to make a change, but there are a lot of people out there. And that's when we come in. That's when the Robin Hoods come in and say, well, we've got a better idea for you.

[David Marchese]

Have you experienced any profound moral shifts in your life?

[Rutger Bregman]

So I was a very lazy boy in high school. Like, my preferred grade was a 5.5. We have a grading system from 1 to 10. And a 5.5 is a bare pass. So that's like I would have done just enough to pass the class. And when I became a student, when I was 18 years old, I became a member of this small student society with a small fraternity. Most of the other guys, they were quite a bit older than me, 23, 24 years old. And they took me to lectures about anthropology and philosophy. I discovered people like Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. And that was the first time in my life that my definition of success changed and I became super curious. I wanted to read everything in our student house. I built this system that you could listen to classes from professors even when you were taking a shower, right? So there was a cable going from my room through the attic, then through the ceiling to the shower. And then I would always annoy people by putting on lectures from Martin van Rossum, who's a famous Dutch historian. But I guess my definition of success changed once again once I achieved those first dreams. Like, honestly, I mean, I wanted to become a best selling author. I wanted to write big books. But then you've done that and you've written a big book about human nature and you're in your early 30s and you're like, okay, what's the next ladder? And how can I use what I have to do? Much more good, honestly. It was also the experience of becoming a bit more wealthy. I mean, I'm not a billionaire, but I am a bestselling author. So I became much richer than I ever expected I would. At first I thought I would just become a history teacher or something like that. So that also caused me to question, like, okay, but then what do I actually do with this? Like, I need to invest it in something. Like, I already have a house, we have a car. I don't need two cars. I can only drive one car at a time. I guess that also led me on this journey.

[David Marchese]

You know, I think undergirding a lot of what we've been talking about is sort of this idea of a shift in cultural values where making money has become increasingly central at the expense of trying to do good in the world or live by greater values. And I think at the same time, we also. There's also alive in the culture a real sense of burn it all down anger, which is an appealing and seductive feeling. And so that's a bit of a preamble to something that I want to connect to another. One of the books you were able to recommend to me, which was the autobiography of the philosopher and the pacifist Bertrand Russell. And in that book he's writing in the context of public support in Great Britain for World War I. And he says that I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. Do you think he was wrong?

[Rutger Bregman]

Well, Bertrand Russell certainly had his cynical moments. And I totally understand that in the fervor of the First World War, where even so many people, you know, who may have described themselves as pacifists not that much earlier, were swept up in this fervor. Yeah, it's. It's a dark truth about humanity, is that we can go nuts sometimes pretty quickly. Look, I don't know where we'll go from here. I guess where I find hope is that I know of historical examples, eras in which things got really dark as well, eras that were incredibly immoral, incredibly unequal, where we just had elites that were incredibly irresponsible and selfish. And then there was a counter movement, a cultural revolution that was actually started by elites. And I think we desperately need that today. Someone said this to me recently, if you are watching the news right now and you're not terrified for yourself, right, you still have some measure of comfort because you have some savings, because you have a nice job, then you are the person who needs to stand up right now. And we see an enormous amount of cowardice, sadly. But I guess I found hope in the simple knowledge that it only takes a small group of people to start spreading a different story and a different mentality. And I like to see some signs here and there that that may be happening. And I just want to put more oil in that fire.

[David Marchese]

That's Rutger Bregman. His new book is Moral. Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference. This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Dan Powell, Elisha Ba Itupe, Leah Shaw, Dameron and Marion Lozano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew and Wyatt Ormond is our producer. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Matty Masiello, Jake Silderstein, Paula Schumann and Sam Dolnick. If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to the interview. Wherever you get your podcasts to read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com theinterview and you can email us anytime@the interviewytimes.com we'll be back with a new episode in two weeks when Lulu interviews Miley Cyrus. There's normal people that make normal music.

[Rutger Bregman]

For, like, normal people.

[David Marchese]

Then there's weird people, and we all.

[Rutger Bregman]

Know that kind of music that make weird music for weird people. So I think Miley's songs are either.

[David Marchese]

Normal music or weird music.

[Rutger Bregman]

You know, I don't love the middle.

[David Marchese]

I'm David Marchese and this is the interview from the New York Times.

[Lulu]

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