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Our guest this week is Alain de Botton. Alain is a London based writer and psychotherapist. His first book, Essays in Love was published when he was 23 years old and went on to sell two million copies. His books emphasise philosophy's relevance to everyday life. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

He’s written 15 books under his name and many more under The School of Life imprint, which have become bestsellers in 30 countries. He is not just a writer, but also an organizer of ideas and institutions.

He founded The School Of Life in 2008, which is dedicated to help people lead more emotionally intelligent lives – through classes, books, games, therapy, films, articles, their app, and their podcast. Their website says, everything they do supports self-knowledge, better relationships, and brings calm to modern life.

His public profile emphasises his desire to bridge intellectual ideas into a lived experience.

We talk about:

• 2 and a half friends is plenty
• A more rigorous approach to friendship
• Different types of friends - from the teasing to the mirco
• Platonic sleepovers
• One way friends
• Enemies of friendship
• The bravery of being weird
• Good substitutes for friends

Let’s make friends!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message!

Our guest this week is Rutger Bregman. Rutger is a Dutch historian and author. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History and Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There were both Sunday Times and New York Times Best Sellers and have been translated in 46 languages.

The Guardian described him as 'the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas', while TED named him 'one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers'. His TED Talk, 'Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character; It's a Lack of Cash', was selected by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top ten talks of 2017.

He studied History at Utrecht University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Initially considering a career as an academic historian, Rutger instead ventured into journalism. He began his career at the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant before moving to the independent journalism platform De Correspondent, for which he wrote for ten years.

In 2024, Rutger co-founded The School for Moral Ambition, a non-profit organization inspired by his latest book, Moral Ambition. The initiative helps people to take steps toward an impactful career.

‍We talk about:

• Not resting on ones laurels
• Individual versus societal responsibility
• How just being decent isn’t enough
• The value of harsh feedback
• When is the best time to make people morally ambitious
• Pragmatic Alliances
• Noble Loosers aka Social Media Activism
• Effective Altruism
• The School of Moral Ambition

‍Let’s get moral!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message!

Our guest this week is Howard Covington. Howard is a Cambridge graduate in physics and maths. He has been a banker, a co-founder and chief executive of New Star Asset Management, and a trustee of the Science Museum. He’s also been and chair of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, The Alan Turing Institute, ClientEarth, and the Scotia Group.

He is the incoming chair of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Howard is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and an honorary fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute and The Alan Turing Institute.

We want to a talk Howard gave recently and were very amazed about how many of his predictions have come to pass and therefore left comforted by his positive predictions of the future.

We talk about:

• A quick history of 540 million years
• Living in the midst of the third Intelligence Explosion
• Printing meat to eat
• Dark factories
• Are robots part of evolution
• How capitalism drives the race to net zero
• The restoration of the planet

Let’s gaze into the future!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet