Moral Ambition: Redefining Success for the Global Good with Rutger Bregman
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The overarching definition of success today often looks like the accumulation of stuff – money, cars, property, clothing – anything that signals wealth. This means that success is also synonymous with overshoot, extraction, and consumption – none of which lead to healthy outcomes for the planet or the global good. But what might be possible if we were to redefine success to prioritize collective well-being instead of personal gain?
In today's episode, Nate sits down with Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman to discuss the concept of moral ambition, which he defines as the desire to be one of the best, measured by different standards of success: not by big payouts or fancy honorifics, but by the ability to tackle the world's biggest problems. Bregman highlights the importance of entrepreneurs in driving social change and the necessity of cultural shifts to foster a more altruistic society, as well as the challenges faced in pursuing these ideals.
What possibilities might arise if we combined the idealism of an activist with the ambition of an entrepreneur? How can we apply the principles of entrepreneurship to better address global challenges? And how could a radical redefinition of success motivate the world's top talent to make major contributions to our most pressing issues, leaving a legacy that actually makes a difference?
(Conversation recorded on July 8th, 2025)
About Rutger Bregman:
Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian and author. 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. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) and Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There (2017) were both Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers and have been translated into 46 languages.
In 2024, Rutger co-founded The School for Moral Ambition, a non-profit organization inspired by his latest book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. The initiative helps people to take the step toward an impactful career.
Watch this video episode on YouTube
Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.
---
Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.1 | This is one of the deepest needs of humans beings. |
| 0:03.2 | We want to be part of the group. |
| 0:04.8 | We want people that we respect to say to us, like, hey, well done, good job. |
| 0:10.3 | You are successful. |
| 0:11.8 | But our definition of success is highly malleable. |
| 0:14.5 | One of the things I discovered as I studied the British abolitionist movement was that |
| 0:18.6 | it was all about this cultural shift. |
| 0:23.4 | Elites in particular were redefining for themselves what it meant to be successful, moving |
| 0:27.4 | away from this conventional shallow definition of success, like making a lot of money, owning |
| 0:32.0 | a big mansion on Fifth Avenue, and instead they started carrying more about actually doing |
| 0:37.3 | good, helping others. |
| 0:38.5 | That became more of a status symbol. |
| 0:41.1 | How can we change our culture of success? |
| 0:44.0 | Like, is it possible to culturally engineer this? |
| 0:50.0 | You're listening to the great simplification. |
| 0:53.1 | I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:54.4 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 1:02.8 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 1:16.6 | Today I'm joined by Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman to discuss his recent work |
| 1:22.5 | in building a movement for moral ambition. |
| 1:27.0 | Rutger has published four books on history, philosophy, and |
| 1:29.9 | economics. This includes his most recent book titled Moral Ambition. Stop wasting your talent and |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate Hagens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Nate Hagens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.