Too many people waste their talents because they lack moral ambition. And the world cannot afford that. That's the premise of Rutger Bregman's latest book – you might know him from his previous books «Utopia for Realists» or «Humankind: A Hopeful History». This time around, getting people to read isn't his real goal. He's on a mission to make real change with a new organisation he founded, the School of Moral Ambition. This interview gives a good idea of what this will look like. My favourite moment, though, is the effortless shade throwing when Bregman is asked whether he can understand when people choose money over ambition.

The essence of Rutger Bregman's new book, and the movement he has started – The School of Moral Ambition – in one extremely well-produced 20-minute video.

Ever since it was published, «Lord of the Flies», albeit fictional, served as a cautionary tale of what humans will do to each other once the guardrails of civilization are gone. In his new book «Humankind», Dutch historian Rutger Bregman tells the real story of six boys who stranded on a small Pacific island – and behaved very differently from their fictional counterparts. It is one of several examples in the book in which Bregman clinically picks apart common assumptions about human behaviour, from history books to social experiments, to reveal that humans are often kinder than we assume. It’s a great book, at that excerpt in The Guardian is a good gateway into it.