Utopia For Realists: The Case of a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek

FEATURING RUTGER BREGMAN – Fox News Anchor Tucker Carlson had a now-famous exchange with a prominent European historian named Rutger Bregman, that only became public after a video of the encounter was leaked. Bregman is the author of Utopia for Realists: The Case of a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek. After he addressed wealthy elites in Davos, Carlson invited Bregman for an interview but then lost his temper in an expletive filled rant. A video of the taped recording that never aired has now gone viral. Here is the video of their exchange.

Bregman was a guest on our show when his book was published in 2016. Here’s our conversation with him.

Imagine a life where you didn’t need to work more than 15 hours a week to make ends meet. One where you weren’t restricted by the place of your birth and the stamp on your passport. And where financial worries were not the main driver of your major life decisions. Sounds like Utopia right?

But what if such a world were actually far more within our reach than we thought? It turns out that long-term trends show that humans as a whole are actually moving in this very direction and that there is already plenty of research proving that the time has come to realize such a utopia.

Read excerpts from Utopia for Realists online at https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists.

Rutger Bregman, best-selling author of Utopia for Realists, one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers.

**This interview was originally broadcast on August 22, 2016.