The Rich Roll Podcast
Let’s Make The World Wildly Better: Rutger Bregman On Moral Ambition
15 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is moral ambition and why is it important?
When I studied the great moral pioneers of the past, I don't read biographies of people who were very relaxed. They were working their ass off. We think that follow your passion is probably the worst career advice ever invented in the history of humanity. Let's not just check our privilege. Let's use it to make a massive difference.
If you can achieve your goals in your own lifetime, then I think you're not thinking big enough. And this is a movement that's way bigger than us. So we're in the midst of the holiday season, and so many of us are trying to get our heads around what we're going to do differently in 2026.
And in thinking about this, I think what I want to do is offer you something to think about, something I've said many times before, but bears repeating around this time of year. And that is this. We are all far more capable than we permit ourselves to believe.
each and every one of us is in possession of a reservoir of potential we've barely begun to tap, that is just begging to be expressed into reality. And I say this as somebody for whom hopefulness comes hard. I am hardwired to dismiss these kinds of optimistic proclamations as Pretty much nothing more than pure Pollyanna drivel.
But at the same time, I actually know for a fact that this statement is true. I've experienced it myself, and I have witnessed it many, many times as true in others as well. So basically what I'm saying is that I... need to be constantly reminded that transformation is our birthright. And all of us possess the agency to change for the better.
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Chapter 2: How do modern jobs contribute to a sense of meaninglessness?
And the impending new year is really just this opportunity to ritualize this fact and render it into reality. So to set our minds right, I can think of nobody better than Rutger Bregman to help us consider what's possible, both for ourselves and the broader world. And as somebody who can help us incite the expression of our inner change agent in the interest of our future betterment.
And I say this because Rucker is a guy who dreams big. And today, he brings to the table a big call to action, asking us to use what we have, whether it's our privilege or our resources, or most importantly, our human capital, to take on the world's most pressing challenges.
What we need, what the world needs, is more moral ambition, which is the title of Rucker's new book and the topic of today's conversation. Rutger, for those unaware, is one of the most compelling moral philosophers and public intellectuals working today.
A Dutch historian and author who has a talent for clearly diagnosing the crisis of meaning that so many of us feel, which he marries with a refreshing pragmatism for charting a more fulfilling life path forward in service to a better world. And so to put a finer point on it, Rucker believes that our deepest hunger isn't for wealth or prestige or security.
During this time in which a staggering number of people report that their jobs feel socially useless, what we actually hunger for is contribution, for a life in service of something larger than ourselves. Over the course of a couple hours, Rucker and I discuss our current cultural moment of widespread disillusionment and how to dispel it with individual action.
We talk about the moral catastrophe of our modern factory farming system. We discuss resolving the illusion of free will with personal agency to produce change. We discuss the mission behind the School for Moral Ambition, which is the nonprofit that Rucker founded, and why we need to make doing good prestigious again.
This has a little bit of something for everyone, but if you're somebody who feels like something in your life is missing, that you're not using your gifts the way that you could, or that you're waiting for permission to step into a more meaningful life, if that's you, this episode is definitely appointment pod and mandatory listening.
Rucker's challenge is simple, but it's actually quite profound. Make your life about something more than yourself. And as my friend Scott Harrison says, do not fear work that has no end. And this is where meaning lives. Final note before we get into it, right now, the School for Moral Ambition is raising funds for food system reform.
In my opinion, eradicating the ills of factory farming is worthy of your moral ambition, and Rucker's organization is even matching every contribution, meaning that every dollar donated will be doubled. So to learn more and to contribute to making a difference, I did, in case you're wondering, please go to moralambition.org slash food. All right, so let's get into it and let's get mobilized.
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Chapter 3: What historical movements can inform today's activism?
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Unlock 20% off your order with the code RICHROLL at ROKA.com. That's R-O-K-A dot com. Rucker, you're here. We're going to talk today. This is so exciting. Thanks for having me, Rich. Super excited to be here. Thank you for being here. You're here on the heels of putting out this book called Moral Ambition, and you've got this new school, the School of Moral Ambition.
So moral ambition is sort of the topic of the day today. Mm-hmm. But before we can go any further, you know, I want to allow you to define this phrase. It's pretty simple. So I think we're all aware that we face some enormous challenges as a species. Like the age-old challenges of poverty and disease, like still terrible diseases killing so many people, like...
especially the neglected ones like tuberculosis killing, what is it, 1.2 million people every year, malaria, 600,000. But we've got existential risks as well. The threat of the next pandemic is just around the corner. The rise of AI could be pretty dangerous as well. Climate change.
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Chapter 4: What are the ethical implications of factory farming?
I mean, we're all aware, right, of these big, big problems. Now, what do we need to do in order to take on these challenges? I think we need people, and preferably really, really talented people. And our analysis is pretty simple. What we see is that a lot of really talented entrepreneurial people are currently stuck in jobs that don't really make the world a much better place.
So moral ambition is the antidote to that. It is the will To use what you have, your privilege, it could be your financial capital, your cultural capital, but most importantly, your human capital, like what you can do with your hands and with your brain. You use that to build a legacy that actually matters, to be remembered by the historians because they're kind of proud of you.
So that's what it is. On a macro level, there are sort of forces working against this and forces that are kind of marshalling energy around moving towards it.
On the moving towards it piece, not only are a vast number of people in jobs that are essentially not moving society forward, they're jobs that are leaving people or kind of moving people in the direction of their own existential crisis because there is no –
They're not deriving enough meaning from what they spend all day doing every single day, which is sort of an energizing force that might make people more receptive to these ideas that you're talking about. In terms of the forces working against it, like the average person is going to say, well, you're asking a lot of me. You know, I'm just trying to put food on the table.
I'm aware of all these looming threats out there, but there's only so much I can do. And my priority is to just take care of my family. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's first talk about the scale of the problem, like the amount of talent that currently gets wasted. So there's one study that was done a few years ago in which 100,000 people were asked about the social value of their job.
So it's important to say that I'm not judging people's jobs, right? It's people... asking themselves the question. I think like, okay, what happens if I go on strike? Does that really matter for society? Yes or no? And it turns out that around 25% of all people in modern developed economies think that their own job is probably Yeah, socially useless.
I think the technical term here is bullshit job. That's what academics call it. And that is really astounding because that's five times the unemployment rate. And then if you dig into the numbers, what you see is that it's not the plumbers and the teachers and the nurses and the care workers that we're talking about. Obviously not, right?
If they go on strike, we've discovered that during the pandemic. they have the essential jobs, right? They're the shoulders that carry us all. But what you see when you look at these numbers is that certain job categories are overrepresented. So the usual suspects are the bankers, the consultants, the corporate lawyers. It's what one friend of mine- The Bermuda Triangle.
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Chapter 5: How can individual actions lead to systemic change?
Yeah, yeah. It's what one friend of mine calls the Bermuda Triangle of talent. Indeed, consultancy, finance, corporate law. But it's also like marketeers score very highly there, managers. And I really do not want to say that all these jobs are by definition are socially useless.
I just think it's really striking that people say it about their own jobs, especially when we face such big challenges as a species. So that's one thing. Then on the other hand, yes, I mean, I'm not saying this is the easy path.
I mean, there's one message that I want to get across in this book, Moral Ambition, is that, look, if you want to be more mindful, happy, relaxed, whatever, I mean, you can go to the bookstore. There are hundreds, thousands of books out there in the self-help category that promise you Exactly that, right? This book is not about living an easier life.
When I studied the great moral pioneers of the past, you know, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the humanitarians, I don't read biographies of people who were very relaxed or mindful or whatever. They were working their ass off and they paid a substantial price in many cases, but they lived lives worth remembering.
In terms of obstacles in people's way, in terms of kind of accessing what you're trying to convey and taking action on it, To me, it feels like there's two forces working against it. One is the biggest one, which is the incentive structure upon which we've created this society. And the second is sort of secondary, and that is that there is sort of a PR problem around this.
It's the way that it's messaged and marketed. So maybe take the incentive structure aspect of this first. I have been building this movement now for... Two years. And one thing we've discovered is that when you go to, say, the typical banker on Wall Street or a successful corporate lawyer, and you say, oh, you're such a greedy person, right? You're an immoral person.
Why don't you work on these great challenges? That person is going to be like, oh, you know. Don't bother me, right? What are you complaining? Can't you compete or something like that? Or what are you doing?
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Chapter 6: What role does privilege play in moral ambition?
Exactly, what are you doing? Reflect on your own life. Indeed, don't be such a moralizing pain in the ass. So that's one thing we've discovered that it's much more effective to say like, hey, you've got only one life on this planet. on average, a career loss for around 80,000 hours. So that's 10,000 working days. That's 2,000 work weeks.
And what you do with that precious time on this beautiful planet, right? It's one of the most important questions that you have to answer. And do you really want to spend your whole life in a cubicle, you know, making products, selling services that people don't really care about? We've discovered that that is a much more
effective approach if you want to convince people to make a change in their lives. What I've learned from studying these great movements of the past is that they all had something in common. They were really successful at making doing good more prestigious.
So if you study, for example, the most successful abolitionist movement, which was not in the US, but it was actually in Britain, it was way more successful there. And you would have asked people like William Wilberforce, who was one of the leaders of that movement, You would have asked him about his main mission in life.
He wouldn't even have said abolishing the slave trade or abolishing slavery. He would have said, my mission in life is to change the incentive structure, is to make doing good fashionable, to bring virtue back in vogue, and to convince people that life ultimately is about something else than just yourself. So that is, I think, what we got to try and do. Essentially, you have to make it cool.
Yeah. Basically. Right now, all of the incentives of our modern culture are pointing in the direction of property, power, and prestige. These are the things that we reward people for achieving. These are the seeds of all of our aspirations for as long as we can remember. It's emblazoned on every billboard and every television commercial and just reaffirmed.
from as far back as we can remember to today, such that we don't even really question it, right? And so on some level, we can't be blamed. We're sort of living reactively based upon the rules of the game that have been passed on to us. And so it's not a surprise that an ambitious young person is going to study hard to get into a good school.
And then when they enter into the, you know, the career center at their college or university, they're going to be looking at consultancy jobs, McKinsey and, you know, places like that or corporate law or finance. Because if they can acquire one of those jobs, they're on this upward trajectory towards property, prestige and power. And on top of that, I think human beings are hardwired to seek out
security, not just financial security, but some kind of psychological buffer against the uncertainty of being in a human body and living a human life. And on some level, we convince ourselves that these jobs work to immunize us against all of those uncertainties that make us so fundamentally uncomfortable. So I think what people want fundamentally in the end, what all of us want is a
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Chapter 7: How can we build coalitions to tackle societal issues?
Only 50% of students said that making a lot of money was one of the most important life goals. Today, as you can expect, those numbers have flipped. So now it's 90% saying it's all about the money and only 50% saying it's all about that meaningful philosophy of life. And so how do you make sense of that?
But I would say there's also some hope here because it tells us that this is not human nature, but it is human culture, right? It is the result of decades and decades of storytelling, of some would say propaganda, you know?
uh relentlessly hammering down a certain message about what life is about about what success looks like and if i'm thinking about what is like the fundamental problem we face as a species it's not that there are not enough people working on these big challenges from poverty to inequality to climate or whatever it is that we have the wrong honor code right if we would fix that then we would it would be so much easier to recruit a lot of brilliant and talented people
So as a historian, when you reflect on the 60s and that moment, how did that honor code come to be and what happened to denigrate it or shift it? Okay, so that is a really big question, right? You can write a library full of books about that. But understanding that is a means of building a pathway back to something that resembles that. Yeah, yeah.
I would say the usual story goes something like this. So after the Second World War, there was a great spirit of cooperation. People were like, okay, this can never happen again. We rely on each other to make this world a much better place. You had both in Europe and the US, you had strong governments that really relied on the solidarity of countries. very privileged people.
So it's hard to remember nowadays, but tax rates for the rich were way higher back then. Up to 80, 90% marginal tax rates for the very rich. You had much higher inheritance taxes. I think that was all part of a social contract where... elites and people with more privilege agree that you got to give back. You got to give back a lot and not just in philanthropy.
It's not just about putting your name on a building at Harvard. It's about doing many different kinds of things. And then slowly, maybe it was because the memory of the war started to disappear. Maybe it was also because of the failures of that economic model, right? In the 70s, we have massive inflation. We had massive strikes. Like the economy really was not doing well.
And then new politicians came along. like Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan famously in the US, who said, you know what, it's time for something else. And that's usually called neoliberalism. And at the heart of that philosophy was the idea that if you just rely on the selfishness of people, if you just let people do whatever they want, that in the end, everyone's going to benefit.
There was a lot of power in that idea. And it did really seem to work for quite some time, right? The economy started growing again, stock markets exploded. But I think now we've come to the realization that over the years, our society hollowed out and our social contract broke.
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Chapter 8: What practical steps can listeners take to get involved?
And I was walking around in a daze. I was like, oh my God, I've made a major philosophical discovery. Everyone should know. Nothing makes sense anymore. Like, why do we punish people? Why would we reward people? I mean, everything is just cause and effect. And I didn't choose my parents. I didn't choose the way I was brought up. Like, I can say yes or no, but all of that is already predetermined.
It took me a few years to find out that actually that was one of the first thoughts that philosophers ever had, you know, going back to the ancient Greeks. But anyway, that was that moment in my life where indeed meaning seemed to disappear. And it was like, you know... it felt like falling off a cliff.
Um, and so, um, I would say that my whole, um, body of work, all books that I've written all revolve around those big questions. Where do we come from? Where do we go? And how can we find meaning when the old stories don't really make sense anymore, at least not to me, um, in the era of science and everything we know about, um, the age of the planet and evolution and you name it. Um, and, um,
I think I've found some answers. And one of those answers is in some individuals that I really, really admire. So what I remember is when I was 19 years old, I was following a lecture series about... It was actually a lecture series about atheism by a Dutch professor called Herman Philipsen. And he was saying that every... person needs to have his or her own intellectual hero.
And I never really thought about that. But the idea of an intellectual hero is that it is someone who has been heroic in changing his or her mind, being really open to the facts and the evidence. And so I was back home in my student dormitory, and I started looking like, maybe I can find someone like that. And after a few hours, I stumbled upon this guy called Bertrand Russell.
Maybe you've heard of him, the British philosopher. And I just became obsessed with this guy who lived such a rich life. He had four marriages. He was imprisoned twice for his pacifism. He was behind major philosophical breakthroughs. He was a brilliant mathematician. He won the Nobel Prize for literature. He almost died in a plane crash.
Later, he would joke that he survived because he was a smoker. He was in the smoking compartment of the plane and that –
there the door opened and then the non-smoking apartment the door didn't open but anyway the point is that what I saw here is like oh but this is what life is about it's about living incredibly rich life in service of others and I think that has basically become my religion is that we have been given this incredible gift of what is it if we're lucky 80 years 4,000 weeks I think that's the number and
Yeah, we got to use it well and try and make our own life in a monument that stands in time. I think that's the only kind of immortality that we can have. I don't believe in life after death or anything like that, even though I would say I'm I'm agnostic. But the one thing I do know is that no one can take away this life from me, right?
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