[ONLINE] – This Changes Everything

Behind everything, there is an idea: ideas start wars and movements, undergird societies and governments, and shape the daily experiences of our personal lives. Every once in awhile, they change things at an extraordinary massive scale, and we see a paradigm shift—it's possible we'll see one in the world that emerges post-COVID.

We ignore or underestimate the power of ideas to our detriment. And yet they can feel slippery to reckon with; difficult to see, tougher still to understand their complex movement through the world.

Join The Progress Network for a wide-ranging discussion on ideas—which ones are significant now, which may be significant in the future, and how we can participate in ideas' power ourselves—with Joan Blades, co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org, and public intellectual Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now and several other books. Zachary Karabell, founder of The Progress Network, will moderate. The conversation will address questions like: which ideas do we want as the basis of our future? Can we become better at harnessing them in the moment, or can their presence be understood only in hindsight? What does it mean, in an era when everyone has their own online presence, to be part of an idea movement?

Speakers:

Joan Blades, @joanblades
Founder, Living Room Conversations

Steven Pinker, @sapinker
Cognitive Scientist, Harvard University

Zachary Karabell, @zacharykarabell (moderator)
Founder, The Progress Network