Progress | Munk Debates

Matt Ridley

"The world has never been a better place to live in, and it will keep on getting better."

Matt Ridley’s books have sold over one million copies, been translated into 30 languages, short-listed for nine major literary prizes and won several awards. With BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, he worked for The Economist for nine years as science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor, before becoming a self-employed writer and businessman. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock plc and Northern 2 VCT plc. He also commissioned the Northumberlandia landform sculpture and country park in northeastern England. He currently writes the Mind and Matter column in The Wall Street Journal and writes regularly for the British newspaper The Times.

As Viscount Ridley, he was appointed to the House of Lords in February 2013. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honourary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His latest book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, argues that human beings are not only wealthier but also healthier, happier, cleaner, cleverer, kinder, freer, more peaceful and more equal than they have ever been. He argues this is because the source of human innovation is, and has been for 100,000 years, not individual inspiration through reason but collective intelligence evolving by trial and error resulting from the sharing of ideas through exchange and specialization. The secret to human prosperity is that everybody is working for everybody else.

Steven Pinker

"It’s just a brute fact that we don't throw virgins into volcanoes any more. We don't execute people for shoplifting a cabbage. And we used to."

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now.

He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He was Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications. His twelfth book, published in September 2021, is called Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

Alain de Botton

"Nothing human can ever be free of blemishes. There cannot be an end to boom and bust, mayhem and death."

Alain de Botton was born in Zurich in 1969 and now lives in London. He is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a “philosophy of everyday life.” He has written on love, travel, architecture and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. De Botton also started and helps to run a London-based school called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education, and authors pieces for its YouTube channel. His newest book, published in February 2014, is titled The News: A User’s Manual. 

De Botton’s first book, Essays in Love (titled On Love in the United States) was published when he was 23 and has sold two million copies worldwide. It minutely analyzed the process of falling in and out of love, in a style that mixed elements of fiction and non-fiction. With How Proust Can Change Your Life, de Botton’s work reached a truly global audience. It was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Religion for Atheists and Art as Therapy. In the summer of 2009, de Botton was appointed Heathrow Airport’s first writer-in-residence and wrote a book about his experiences: A Week at the Airport. 

De Botton continues his work with the architectural organization he founded, Living Architecture, which aims to give everyone access to the work of some of the greatest architects in the world. 

His latest book is The News: A User’s Manual, which urges people to think differently about the media and to recognize the ways in which our attention spans and mentalities are manipulated.

Malcolm Gladwell

"The idea that because things have gotten better in the past they will continue to do so in the future is a fallacy I would have thought confined to the lower reaches of Wall Street."

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. His latest book is Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know. He has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine and one of Foreign Policy magazine’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, producers of the podcast Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood,

Gladwell has explored how ideas spread in the Tipping Point, decision making in Blink and the roots of success in Outliers. With David and Goliath he examines our understanding of the advantages of disadvantages, arguing that we have underestimated the value of adversity and over-estimated the value of privilege. 

Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has won a national magazine award and been honoured by the American Psychological Society and the American Sociological Society. He was previously a reporter for The Washington Post.