Radicals Chasing Utopia | Jamie Bartlett & John Knefel

The key to a successful democracy relies on society’s ability to examine the current radical movements and studying them, learning from them, and using it to build a better world.

Jamie Bartlett is one of the world’s leading thinkers on radical politics and technology and has explored the strange and exciting worlds of the innovators, disrupters, idealists, and extremists who think we can do better–and believe they know how. Bartlett shares some of the most influential movements today: techno-futurists questing for immortality, far-right groups seeking to close borders, militant environmentalists striving to save the planet by any means necessary, and psychedelic pioneers attempting to heal society with the help of powerful hallucinogens.

Join us in the Rare Book Room as Bartlett sits down with journalist John Knefel to share his outlook, his experiences, and his vision for a journey into utopia.

Jamie Bartlett is a writer and a journalist, and the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos. He writes and talks about about technology, society, politics, research methods, and internet culture.

John Knefel is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed and the Village Voice. He is also a co-host of the daily podcast Radio Dispatch and a researcher at Comedy Central’s The President Show. He lives in Brooklyn.