Sir Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Formerly he was chief executive of Nesta, and held government roles (1997–2004), including as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit director and as Downing Street’s head of policy. He is the founder or co-founder of many organisations, from Demos to Action for Happiness, and the author of Another World is Possible, Social Innovation: how societies find the power to change, Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world, and other books.

SIR GEOFF MULGAN

I would like young people to feel agency above all that they actually do have some power and some responsibility to shape the world, not just be an observer. I think reading history helps you get that, and it's important to have a sense of the past and how we got here because...it can be depressing, but it can be empowering. And in a way that it's for each regeneration to ask that question. What from the present do we want to take forward into the future? And I think if we could do that, we actually live happier lives. If we have that sense of our embeddedness in time in that sense.

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The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Vincent Cortese with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Vincent Cortese. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).