Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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We’ve been taught to chase fancy job titles and large salaries but what if we aimed for moral ambition instead? In this week’s episode of Hello Monday, host Jessi Hempel sits down with historian and bestselling author Rutger Bregman to explore moral ambition: the idea that the core metric of a successful career should be the positive impact we have on the world. His latest book is Moral Ambition: How to Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference.

Tune in for Rutger’s take on:

What moral ambition is—and why we need more of it
Why “follow your passion” is the wrong advice
How to shift from success-driven to service-driven work
How to build coalitions and collaborate for impact

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0:00 Intro
3:10 Rutger defines moral ambition
7:48 Redefining what it means to be successful
11:17 How we change being driven by fear about the future and a scarcity mindset
14:22 The Moral Ambition Circle
20:04 The importance of asking what you can do and where you are needed
27:32 Conclusion