Why do some promising ideas take root, and others never bear fruit? Award-winning author Gal Beckerman joins us to show how history is made.

We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fuelling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can whisper among themselves, imagine alternate realities, and deliberate over how to get there.

Journalist and author Gal Beckerman joins us to search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and warn us that they might soon go extinct.

In this livestream, In Conversation event, Beckerman will reveal a grand panorama, stretching from the seventeenth century correspondence that jumpstarted the scientific revolution to the groundswell of the Chartists, the liberation movement on the Gold Coast and the underground network of samizdat publications in Soviet Russia – even the encrypted apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration.

Social movements – from decolonization to feminism – thrive when they are given the time and space to gestate. Now, Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces with monolithic platforms that are very public and endlessly networked. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart and Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem lacks – everything from patience to focus – and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again.

Don’t miss this chance to look to the past in order to imagine a different future.

Praise for Gal Beckerman’s The Quiet Before:

‘This brilliant book filled with insightful analysis and colourful storytelling, Gal Beckerman shows that new ideas need to incubate through thoughtful discussions in order to create sustained movements. Today’s social media hothouses, unfortunately, tend to produce flash mobs that flame out … Rarely does a book give you a new way of looking at social change. This one does.’ – Walter Isaacson

‘The Quiet Before is a fascinating and important exploration of how ideas that change the world incubate and spread.’ – Steven Pinker