Abstract
We’ll be joined by Rowan Hooper, Managing Editor of New Scientist magazine, to discuss his latest book: How to Spend a Trillion Dollars. If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do?
A trillion dollars is an unimaginably large sum, yet it’s only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It’s a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. Within this book, Rowan explores fascinating options for how the money could be spent.
How to Spend a Trillion Dollars is the ultimate thought experiment but it is also a call to arms: these are all things we could do if we put our minds to it - and our money.
More about our guest
Rowan Hooper is Managing Editor of New Scientist magazine, where he writes about all aspects of science, from the nature of dreams to life in the multiverse. After gaining a PhD in evolutionary biology, he worked in Japan studying dragonflies, then held a fellowship at Trinity College Dublin working in a physics lab and as writer-in-residence. He is the author of Superhuman: Life at the Extremes of Mental and Physical Ability.
