Educated in history at the universities of Utrecht and California, he has five published works, including Utopia for Realists (Empúries/Salamandra, 2017) and Humanity: A History of Hope (Empúries/Anagrama, 2021), both New York Times Bestsellers and translated into more than forty languages. His books deal with central debates in the history of philosophy and propose a new realism characterized by a positive view of the human condition.

He was one of the pioneers in the defence of universal basic income, for which he was invited to the Davos Forum in 2019, where he made a provocative intervention that made him internationally known. He publishes in leading media such as The Guardian and The Washington Post and in recent years he has become one of the most relevant voices on the European intellectual scene. He has been nominated twice for the European Press Prize for his work as a journalist in The Correspondent.