Europe’s biggest future festival, Brain Bar, closed with a full house

Bram Westenbrink, global head of the Heineken brand, was also there

This year’s Brain Bar roared with a genuine festival atmosphere and constant buzz. Today’s biggest minds and breathtaking art productions took turns on stage, and the participants could ask all their questions and even engage in debate with the speakers from more than 20 countries.

The festival focused on the burning questions of the world, and this year it did not shy away from divisive topics either. For the first time, the domestic audience could hear live the thoughts of six-time New York Times bestseller Malcolm Gladwell, who spoke about the challenges of the coming decades and how Generation Z can only deal with them by building a society of team players. Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, talked with Iain Lindsay, the popular former British ambassador, about what kind of leaders this struggle might require.

Laura Toodu, the Estonian government’s defense policy advisor, mercilessly confronted the festival-goers with the reality of conscripts, which could easily become their own future. The breaking of the taboo continued with Joanna Williams, the author of the scandalous book “Women VS Feminism”, who came to the defense of women against modern feminism and emphasized that everyone is harmed by the overheated struggle between the sexes. And Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former “rock star” finance minister, got into an argument with blockchain developer Viktor Tábori in order to destroy the Bitcoin revolution and the utopia of “politic-free money”.