A Rock Star Ideas Festival in Brooklyn

Anyone who hasn’t been Very Online since 2020 may be wondering why Mumford & Sons co-founder Winston Marshall, the British guy who helped usher in the 2010s folk rock revival, would be interested in organizing a heterodox thought symposium in Brooklyn. The event website features a cascade of big-think internet names cascading down the screen like bands on a summer music poster. Headliners like Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali appear in large bold font against a neon background. Thomas Chatterton Williams’ name is a bit smaller. “I have a music background,” the Grammy-winning Marshall said when I interviewed him recently. “I think I can sort of apply what I’ve learned there to the ideas space, adding, “this world of ideas happens online.”