Brain Bar 2021 brings the future closer to home

An annual meeting of minds in Budapest, Brain Bar hones its focus on the future and what it might bring. This year, the two-day festival showcases fascinating speakers and vital topics.


Along with climate change and nature conservation, visitors can gain insight into the everyday life of a space explorer. Dorottya Milánkovich is a noted physician and space researcher, renowned here and abroad, who has appeared at the UN Space Commission. And for her lecture on the universe, she will even bring her own tools.

Nowadays, we have a more gloomy vision of the world because of pollution, climate change and viruses, but if a storyteller weaved a tale about our future, would it change that image? András Berecz will improvise a yarn about our future on the Brain Bar stage, with the help of the audience.

No matter how we surround ourselves with the latest technology, more and more people are longing for analogue: notebooks, books and Polaroid cameras are back in vogue. Anyone who craves escape from a digital world may have read David Sax’s book The Revenge of Analog, where the journalist travels almost the entire world looking analogue’s right to exist in a record factory or at the offices of Moleskine. On the podium at Brain Bar, he’ll talk about why we still seek out analogue, and how much more it means than a sudden wave of fashion.

Also appearing will be environmental activist Michael Shellenberger, who will also talk touch on theories of existence, and Alex Rawlings, who speaks 15 languages, and here will aim to reveal just how we can make ourselves understood anywhere in the world.