Uncertainty pervades the big decisions we all make in our lives. How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday?

We do not know what the future will hold but we must make decisions anyway. We crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. But humans are successful because they have adapted to an environment that they understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives.

John Kay and Mervyn King draw on history, mathematics, economics and philosophy to highlight the most successful – and most short-sighted – methods of dealing with an unknowable future. They offer both an exploration of the limits of numbers and a celebration of human instinct and wisdom.

In conversation with Lizzy Burden (Telegraph).

Radical Uncertainty is published by Little, Brown. Buy a copy from our bookselling partners at Waterstones.

In our ninth Festival of Economics, co-programmed by Diane Coyle and Richard Davies, economists and experts from around the world debate with each other – and their audiences – some of the key economic questions of our time.

It's important to us that ideas and debate are affordable to everyone. It's also important that our commentators, artists, writers, poets and thinkers are paid. This is a Pay What You Can event. You are invited to choose your own contribution to the event, from £0 to £8. All proceeds go towards supporting our speakers and sustaining Festival of Ideas. The option to attend for free is available for all online events.

Festival of Economics: John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty