The Next Big Idea Daily

Latest Episodes:

The Hidden Cost of People-Pleasing Aug 20, 2025

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Most of us worry about what others think of us. While this is probably a useful survival instinct, it can also turn into a kind of neurotic rumination, leading us to prioritize people-pleasing over our own needs. Why we do this, and how we can move past it, is the topic of the new book Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You by psychotherapist Meg Josephson.

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Want to Outsmart AI? Ask an Elite Soldier. Aug 19, 2025

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We live in a complex world that’s only getting harder to navigate. The pace is faster, the problems are messier, and the future is tougher to predict. So how can your brain possibly keep up? Should we outsource everything to AI? Or is there a deeper, older intelligence we’re overlooking? That’s the question Angus Fletcher asks in his new book out today, Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know. Angus is a professor of story science at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, a consultant to U.S. Army Special Operations, and a leading thinker on how the human mind really works — and why our creative minds are a lot more powerful than we realize, even in the age of smart machines.

How to Run Your Life Like a Startup Aug 18, 2025

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Happiness might not sound like a business strategy, but Arthur C. Brooks—Harvard professor, Atlantic columnist, and all-around happiness guru—says it’s the most important metric of all. In his new book The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life, Arthur argues that your life is a startup, and you’re the founder, CEO, and maybe even the unpaid intern. Which means you’ve got to manage your most important asset: yourself.

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How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World Aug 15, 2025

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How can you break out of the endless cycle of blah and create the kind of interesting, meaningful life you seek?

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Anti-Aging Is Overrated. Joy Is the Real Fountain of Youth. Aug 14, 2025

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When we talk about aging, we often hear about lifespan (how long you live) or healthspan (how well you live). But what about joyspan? That’s the question gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnight is asking in her new book by that name, Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half.

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Money Isn’t Real—Here’s Why That Matters Aug 13, 2025

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Journalist Paul Vigna has spent years covering crypto and asking hard questions about finance. He’s written a new book called The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin and in it he argues that money is less of a tool and more of a kind of religious object — a myth fueled by faith, weaponized by greed, and now so central to our lives that we barely question it. But maybe we should.

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That Little Voice in Your Head? It’s Smarter Than You Think. Aug 12, 2025

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Do you ever just know something? You get a gut feeling about a person or a situation — a feeling you can’t quite explain, but more often than not happens to be right? It can feel like magic, but it’s actually neuroscience. Today, we’re hearing from behavioral scientist Laura Huang, author of You Already Know: The Science of Mastering Your Intuition. In the book, she explains that gut feelings are actually fast, subconscious calculations — your brain drawing on data, memory, and lived experience to make split-second judgments. And the best part? You can train it to be even better.

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Feel Like a Number? Learn How to Beat the System. Aug 11, 2025

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In Robin Hood Math, mathematics professor Noah Giansiracusa shows how understanding a little math can help you push back against a world that keeps reducing you to a number.

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Reality Bites: Why Your Teeth Matter More Than You Think Aug 08, 2025

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Author and zoologist Bill Schutt joins us to make the case that chompers have made vertebrates dominant on the planet, and how, in the future, dentists might be a dying breed.

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Arguing About Politics Never Works. This Does. Aug 07, 2025

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In her new book Don’t Talk About Politics, Sarah Stein Lubrano explores a radical idea: that people don’t think their way into new beliefs — they live their way into them. If you want to shift hearts and minds, you’ve got to start with experiences, relationships, and community.

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