Stay ConnectedThe Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join hosts Rufus Griscom and Caleb Bissinger — along with our curators, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — for conversations that might just change the way you see the world. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
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Podcasting is lousy with guests who peddle advice about starting businesses, building careers, and living full lives. Few of these gurus have actually accomplished anything. Fewer still have advice that comes anywhere close to revelatory.
Mark Pincus is the rare exception.
The founder of 10 companies, Mark is best known for Zynga, the gaming juggernaut behind FarmVille and Words With Friends. At its peak, Zynga was valued at more than $12 billion and accounted for 20% of Facebook’s page views. It was so big, in fact, that Mark Zuckerberg once admitted to Mark Pincus, “Zynga is the only company that is capable of being an actual Facebook competitor.”
Across his 30-year career, Mark — Pincus, not Zuck — developed a cheat code for building products people love and living a life anyone would admire, and that cheat code winds its way through his new book, Life at the Speed of Play.
Today, he shares how he learned to trust his gut, why most founders build too much and test too little, and how failure taught him to move faster, pivot sooner, and search for real signals instead of hope.
📖 CHAPTERS:
(02:22) The Fight That Changed His Life
(08:25) The Startup Decision That Matters Most
(17:00) The Fastest Way to Make People Care
(20:42) The Day Mark Zuckerberg Proved Him Wrong
(31:59) Why Most Startups Build Too Much
(40:11) How The Founder Is Employee #1
(43:39) The Culture Hack That Scales
(51:37) The Framework Behind FarmVille
📱 This is part one of our conversation with Mark. The second installment will be out on Monday. If you can’t wait until then, you can listen right now in the Next Big Idea app.
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For years, cardiologist Eric Topol hunted for the rarest people in America: those over 80 who had never been sick. When he finally found 1,400 of them, he made a shocking discovery. It wasn't their genes. These "super agers" were often the last ones standing in families where everyone else died decades earlier. So what separates people who live into their 80s or 90s feeling great from those who battle chronic disease? In his new book, Super Agers, Eric reveals what the science actually shows, shares practical advice you can use at any age, and takes on the bro scientists selling false promises along the way.
This episode first aired in July 2025.
🎥 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
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Despite decades of urgency and alarm, progress on climate change has felt frustratingly slow. What if we've been going about it all wrong? Elizabeth Dunn and Jiaying "JZ" Zhao think there's a missing ingredient in the conversation: joy.
In their new book, Leave the Lights On, Liz and JZ draw on psychology, behavioral science, and sustainability research to argue that the most effective climate solutions aren't rooted in guilt, fear, or self-denial. They're rooted in easy choices that also make your life better.
Today on the show: why doom-and-gloom messaging backfires, what bacon dipped in maple syrup has to do with saving the planet, how buying more underwear might just protect our species, and why the choices that help most are also the ones that make us happier.
***
Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:23) Why Climate Fear Backfires
(09:24) The Case for Making Meat a Treat
(17:44) The BLT Climate Paradox
(20:53) The Hidden Climate Cost of Your Bank Account
(23:50) Fast Fashion, Slow Happiness
(31:10) Why Driving Makes Us Unhappy
(39:08) The Best Trips Are Closer Than You Think
(45:24) The Science of Social Tipping Points
(49:41) The Climate Power of a Single Vote
About the Guests:
Elizabeth Dunn is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and one of the world's leading researchers on happiness and well-being. Her work explores how people can use their time, money, and relationships to build more satisfying lives.
Jiaying Zhao is a professor of psychology and the founder of the Behavioral Sustainability Lab at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on climate action, behavioral change, and the role of psychology in accelerating the transition to a more sustainable future.
***
🎥 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
IM8 ➡️ Athletes, doctors, David Beckham — they all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi
Northwest Registered Agent ➡️ They’ve been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
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Publisher, scientist, humorist, diplomat — Benjamin Franklin was America's first polymath. Today, with help from Eric Weiner, we revisit Franklin's life, searching for tips about how to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
This episode first aired in July 2024.
🎥 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
IM8 ➡️Athletes, doctors, David Beckham — they all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi
Northwest Registered Agent ➡️ They’ve been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
Shopify ➡️ Stop waiting for permission to build something. Your next revenue stream starts free at shopify.com/nbi
"We’re entering our 250th birthday, and we’re not quite in the mood for a birthday party. We’ve been tearing ourselves apart." That's what Walter Isaacson told Rufus when they sat down last year. But, he says, it doesn't have to be that way. "Let's use this birthday party as a chance to try to heal some of the divides."
Walter's latest book is The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. That sentence? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Yes, it’s eloquent, but more than that, it gave the United States a mission statement, one that we are still striving — fitfully, imperfectly — to meet. With America's 250th birthday just a few days away, we think it's the perfect time to revisit this conversation with Walter about how that sentence came to be written, what it meant to the founders, and why it still matters today.
🎥 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
IM8 ➡️ Athletes, doctors, David Beckham — they all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi
Northwest Registered Agent ➡️ They’ve been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
Shopify ➡️ Stop waiting for permission to build something. Your next revenue stream starts free at shopify.com/nbi
On Thursday, Rufus and Robert Wright (The God Test) talked about AI as a new stage in the evolution of intelligence — and about the very human traits already showing up in our machines: empathy, deception, power-seeking, seduction. Today, they ask the harder question: what happens when these machines become the object of a geopolitical arms race?
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Does the logic of human destiny now lead to artificial intelligence? Are we creating a higher form of intelligence in our own image? And, if so, what kind of image is that?
These are the questions celebrated author Robert Wright asks in his new book, The God Test, which was published this week.
Bob argues that we should not be surprised to see signs of deception, power-seeking, flattery, and autonomy in AI systems. These are not alien traits; they are behaviors that show up again and again in intelligent systems — including us. And if there is an evolutionary process at work in AI, then we are not just observers: we are part of the selection pressure. In the end, we may get the AI we deserve.
This was such a wide-ranging conversation that we’ve divided it into two episodes. Today, we begin with the cosmic story: how life became mind, how mind became culture, and how culture has now begun to build a new mind — one that may surpass us.
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Fora ➡️ Build and scale your own travel business by becoming a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/idea
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Most of us swear we have no free time. But the week is 168 hours long. Subtract a 40-hour job and eight hours of sleep a night, and you're left with 72 hours. So where do they go? Today, Laura Vanderkam, author of the new book Big Time, shares her system for reclaiming her free time, including her method for knocking out "someday" projects in small daily bites.
🎬 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Fora ➡️ Build and scale your own travel business by becoming a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/idea
Northwest Registered Agent ➡️ Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
Shopify ➡️ Launch your business for just $1/month. Start selling today at shopify.com/nbi
GPAs. Citations. Step counts. Likes. We love a good metric, don't we? It tells you exactly where you stand, no arguing. Mention a 4.0 to a high schooler and they'll know exactly what you mean. Tell a fellow Fitbit-wearer you just hit 10,000 and they'll nod approvingly. But that clarity has a price. To make a metric that clean, that portable, you have to sand off all the nuance, all the context, everything that made the thing worth measuring in the first place. And philosopher C. Thi Nguyen thinks that's quietly rewiring us. In his book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game, he argues the metrics we chase have stopped measuring our values and started setting them.
🎬 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com.
🎁 The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com, and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Fora — Build and scale your own travel business by becoming a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/idea
Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
Shopify — Launch your business for just $1/month. Start selling today at shopify.com/nbi
The World Cup kicked off over the weekend, and so far the mood is meh. Fans are fuming over sell-your-kidney ticket prices, frightened by reports that ICE may target matches, tailgates, and sports bars, and generally feeling down on this quadrennial celebration.
We wanted to know: Is there any joy left in this thing?
So we called up Simon Kuper. He's a columnist at the Financial Times, "one of the best sportswriters in the English language today" (The New Yorker), and author of the Next Big Idea Club must-read World Cup Fever. He's also attended every World Cup since 1990.
Simon tells us how the tournament bridges political divides, why suicides decline during the World Cup, whether “sportswashing” really works, and which storylines to follow, no matter if you're a die-hard footy fan or a first-time viewer.
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Fora — Build and scale your own travel business by becoming a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/idea
Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree
Shopify — Launch your business for just $1/month. Start selling today at shopify.com/nbi
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