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.
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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.
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🎁 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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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
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"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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nearly half of all Americans believe AI is bad for humanity. Peter Diamandis is not one of them. On his podcast, Moonshots, and in his new book, We Are as Gods, co-written with the inimitable Steven Kotler, he makes the case that artificial intelligence is already ushering in a world of abundance — think radical life extension, 10 billion humanoid robots, and agents that do your job while you're sipping a latte.
He knows it may not be all sunshine and hydroponic roses, but he believes our future is incredibly bright. And he's putting his money where his mouth is: XPRIZE, the nonprofit he founded more than 30 years ago to bankroll breakthroughs, just announced it's giving $3.5 million to filmmakers who conjure convincingly optimistic visions of the future.
Rufus and Caleb don't have their film treatment ready yet, but they do have plenty of questions for Peter and Steven about flying cars, the future of work, worst-case scenarios, and the new commandments for working with AI.
💬 LINES WE LOVE:
“If you’re in ninth grade and you’re using AI to do your homework, that’s just stupid, and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that. But if you’re in ninth grade and you’re using AI to help you build a starship to go to Alpha Centauri, or create a new form of energy, or something that’s way beyond your dreams — and it’s enabling you to up-level your ambition and your abilities — then that’s amazing.” —Peter Diamandis
“Human writing is weird, it's surprising, it's idiosyncratic, it has high prediction error. An LLM optimizes towards the mean, towards the average. It standardizes output... [It] may make your writing look a lot cleaner to you, but it's actually hurting communication and it's hurting persuasion. Average gets ignored; remarkable gets remembered.” —Steven Kotler
"I'm not worried about artificial intelligence. I'm worried about human stupidity.” —Peter Diamandis
🎬 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.
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Modern life has not been easy on our brains. Average IQ scores rose steadily throughout the last century. Now they appear to be leveling off. The problem, according to neuroscientists, may be that we have reached our neurobiological limits. Our brains simply can’t work any harder. Luckily, science writer Annie Murphy Paul has a solution. In her book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, she draws on a wealth of scientific research to show that we’re smarter when we get out of our heads. By offloading our memories onto our phones, making decisions based on our bodily sensations, using tactile tools to solve abstract problems, drawing inspiration from our surroundings, and arguing with our friends, we can access intelligence that exists beyond the confines of our craniums. In this episode, Annie explains how to do it.
This episode first aired in June 2021.
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Nicholas Epley is a mind reader. But he doesn’t have ESP or practice hypnosis. He's not telepathic or clairvoyant. Sure, you could ask him to read your fortune, but you'd be better off with a Magic 8 Ball.
When we say Nick is a mind reader, what we mean is he studies mind reading at the University of Chicago — studies, as he puts it, "how we make inferences about each other's thoughts and beliefs and attitudes, and mostly how we screw that up."
Today, he makes small talk — and big talk — with Rufus about his new book, A Little More Social, which draws on the dozens of studies he's run with thousands of participants to show that talking to strangers, cringe as it may feel, can enliven your days, lengthen your life, and maybe even heal our politics.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out our conversations with Charles Duhigg, Leslie John, David Brooks, Marc Schulz, Anna Sale, and John Colapinto.
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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What do your five senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch — have to do with happiness? According to Gretchen Rubin, a great deal. The world around us, she says, has the potential to dazzle, to entertain, to trigger a state of rapture. If only we pay attention. Today on the show, she shares the tools she's developed to delight in the physical world. She spoke to Rufus in April 2023 about her book Life in Five Senses.
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America's a funny place. It's not a country with a fixed geographic or religious identity. We don't have a common story of divine creation. "What we have," writes Ben Rhodes in his new book, All We Say, "are words." The words of the founding documents, yes — but also "the words of speeches spoken by Americans who call us to be that better version of ourselves."
Ben has spent more time with great American speeches than just about anyone. For eight years, he was a speechwriter in the Obama White House, crafting some of the defining oratory of the era. His new book is a 250-year tour through 15 speeches that built the country, challenged it, and raised its sights.
He tells us how FDR changed the course of WWII from behind the lectern, how MLK ad-libbed one of the most famous lines in American history, and what Obama's 2008 speech about race can teach today's politicians about storytelling. And he makes the case that America needs great oratory now more than it has in a long time.
💬 LINES WE LOVED:
“Try to imagine American identity without speeches. It's hard to do. It's almost like secular scripture. Think about the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's second inaugural, the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech or those Kennedy speeches — or, if you're a Republican, the speeches that Reagan gave. I would argue that one of the reasons our politics is so fractured and we can't talk to each other or persuade each other of anything is because we're not doing that anymore.”
“Obama used to say to me, ‘Remember that everything we do is just we're trying to tell the best story we can about America and what it can be.’ Not only is every speech a story, but every speech is a chapter in a larger story we're trying to tell.”
🔗 LINKS + SPONSORS:
If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like our conversations with Erik Larson, Walter Isaacson, Eric Weiner, and Jill Lepore.
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In his mega-bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman showed that the finitude of life “isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief.” In his follow-up book, Meditations for Mortals, he invites us to embrace what he calls “imperfectionism.” Accept your limitations, your finitude, your lack of control — because “the more we try to render the world controllable,” he warns, “the more it eludes us; and the more daily life loses … its resonance, its capacity to touch, move and absorb us.”
This episode first aired on October 31, 2024, but it wasn’t Oliver’s first appearance on the show. Back in 2022, he sat down with our curator Malcolm Gladwell. You can find that conversation here.
💬 LINES WE LOVED:
“Turning towards the limited situation in which we find ourselves is ultimately freeing, energizing, and conducive to meaningful productivity.”
“Getting on top of all your to-dos is impossible because there's always a bigger space of things that we could do than things that we're going to be able to do.”
“Everything is either a good time or a good story.”
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Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and host of "The Most Interesting Thing in AI," joins Rufus and Caleb to explain why the machines may master our minds long before they master our muscles — and what that gap tells us about where AI is headed. Along the way: why human podcasters still beat AI ones, how Nick learned to stop worrying and love open source, and where he'd point an infinite AI budget.
🎧 Check out Nick’s previous appearance on the show here.
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The Greek philosopher Epicurus made a rather bold claim over two thousand years ago. The key to life, he said, is simple: pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Around this maxim he developed a school of philosophy, Epicureanism, which promised its adherents that if they took care of their basic needs, surrounded themselves with trustworthy friends, and developed a basic understanding of science, they would be happy. But is it really that simple? Can the advice of someone born 2,363 years ago still hold true? To answer these questions, we turned to Emily Austin, professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University and author of the delightful book Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.
(This episode first aired in January 2023.)
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You can run from uncertainty, but you can’t hide. The thing to do, says Simone Stolzoff, to develop comfort with ambiguity and build tolerance for the unknown. His new book is How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers.
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In the last 20 years, there has been a dramatic change in our understanding of neuroplasticity — the brain’s capacity to grow new neurons. In the last five years, we’ve learned that your hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for learning and memory, can get bigger at any age. Majid Fotuhi, who teaches at Johns Hopkins, has been at the forefront of a new body of research demonstrating that lifestyle changes — tweaks to the way you exercise and eat, adjustments to your sleep and mindset — can improve your brain health no matter how old you are. They can even reverse early-stage Alzheimer’s. His new book is The Invincible Brain, and the message is clear: with the right lifestyle and mindset changes, you can grow a bigger brain.
🔗 LINKS AND MENTIONS:
Check out our playlist of health-related episode on Spotify
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Is freedom overrated? In his new book, Inside the Box, David Epstein argues that constraints, limits and obstacles are what stimulate creativity, innovation, collaboration and personal contentment.
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For the last three years, Will Guidara has been on the road talking about unreasonable hospitality. He's met financiers and prison wardens, educators and athletes, Fortune 500 executives and small business owners. They kept asking the same question: "I get how this works in a restaurant, but how do I apply it in my business?" So Will wrote them an answer. It's called Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide.
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In September 2023, Will Guidara told us the story of how he used two words to turn a middling brasserie into the best restaurant in the world. Those two words? Unreasonable hospitality.
We're running that episode again today because, well, it's one of our all-time favorites. And because Will is coming back on the show on Monday to discuss his brand-new book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide. Consider this the appetizer.
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Every few months, we pick one book with the power to change how you see the world. Then we build an experience around it: author conversations, reading guides, key insights, and a community of people who love talking about ideas. In this episode, we reveal our latest pick. And stick around for a sneak peek of Rufus's conversation with the author.
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What's standing between you and your goals? Focus? Discipline? Motivation? Nir Eyal points the finger somewhere else. Your beliefs. In his new book, Beyond Belief, he shows you how to trade them in for better ones — and finally get unstuck.
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In celebration of Apple's 50th birthday, we're probing the company's past and peering into its future with David Pogue — former New York Times tech columnist, current CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, and author of the recent New York Times bestseller Apple: The First 50 Years. We begin by looking backward, exploring the improbable story of the hippie pranksters who built the world's first trillion-dollar company. But we're not just here for the history. We also look ahead, asking: What cool new tech are they cooking up in Cupertino? Why has Apple been so slow on AI, and does the company have a plan to catch up? And who's the frontrunner to succeed Tim Cook?
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Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Thermostat. In his book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, he shares everything he’s learned about building great companies and game-changing products.
(This episode first aired in September 2022.)
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When journalist Sebastian Mallaby approached Demis Hassabis, Google's AI chief and a man with a lifelong mission to build superintelligence, about writing his biography, he made the following pitch: "If you're going to disrupt people from head to toe, you owe them an explanation of why you're doing it. What motivates you? Why do something this dangerous?" Today, Sebastian tells us what answers he found.
Sebastian's new book, The Infinity Machine, is out now. Pick up a copy from Amazon, Audible, or Bookshop.org.
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In 2023, Patrick Radden Keefe met a man who told him, "I might have a story for you." When you're Patrick — New Yorker staff writer, author of "some of the most memorable nonfiction books of the last decade" (that's the New York Times talking) — this is a hazard of the trade. But he heard the guy out.
The guy said he knew a family whose 19-year-old son had died in mysterious circumstances. "He went off the balcony of a luxury apartment building overlooking the Thames." When the boy's parents started looking into it, they made an astonishing discovery: Their son — a nice, upper-middle-class Londoner — had been running around the city posing as the son of a Russian oligarch.
"This guy said only about that much," Patrick tells us in today's episode, "and I knew if the family would talk to me, this was my next thing." His new book is London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth.
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It’s a big, bad, scary, lonely world out there. Lucky for us, Jenny Lawson — aka the Bloggess — has collected more than a hundred tricks and tools that have helped her keep going, and she shares them in her heartwarming and hilarious new book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay.
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The French filmmaker Jean Renoir said, "The only things that are important in life are the things you remember." But what do you remember and why? That's the subject of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters by pioneering neuroscientist Charan Ranganath. He explains why you still know the lyrics to the song you loved in eighth grade but can't remember the name of your kid's eighth-grade teacher, how memory shapes your identity, and what you can do right now to improve your recall. (This episode first aired in April 2024.)
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Let's face it, modern life is kind of a bummer. We're glued to our phones, starved for meaning, haunted by a gnawing sense of emptiness. Enter Arthur C. Brooks. He's a Harvard professor, happiness expert, and a man with a plan to help you find your why and build a life that actually fills you up.
Arthur’s new book is The Meaning of Your Life. Learn more at https://www.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-of-your-life
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We’ve been told that “oversharing” (TMI) is a social sin. But our guest today, Leslie John, who teaches at Harvard Business School, argues that TLI (Too Little Information) is far more dangerous. In her new book, Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing, she shows how personal, vulnerable, even uncomfortable disclosures are the wellspring of trust, friendship, romance, and professional success.
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On a muggy spring day in 2018, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that transformed America. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court cleared the way for legal sports betting from coast to coast. Since then, all bets have been off: Americans have wagered more than $500 billion on sports. And now, thanks to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, we're betting on everything — the weather, where the next US airstrike will land in Iran, whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027. McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wanted to write about this brave new world of betting. He got more than he bargained for. His story — "My Year as a Degenerate Gambler" — is the cover of The Atlantic's April issue.
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Last week, we hosted a members-only Q&A with Michael Pollan. We covered food and diet, his writing process, psychedelics, and dreams. We also got into the microbiome, which happens to be the subject of Michael's new book (and a topic he thinks will fundamentally change how we understand health). The conversation was so good that we thought, Why keep this to ourselves?
The episodes we mentioned about the origins of life with Sara Imari Walker? You can listen to them here and here.
And if you can’t get enough of Michael — and who can? — here’s our last interview with him.
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What do the campfire, printing press, motion picture, and smartphone have in common? They're all storytelling technologies. Each one gave us a new medium through which to transmit tales, reshaping how we think, what we believe, and who holds power. And we may be on the brink of the most disruptive one yet.
In his new book, The Story of Stories, Kevin Ashton traces the million-year arc from fireside gossip to the screen in your pocket. Now, with AI-generated imagery and displays approaching the resolution of the human eye, we're heading somewhere new: a world where we may not be able to tell the difference between a story and reality.
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According to Merriam-Webster, the word "conversation" has 36 synonyms, ranging from the alliterative ("confabulation") to the arcane ("persiflage"). Why the linguistic profusion? Because conversing is a fundamental part — maybe the fundamental part — of being human.
We chat with our families, friends, strangers, and co-workers, and we communicate in phone calls, text messages, emails, and (occasionally) postcards. When these tête-à-têtes go well, it is oddly thrilling; we become better versions of ourselves — warmer and wiser, funnier, and consistently insightful. Best of all, a good dialogue is a direct route to connection. "The bond of all companionship," wrote Oscar Wilde, "whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."
But when a conversation goes poorly, when it stays on the surface ("what do you do for a living?") or devolves into a sputtering mess of misunderstanding ("you’re overreacting!"), we don’t feel the invigorating pulse of connection. What we feel, instead, is the emotional equivalent of a busy signal.
So, this hour, we’re asking: How can we have better conversations? And to help answer that question, we’re joined by Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the bestselling author of "The Power of Habit" and now Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.
Charles, as you’ll hear, is something of supercommunicator himself — a lithe storyteller who is as well-versed in evolutionary biology as he is in the latest psychology — and after studying the art and science of communication for the last few years, he’s concluded that anyone can become a great conversationalist. You just have to master a few simple skills. Tune in to find out what they are.
(This episode first aired in February 2024.)
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As the war with Iran enters its second week, two big questions loom: How did we get here? And how will it end? We put those questions to Scott Anderson. Scott is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Sudan, and El Salvador. He’s also the author of King of Kings, a riveting account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. He helps us unpack the long, complicated history between the US and Iran — countries that were once close allies — and looks ahead at what may come next. "In the Middle East," he says, "things can always get worse."
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Emad Mostaque co-founded Stability AI, the company behind the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, and he now runs Intelligent Internet, which builds open-source AI models. In his new book, The Last Economy, he argues that AI is about to make human intellect so cheap and abundant that the entire economic order — work, money, meaning — will crack apart. And he thinks this will take place within a thousand days. In this episode, he and Rufus talk about what happens if we sleepwalk into this, and what's possible if we don't.
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“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” sneers a rebel henchman in Shakespeare’s “Henry VI.” Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has another idea: let’s fire all the politicians. She has a point, doesn’t she? Most of ’em are beholden to donors, allergic to accountability, and more interested in stuffing their reelection coffers than serving the public good. But what’s the alternative? Well, Hélène believes we could break the partisan gridlock and restore public trust by letting ordinary citizens, chosen at random, set the agenda and craft legislation. That may sound preposterous, but in her new book, Politics Without Politicians, she blends examples from ancient Athens to modern-day France to show citizen rule in action and argue that it might just save democracy.
This episode was guest-hosted by one of our favorite citizens, Michael Kovnat. If you’d like more of his dulcet tones and shrewd insights, check out his daily podcast (The Next Big Idea Daily) and newsletter (Book of the Day).
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On the surface, Ian Leslie's book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs is a dual biography of the greatest songwriting duo the world has ever seen. So not exactly standard Next Big Idea territory. But what’s remarkable about Ian's book, which I've been pressing on everyone I know, whether they're Beatlemaniacs or the opposite (i.e., Rolling Stones fans), is that through the narrative of this tender, tempestuous, radically inventive partnership — romance, really — genuinely big ideas emerge about creativity, vulnerability, and how to get by with a little help from your friends.
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Five years ago, Michael Pollan — the acclaimed author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind — went looking for an answer to one of life's great mysteries: "How does three pounds of brain matter generate subjective experience?" The result is his luminous new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, which comes out tomorrow.
Great journalists like Michael have a nose for story and a knack for timing. Both are on display in A World Appears. It's a page-turner teeming with maverick characters. It's a startling look at the emerging science of plant sentience. And it's an urgent exploration of a question we can't afford to ignore: Could consciousness — that is, "subjective or felt experience," the trippy miracle that when we open our eyes, a world appears — emerge in AI?
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A World Appears is the Next Big Idea Club’s latest selection. To get an early copy, a personal note from Michael, and an invitation to a Q&A with him on March 10, become a member at nextbigideaclub.com. Code PODCAST gets you a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
If you enjoyed this episode, check out our conversations with Antonio Damasio, David Chalmers (here and here), Sara Walker, Paul Bloom, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris, and Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland.
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The only constant is change. You’ve heard it a thousand times. But here’s what the cliche leaves out: Change may be inevitable, but how you respond to it — and who you become because of it — that part’s up to you.
Maya Shankar knows a thing or two about this. She’s studied change as a cognitive scientist, explored it on her podcast “A Slight Change of Plans,” and now written a book — The Other Side of Change — about how the hardest moments of our lives can transform us … for the better. In the book, she tells remarkable stories of people overcoming colossal change — debilitating diagnoses, amnesia, incarceration — and extracts universal lessons grounded in the latest science.
“When a big change happens to us,” she tells us in this episode, “it can feel like a personal apocalypse of sorts. And that the word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokálypsis, which actually means revelation. That etymology is instructive. Change can upend us, yes. But it can also reveal things to us.”
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That Tim Kreider essay we quoted is called “Reprieve,” and you can find it in his wonderful book We Learn Nothing.
The George Saunders clip comes from his lovely conversation with David Marchese, co-host of “The Interview.” You can listen to it here.
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Do you ever feel like you're drowning in health advice? Eat this, not that. Take this supplement, but only after popping this other one first. Here’s the good news: Most of it doesn't matter. In Eat Your Ice Cream, renowned physician Ezekiel Emanuel shares six simple rules for living longer — and gives you permission to ignore pretty much everything else.
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If you’ve spent any time on social media in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed the rise of what Brad Stulberg calls “hustle-culture greatness” — influencers who promote labyrinthine morning routines, ruthlessly optimized habits, and ascetic self-discipline. “That is not excellence,” says Brad. “That is a bunch of elaborate kabuki that masquerades as the real thing.” The real thing is about challenging yourself in worthwhile endeavors, focusing on what matters most, and expressing the unique qualities that make you who you are. In a word, excellence. Today, we’ll teach you how to pursue it.
Brad’s new book, The Way of Excellence, is out now. Pick up a copy on Amazon, Audible, or Bookshop.org.
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In her new book, Mattering, Jennifer Wallace argues that our deepest crises — loneliness, anxiety, political rage — stem from a single unmet need: the need to matter. How did this happen, and what can we do about it?
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If you enjoyed this conversation, we think you'll like Jennifer’s previous appearance on the show, her episode of The Next Big Idea Daily, and Rebecca Goldstein’s book bite for The Mattering Instinct.
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You know that feeling when you meet someone and something just … clicks? Scientists have a name for it. They call it “interpersonal synchrony.” Turns out we subconsciously mimic other people’s movements, postures, facial expressions, and gestures. We even sync involuntary functions like heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves, pupil dilation, and hormonal activity. Kate Murphy, author of the forthcoming book Why We Click, says interpersonal synchrony — syncing for short — is our superpower. But there’s a catch. The same instinct that bonds us can also hijack us.
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If you enjoyed this episode, check out our conversations with Charles Duhigg, David Brooks, and John Colapinto.
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Evan Ratliff started a company last summer. He and his co-founders came up with a name, hired a team, built a website, and launched an app. They interviewed interns, planned a company hiking trip, and fielded inbound interest from VCs. Normal startup stuff. Except for one thing: All of Evan's employees are AI agents. So are his co-founders.
He's been documenting the journey on his podcast Shell Game — what works, what doesn't, and what it might tell us about a future where AI employees are everywhere.
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As the co-founder and CEO of Circle — the fintech powerhouse that issues USDC, a popular cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar — Jeremy Allaire has had a front-row seat to the crypto revolution. Circle now commands a market cap of over $20 billion, yet Jeremy insists it is still an "early stage company." Why? Because the true transformation of the global economy, he says, is just beginning.
In this episode, Jeremy and Rufus discuss how the economic system is becoming “internet native," what happens when money becomes programmable, and why blockchain is the "major missing layer" of the internet.
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Chris Dixon runs a16z crypto, a fund that has raised more than $7 billion. So it’s no surprise that when talking about the blockchain, he says things like, “ I've never seen a situation in technology where the gap between what I believe is the potential of the technology and the perception is so wide.” The thing is, he may be right. From enabling digital ownership to complementing AI, the blockchain is poised to reshape the world. In this episode, which first aired in February 2024, Chris explains how.
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Maryanne Wolf is a UCLA professor and the renowned author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain" and "Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World." She says deep reading makes you a better thinker, communicator, and citizen. But what happens if you lose the ability to read slowly, patiently, and critically? Is there anything you can do to get it back?
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(This episode first aired in March 2023.)
This is one of our favorite episodes — a conversation with Priya Parker, a conflict resolution specialist who’s worked on peace processes around the world, about her book The Art of Gathering. What she told him changed how we think about every dinner party, every work meeting, every family get-together we host. Priya’s argument is simple but radical. She says most of our gatherings fail because we focus on the wrong things. We obsess over the menu, the playlist. And we ignore the one question we should be asking: Why are we bringing these people together? With the right answer to that question, she says, you can turn any gathering into something meaningful — maybe even transformative.
(This episode first aired in January 2020.)
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What does it mean to flourish? According to author Daniel Coyle, flourishing is “joyful, meaningful growth — shared.” But how do you achieve that enviable state? The answer lies in Dan’s forthcoming book, “Flourish,” which you can pre-order now on Amazon, Audible, or Bookshop.org.
Highlights:
(5:11) Life isn't a treasure hunt; it’s more like treasure creation
(14:15) The $90 million deli that said no to Disney
(20:40) Your brain’s two attention systems
(58:00) The rule of the beautiful mess
(65:07) Why you should open yellow doors
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In our divided nation, there's one thing many of us seem to agree on: winter sucks. A recent study found that nearly half of Americans would skip winter if they could. Yet not everyone dreads the cold months. Psychologist Kari Leibowitz has spent years studying these winter-lovers, and she's arrived at a surprising truth: people who thrive this time of year aren't just born that way — they've learned to see the season differently. So can you.
(This episode first aired in January 2025.)
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Daniel Coyle will soon join us on the show to talk about his forthcoming book, Flourish. Today, we're revisiting our 2022 conversation with Dan about his last book, The Culture Playbook. Here's how we described the episode back then:
The filmmakers at Pixar. The servers at Union Square Cafe. The badasses on SEAL Team Six. What do these super successful groups all have in common? Strong team culture. But what exactly is culture, and how do you build it? Daniel Coyle has spent the last few years searching for answers. In this episode, he shares what he’s found.
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A few weeks ago, Rufus moderated a panel discussion at Vanderbilt’s New York City campus on artificial intelligence and the future of American higher education. Today, we’re bringing you that conversation. It features Nabiha Syed, executive director of Mozilla Foundation; Nicholas Dirks, president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Julie Samuels, president and CEO of Tech:NYC; and Matthew Johnson-Roberson, inaugural dean of the College of Connected Computing at Vanderbilt.
New York Times columnist and acclaimed author David Brooks has been trying to learn the skills that go into seeing others, understanding others, making other people feel respected, valued, and safe. Such social skills may sound trifling, but mastering them, David believes, could help us all make better decisions, enhance our creativity, and maybe even repair our nation’s fraying social fabric.
This episode first aired in November 2023.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: David Brooks
Book: How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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In this conversation, recorded live on Zoom with members of the Next Big Idea Club community, Brené and Rufus talk about what drives her, how Texas has shaped her, the leadership skills that matter most, and work-life balance. Plus, our curator Adam Grant makes a surprise cameo. Brené’s new book is Strong Ground.
🎁 Join the Next Big Idea Club today and we'll send you a signed copy of Walter Isaacson's new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. You'll also get ad-free versions of this show, invitations to member-only Q&As, and the six best books of the year delivered to your door. Sign up at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST for 20% off.
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Brené Brown is a researcher, storyteller, and author who hosts the podcast Dare to Lead and has given some of the most popular TED Talks of all time.
In this episode, recorded live at an Authors@Wharton event, Brené and our curator Adam Grant talk about her new book, Strong Ground. They discuss how to identify your core values, what courageous leadership looks like, and whether vulnerability has become more popular. They also address the problems with “executive presence,” compare notes on how to have hard conversations and set boundaries, debate the merits of the “tush push,” and reflect on what Brené learned from working with FBI hostage negotiators.
This conversation first appeared on ReThinking with Adam Grant. It’s one of our favorite podcasts. Follow it now wherever you listen.
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🎁 Join the Next Big Idea Club today and we'll send you a signed copy of Walter Isaacson's new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. You'll also get ad-free versions of this show, invitations to member-only Q&As, and the six best books of the year delivered to your door. Sign up at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST for 20% off.
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What is the greatest sentence ever written? According to Walter Isaacson — former editor of Time, ex-CEO of CNN, and the acclaimed biographer of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Jennifer Doudna — it’s this: “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.
Walter’s new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, unpacks that mission statement: how it came to be written, what it meant to the founders, and why it matters today. We're pleased to announce that we've chosen it as our latest selection for the Next Big Idea Club. That means current members will receive a copy in the mail any day now, along with a digital reading guide, the opportunity to discuss the book with fellow members in our WhatsApp community, and an exclusive invitation to a live Q&A with Walter in December.
If you're not already a member, sign up today at nextbigideaclub.com. And if you use the code PODCAST at checkout, we’ll take 20% off your order and send you a signed copy of the book.
When Walter Isaacson, the legendary biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, started shadowing Elon Musk, he found himself following "a guy who was one of the most popular people on the planet, and ended up with a guy who's the most controversial." Today on the show, Isaacson unpacks the transformation.
(This episode first aired in September 2023.)
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, is an eye-opening account of the forces that led to the worst financial crisis in history and the lessons that disaster can teach us about today’s economy.
(7:09) Life before the crash
(8:58) How Americans developed a taste for leverage
(17:10) What happened on Black Thursday
(20:05) Why so few people saw the crash coming
(26:23) Could the crash have been averted?
(37:13) Andrew’s fascination with money
(39:22) What if financial bubbles are a feature, not a bug?
(41:35) Could we be headed for another 1929?
(45:00) The dangers of leverage
(53:16) How the blockchain will revolutionzie finance
Nick Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic. But he moonlights as a damn good runner.
At 44, he ran a marathon in 2 hours and 29 minutes, making him one of the fastest marathoners his age on the planet. He later set an American age group record in the 50K. He has run in blazing heat with ice tucked into his hat and in frigid cold with Vaseline dabbed on his nose. He's run up sunny mountain trails and down dark city streets. He has run, and run, and run some more.
His relationship with the sport is the subject of his new memoir, The Running Ground. It's a book about the fragile boundary between love and obsession, between progress and suffering. And it's about the way we all run in loops: away from the past and then back toward it.
(4:35) Nick reads from The Running Ground
(8:00) On his father: "Not a simple guy"
(16:34) How the sport finds you
(30:00) A personal best, then a cancer diagnosis
(40:56) The four states of running bliss (and how to reach them)
(46:29) How Nick got faster in his forties
(49:14) The big takeaway
(50:33) Want to start running? Do this.
(53:14) Is running actually good for you?
As promised, today we’re bringing you a full-length interview with Steven Pinker about his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.
What is common knowledge? For Steve, it is not conventional wisdom. Instead, it’s when everyone knows something and everyone knows that and everyone knows it. That may sound loopy, but the implications of common knowledge — how it’s produced, sustained, and manipulated — are profound.
“It's common knowledge,” Steve tells Rufus, “that makes humans human. Humans are not solitary. What makes humans humans is that we coordinate in groups — from couples to nations to, in some cases, the entire world — and I think common knowledge is the underpinning, the cement, the foundation of that ability to coordinate.”
(8:00) Why “coffee” doesn’t just mean coffee
(14:40) What blushes and laughter unintentionally reveal
(30:39) The real reason brands spend millions on Super Bowl ads
(35:00) How common knowledge explains cancel culture
(48:43) What happens to society when norms collapse?
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Caleb is joined by Sam Kass, former senior food policy advisor to President Obama and the chef who cooked dinner for the first family most nights. Now a partner at a venture capital firm investing in food and agriculture tech, Sam has a new book out, The Last Supper: How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis.
The situation, he says, is bleak. Almonds, artichokes, chocolate, coffee, oysters, rice, wine — all at risk due to climate change. And that’s not even close to the full list. Our food system is both driving the climate crisis and being devastated by it. But Sam argues we can still avert the worst if we start with culture, fix our policies, and deploy the right technology.
(4:00) Cooking for the Obamas
(7:49) How vulnerable is our food supply?
(12:45) Can fixing the food system bring us together?
(24:29) The food policies we need
(27:38) Are we making America healthy again?
(35:42) The technologies that can make a difference
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Thoughts? Email us at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com
Dave Blundin has co-founded 23 companies, co-hosts the Moonshots podcast, runs the VC firm Link Ventures, teaches at MIT, and has been building neural networks since the 1980s. His take: “[AI is] under-hyped. It's absolutely going to change the world in the next couple of years more than any change in human history. There's nothing even vaguely comparable to it.”
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(7:37) “Stop sleeping. Rush to everything you do.”
(15:16) Why he started building neural nets at MIT in the 1980s
(16:19) Should you finish college or start a business?
(20:38) Why best friends are the best co-founders
(25:00) San Francisco is still king, but Boston is AI startup central
(28:06) “The chip shortage is going to be incredibly bad.”
(34:26) The AI energy shortage
(36:32) Are we in an AI bubble?
(55:44) The case for human immortality before 2050
(1:02:00) Advice for first-time founders (and second-time, and 23rd-time)
—
💿 Catch up on our other AI episodes with this Spotify playlist
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Angus Fletcher has a PhD in literature from Yale and teaches English at Ohio State. He’s passionate about Shakespeare. He probably owns a tweed jacket. In other words, he’s the last person you’d expect to receive the Army’s fourth-highest civilian honor.
But when he’s not parsing King Lear or dissecting Hamlet, Angus is pioneering research into narrative cognition — our ability to think in stories — and how it can make us smarter. When the Army put his theories to the test, his methods reshaped how soldiers learn to think clearly under pressure and act decisively in volatile environments.
Now, he has distilled this work into a new book called Primal Intelligence. Malcolm Gladwell says it's confirmation that Angus "has never had an uninteresting thought." We think you’ll agree.
— — —
(05:43) What is Primal Intelligence?
(8:24) Computers Think in Probabilities. Humans Think in Possibilities.
(11:08) The Art of Intuition: Spotting Exceptions to Rules
(29:59) Why Storytelling is the Essence of Human Intelligence
(34:13) How to Plan
(35:38) The Role of Emotion in Decision Making
(45:27) How to Use Common Sense to ‘Tune Your Anxiety’
(49:34) What Great Innovators Have in Common
(51:25) The Best Way to Become a Better Communicator
(54:22) Don’t Freak Out About A.I. Do Freak Out the State of Your Intelligence.
— — —
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Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker shares five key insights from his brand new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. He reveals how “common knowledge” — the hidden force of knowing what others know — shapes everything from financial bubbles and political revolutions to why we say “Netflix and chill.” Then we revisit our 2021 conversation with Steve about rationality, where he explains why smart people believe dumb things, why we're terrible at assessing risk, and how our species can be both brilliantly rational and spectacularly irrational at the same time.
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Today's AI runs on neural networks, a design originally inspired by the human brain. As these systems grow more sophisticated, they're raising a profound question: Even if they don't work exactly like our brains, could something resembling a "mind" eventually emerge from the machines we're building?
Guests: Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland
Book: The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines
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It’s rare these days for a book to go viral, but that’s exactly what happened with The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt.
Now in its 75th week on the New York Times’ bestseller list, the book reveals a startling truth: Starting in 2012, teen depression rates suddenly spiked 150% worldwide, perfectly coinciding with the moment smartphones and social media conquered childhood.
But Haidt doesn't just diagnose the crisis. He offers a roadmap out with norms, guidelines, and policy suggestions that parents, schools, and communities are already implementing with remarkable success.
Further Listening:
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Arthur C. Brooks is an unlikely happiness guru.
He’s not a psychologist, philosopher, or mystic. He’s an economist and public policy analyst who, for years, ran a prominent think tank.
But rubbing shoulders with heads of state and titans of industry made him miserable. Confronted with the sobering realization that for too long he’d privileged work over connection and status over happiness, he left the c-suite and set about renovating the mission of his life.
Before long, Arthur was teaching at Harvard Business School. But he wasn’t teaching hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. He was teaching happiness. From a scientific perspective.
Now, the pursuit of happiness might not seem like your typical business school fare. But Arthur’s got a good line on this. As he writes in his new book, The Happiness Files:
“Your life is the most important management task you will ever undertake. It is, in fact, like a startup, where you are the founder, entrepreneur, and chief executive. And if you treat your life the way a great entrepreneur treats an exciting startup enterprise, your life will be happier, more meaningful, and more successful than it otherwise would be.”
So that’s what today’s show is all about. What does it mean to live your life like it’s a startup?
What you’ll learn:
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What if, thanks to AI, you can now research and write a book two, three, or even four times faster? For authors and AI pioneers Steven Johnson (Editorial Director, NotebookLM and Google Labs) and Ethan Mollick (Wharton professor and creator of One Useful Thing), that's the new reality. In this episode, they crack open their personal toolkits to reveal the prompts and workflows they use to supercharge their creativity.
What you’ll learn:
Further listening:
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On a June night several years ago, Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, lay on an operating table, dying. An undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery had ruptured, flooding his abdominal cavity with blood. His odds of survival were between 10 and 20 percent. "I said, 'Doc, you've got to hurry. You're losing me right now. I'm going.'" This near-death experience inspired him to embark on a scientific, philosophical, and profoundly personal exploration of what happens after we die.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Sebastian Junger, author of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.
🎁 We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read — well, that's another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST to take 20% off your order.
We all have eureka moments, sudden bursts of certainty that seem to come out of nowhere. What if you could summon that feeling on command? Laura Huang, a business school professor, has been studying that question. She’s found that for the world's most successful people, intuition isn't an accident. It's a skill. A tool they’ve sharpened. Today on the show: the practical steps you can take to turn a random hunch into your most reliable guide.
📕 Grab a copy of You Already Know
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We have a pretty good idea what ancient civilizations looked like. But what did they taste, smell, and feel like?
📕 Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean
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All day long, your brain makes subconscious value calculations. It looks at every decision and asks, "What is going to be most rewarding for me right this very minute?" That creates a gap, doesn't it? A gap between the person you want to be and the choices you actually make. Today on the show, neuroscientist Emily Falk explains the science behind that gap. She shows us how understanding our brain's hidden valuation system can give us more compassion for ourselves, and help us gently nudge our daily actions to align with our deepest values. Her new book is What We Value.
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In part two of our interview with Eric Topol, author of the New York Times bestseller Super Agers, we cover how to get a good night's sleep, why one day everyone may take GLP-1s, and how AI is poised to transform medicine.
1️⃣ Missed Part 1? Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
📚 Become an executive member of the Next Big Idea Club, and we'll send you a copy of Super Agers, along with the seven other best books of the year as chosen by our curators: Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink. Use code PODCAST to take 20% off your subscription
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 is part one of our interview with Eric. Part two will be available right here next week. If you can't until then, you can listen now on the Next Big Idea app: https://nextbigideaclub.com/app/
Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Thomas Edison famously claimed, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Helen Lewis has a different take entirely. To her, the term genius licenses noxious eccentricities, exasperating ego trips, and downright bad behavior. Sure, plenty of things qualify as acts of genius — Shakespeare’s sonnets, penicillin — but when we pin the genius badge on a person instead of an achievement, we grant them membership in a supposedly superior class. That, Helen says, is the genius myth. She wants to demolish it and, in its place, tell the real story of how breakthroughs happen and who deserves credit.
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Kevin Kelly has made a career out of looking to the future. He helped pioneer online social networking all the way back in the 1980s, and he co-founded Wired, the magazine devoted to digital technology, when the internet was still an infant. But in his new book, Excellent Advice for Living, he looks backward. It’s a collection of 450 bits of wisdom he wishes he’d known when he was young. Things like “Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points” and “That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult—if you don’t lose it.” Today on the show he shares his best advice for building careers, nurturing relationships, solving problems, and finding satisfaction. He also explains why he’s more optimistic than ever about technology (yes, even AI).
AI, according to Andy Sack and Adam Brotman, co-founders of Forum3 and co-authors of the new book AI First, isn't just a neat new tool. It's "a tsunami of technology and capabilities." And if you don't start learning how to use it properly, they say, "you are absolutely gonna be left behind." The problem? Most people are using AI wrong. They're treating it like Google search when it should be treated like "an alien synthetic intelligence that can really reason and think and help you." In this episode, Andy and Adam share the mindset shifts and practical techniques that can help you harness AI to supercharge your productivity, creativity, and capability.
This is one of our favorite conversations from the last year. On the surface, it's an interview we did with Michael Lewis to coincide with the paperback release of Going Infinite, his book about Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX. Michael, who spent months hovering over Sam's shoulder, believes he wasn't some malevolent grifter: he was an awkward kid undone by a “pathological ability to foist risk upon other people without asking their permission." But what we love about this episode is that it's not only about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried. It's also about Michael's approach to writing — and living. He opens up about losing his daughter, shares what draws him to a story, and explains how taking pleasure in the world produces his best work.
🏛️ Check out Michael's latest book, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service
🎁 Get 25% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use the code PODCAST at https://nextbigideaclub.com/
Susan Cain always knew she wanted to be a writer. But her path to becoming one was anything but straightforward. She took a creative writing class in college and came away convinced she wasn’t very talented. So she pivoted: law school, white-shoe firm, eyes set on making partner. Seven years later, a senior partner walked into her office with life-changing news. It wasn’t going to happen. “I burst into tears,” Susan recalls. Three hours later, she quit. Within a week, she enrolled in a creative non-fiction class. A few years after that, despite never having published a word in her life, she sold her first book, Quiet, in a bidding war. Today, she ranks among the most successful non-fiction writers of her generation. In this episode, Susan takes us inside her journey from rejection to literary sensation, revealing the unexpected lessons she learned along the way.
Today’s episode first appeared on Author Insider, our newsletter and community for anyone who wants to turn words and ideas into income. Learn more at authorinsider.nextbigideaclub.com.
Subscribe to Susan’s Substack, The Quiet Life, at thequietlife.net
We think that cynicism protects us from being disappointed by other people. But Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki says the opposite is true. When we expect the worst in people, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy that brings out exactly what we feared. So in his new book, Hope for Cynics, Jamil sets out to prove that hope isn't naive: it's smart.
🎁 Looking for a gift for the graduates in your life? How about a subscription to The Next Big Idea Club? They’ll get the smartest new nonfiction as chosen by our curators Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant. Go to nextbigideaclub.com and use the code GRADUATION to get 20% off a new or gift membership
Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman broke free from resentment and rumination, shifting into what he calls an empowerment mindset. Are you ready to do the same?
• Support our show by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more here
What if everything we've been told about having a successful career is wrong? Rutger Bregman thinks most of us are wasting our working lives and argues we should stop trying to get rich and start trying to solve the world's problems instead.
In his new book, The Thinking Machine, Stephen Witt offers a riveting portrait of Jensen Huang, who went from immigrant dishwasher to CEO of the world’s most valuable company.
• If you enjoyed this episode, check out our conversation with Walter Isaacson about his biography of Elon Musk
Humans are wired to explore. So why are we less adventurous than ever — and what are we losing because of it?
Guest: Alex Hutchinson, author of The Explorer’s Gene
Further Listening: Looking for more episodes about adventure? Check out our conversations with Colin O’Brady and David Grann
Could AI take over in the next few years? Daniel Kokotajlo thinks so. Here’s why.
💿 Check out this Spotify playlist of our other episodes about AI
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
Remember magazines? Piled high on coffee tables or tucked into seatback pockets. Savored beneath beach umbrellas or skimmed anxiously in dental waiting rooms. Glorious, glossy magazines. Graydon Carter made some of the best. He started with Spy, a sly, sharp-edged monthly that managed to feel both smarter and more mischievous than anything else on the rack. But it was Vanity Fair that became his cathedral. Over his remarkable 25-year tenure as editor, he built the magazine into a financial juggernaut and a cultural touchstone renowned for its ambitious journalism and arresting photography. The hard-won wisdom he gathered along the way — about editing, storytelling, leadership, and how to leave before the music stops — is the subject of his new memoir, When the Going Was Good.
(This conversation was recorded live at WBUR Cityspace.)
💿 Check out this playlist of our interviews featuring magazine greats like Michael Lewis, Sebastian Junger, Kara Swisher, and David Grann.
You know those families where the kids all grow up to be remarkably successful? New York Times journalist Susan Dominus has spent the last few years getting to know some of them, looking for parenting techniques and life lessons. She's written a book about her findings called The Family Dynamic. "I thought I wrote a book about high-achieving families," she tells us, "but when I look back, it's really a book about families who did believe that the sky's the limit."
📕 Pre-order The Family Dynamic on Amazon, Bookshop, or from your local bookstore, send a copy of your receipt to podcast@nextbigideaclub.com, and we'll give you three months of free access to our paid Substack!
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is probably the most talked-about book in the country right now. And the most hotly debated. It’s a book about how we got here — here being a country without enough housing, a country that has lost its ambitious optimism, a country that has forgotten how to build. The prescription Ezra and Derek offer to cure what ails us is conspicuously pro-growth: more housing, more clean energy, more scientific development and technological innovation. But to pull that off, they argue, will require Democrats to question their endemic zeal for regulation. This view has fired up some liberals while simultaneously drawing ire from others. Today, Rufus sits down with Derek Thompson to talk about the book, the reaction to it, and how to convince political leaders from both sides of the aisle to embrace a liberalism that builds.
We’re often told that success comes down to talent, hard work, and luck. But Adam Grant's research suggests that view is missing something crucial. In today’s installment of Next Big Idea Classics, Adam revisits his 2013 bestseller “Give and Take,” explaining how our interactions with others determine who thrives and who doesn’t.
💿 For Adam’s previous appearances on the show, click here
🎙️ And check out our classic interviews with Daniel Pink, Kim Scott, and James Clear
In 2008, a mysterious figure created Bitcoin — a digital currency without banks or borders that sparked a global financial movement. And then he disappeared without a trace. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Why did he vanish? And why hasn’t he touched his $100 billion fortune? Today on the show, we talk to journalist Ben Wallace about his search for answers.
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
Can you change who you are? When reporter Olga Khazan decided she was tired of being a “high-strung misanthrope” (her words), she turned to science for answers. What she discovered about personality — and how to change it — might surprise you.
Host: Daniel Pink
Guest: Olga Khazan
Book: Me, But Better
This episode was recorded live at Politics and Prose on March 12th.
Every day you inhale 2,000 gallons of air. What’s in there?
📕 Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe by Carl Zimmer
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Turns out it’s not all about the Benjamins. Real success, according to Sahil Bloom, author of “The 5 Types of Wealth,” also requires the freedom to decide how you spend your time, meaningful relationships, a sense of purpose that pulls you forward, and the kind of health that lets you actually enjoy all of the above.
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
In part two of our conversation with Will Storr about his new book A Story Is a Deal, he reveals the five storytelling techniques you can use to captivate any audience. Plus, he helps us craft the story of the Next Big Idea Club.
1️⃣ Listen to Part 1 here
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
Today, we’re sitting down with Will Storr, author of the dazzling new book A Story Is a Deal, to talk about humanity’s greatest invention: story. More than just entertainment, Will argues, story is what we do and who we are. It’s how we make sense of the world, captivate, and persuade. And yet for all its power, storytelling isn’t some elusive magic trick — it’s a skill. One you can learn. Will’s here to show you how.
🎧 Listen to Will’s previous appearance on the podcast here
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
When Rajiv Shah was in his late 20s and didn’t know what to do with his life, he got a job at a fledgling nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before he knew it, he was a driving force behind a global vaccination program that immunized 900 million children and saved 16 million lives.
At 36, he became the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), managing a $20 billion budget, overseeing a staff of 10,000, and leading the U.S. response to global humanitarian crises.
Today, as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, he’s finding innovative solutions to mitigate climate change and end energy poverty.
What connects these experiences? At every step, Raj maintained a big bet mentality. What is a big bet? “A concerted effort to fundamentally solve a single, pressing problem in your community or our world. Big bets require setting profound, seemingly unachievable goals and believing they are achievable.” In this episode, he shares his methodology for creating large-scale change and making the world a better place.
(This episode was first broadcast in 2024.)
💿 For more episodes about aid, philanthropy, and how best to solve the world’s problems, check out this playlist
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
In this special audio essay, Rufus reflects on the big ideas from 2024 that altered his worldview.
🎙️ You can find all of the interviews mentioned in this episode in this Spotify playlist
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Subscribe to our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
A recent Pew Research survey found that most Americans are more worried than excited about AI. Reid Hoffman, however, isn't one of them.
He knows the risks — arms races, runaway superintelligence, the whole humans-being-turned-into paperclips scenario — but he's still convinced that AI is poised to usher in an era of extraordinary human progress. And as you'll hear in this episode, he makes a pretty good case.
Reid is the co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI, and Manas AI, a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock, and host of the podcasts "Masters of Scale" and "Possible." Just this week, he published a thrilling new book called "Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future." Today, he tells Rufus why he's "unequivocally very optimistic" about AI (and why you should be, too), how he's using AI in his daily life, and why he doesn't think DeepSeek is as much of a game-changer as some people say.
📱 Follow The Next Big Idea on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
We've got a special treat for you today. We invited Ethan Kross — psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of the bestseller "Chatter" — to give us a sneak peek at his new book, "Shift." It comes out in February, and it's a myth-busting, science-based guide to mastering your emotional life using tools you already possess.
📕 Pre-order Ethan's book here
🎧 Check out Ethan's previous appearance on the show: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
In our deeply divided nation, there's one thing many of us seem to agree on: winter is the worst. A recent study found that nearly half of Americans would skip winter if they could. Yet not everyone dreads the cold months. Psychologist Kari Leibowitz has spent years studying these winter-lovers, and she's arrived at a surprising truth: people who thrive this time of year aren't just born that way — they've learned to see the season differently. So can you.
Guest: Kari Leibowitz, author of "How to Winter"
Host: Caleb Bissinger
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What drives human motivation? For years, the answer seemed simple: rewards. Dangle the right carrot — a bonus, stock options, "Employee of the Month" certificate — and people will perform. But Daniel Pink's 2009 bestseller "Drive" flipped this idea on its head. Drawing on decades of scientific research, Dan revealed that our deepest motivations come from within: the innate drive for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Now, 15 years after "Drive" revolutionized our understanding of motivation, Dan joins us to discuss how this science has evolved and what it means for anyone trying to motivate themselves or others in today's rapidly changing world.
💿 You can find Dan's previous appearances on the show here
📰 And follow his Washington Post column "Why Not?"
🎧 Check out our Next Big Idea Classics episodes with James Clear and Kim Scott
📱 Follow The Next Big Idea on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Forming a new habit is tough. Sticking with it is even tougher. That’s probably why someone buys a copy of James Clear’s 2018 book “Atomic Habits” every 11 seconds. James breaks down the science of habit formation into simple, actionable steps anyone can take — even you. Today on the show, he talks Rufus through the four laws of behavior change, explains how small improvements compound over time to produce remarkable results, and offers easy tips you can use now to kick bad habits and adopt good ones.
Arthur C. Brooks used to run a prominent think tank where he was paid handsomely to influence public policy. Did all that success make him happy? Nope. So Arthur quit his job and set out to transform his life. Now he’s written a book about what he learned along the way, the #1 New York Times bestseller “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.”
💿 Want to listen back to our favorite episodes of 2024? Check out this playlist
Does free will exist on a sliding scale? Will humans and AI co-evolve? Are aliens already here on earth? These are just a few of the many mind-bending questions Rufus and Sara Walker, author of “Life as No One Knows It,” explore in the second half of their conversation.
1️⃣ If you missed the first half of Sara’s interview, you can find it here
🧪 Want to hear more of our interviews with brilliant scientists? Check out this playlist
🎁 Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription or gift when you use the code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com
We’ve had many bracing thinkers on this show, but Sara Walker might take the cake. A physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University, she's just written "Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence," a thrilling exploration of life's origins and the search for it across the cosmos.
🕐 The second part of this conversation will be available on Thursday. If you can’t wait until then, you can hear it right now on The Next Big Idea app
🎁 Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com
You may think you know what strategy is, but Seth Godin is willing to bet you haven’t got a clue. It’s not just setting goals. It’s not just making plans. It’s— Well, you’ll have to tune in to find out.
📕 This Is Strategy by Seth Godin
✉️ Want big idea delivered to your inbox every day? Sign up for our newsletter Book of the Day here
🎙️ If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy our conversation with Tony Fadell, the legendary creator of the iPod and iPhone, about how to build a game-changing product. It's a team favorite.
🎁 Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership or gift when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com
Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, wants you to think twice before putting your faith in Silicon Valley's promises.
🎙️ Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple or Spotify
🎁 Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership or gift when you use PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com
When he was 26, Will Guidara took the helm of a middling brasserie in New York City called Eleven Madison Park. A decade later, it was named the best restaurant in the world. How did he pull off this unprecedented transformation? By practicing unreasonable hospitality.
(This episode first aired in Sept. 2023.)
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For two decades, Ann Wroe has written weekly obituaries for The Economist. Some of her subjects are luminaries (Queen Elizabeth II, Paul Newman). Others are little-knowns (cheesemakers, storm chasers, typewriter repairmen). But all of them, in Ann’s words, “have enhanced the world by their existence.” Her obituaries are celebrations of life, and Ann is a soul-catcher — souls, for her, being the best word for the “unique and essential part of ourselves, our self-conscious and transcendent core.” It’s a job that requires empathy, patience, almost tactile curiosity, and, well, love. It’s a job from which we can all learn a great deal.
📕 Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul
📬 We launched a newsletter! It’s called Book of the Day, and you can get a special discount here
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Philosophers have long maintained that the Good Life is braided from two strands: pleasure and purpose. But Middlebury’s Lorraine Besser says there’s a third: psychological richness — or, as she calls it, The Interesting. Interesting experiences, she contends, captivate our minds, engage our thoughts and emotions, and often change our perspective. Today, she’ll teach you how to find them.
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Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. These are Cal Newport's three principles for achieving your goals without burning out. Today, in a special preview of our first-ever podclass, Cal explains how to harness the power of slow productivity to bring meaning, purpose, and a genuine sense of accomplishment into your life and work.
✉️ To hear the rest of Cal’s podclass, sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter. Get your special discount here
🎁 Looking for the perfect gift for the readers in your life? How about a subscription to the Next Big Idea Club! Take 20% off your order when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com/gift
What if everything we think we know about the history of our species is wrong? That’s the provocative question at the heart of a new book by today’s guest, David Wengrow. Hailed as fascinating, brilliant, and potentially revolutionary, “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” debuted at no. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Drawing on the latest research in archeology and anthropology, it suggests that the lives of our ancient ancestors were not nasty, brutish, and short. On the contrary, they were playful, collaborative, and improvisational — and there's a lot they can teach us about how to improve the world as we know it.
(This episode first aired in 2021.)
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In his mega-bestseller “Four Thousand Weeks,” Oliver Burkeman showed that the shortness of life “isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief.” Now, in “Meditations for Mortals,” he invites us to embrace what he calls “imperfectionism.” Accept your limitations, your finitude, your lack of control — because “the more we try to render the world controllable,” he warns, “the more it eludes us; and the more daily life loses … its resonance, its capacity to touch, move and absorb us.”
✨ Want to hear Oliver’s advice on how to keep your feet on the ground this election season? Head over to bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
Making art is hard work, as Adam Moss, the revered former editor of New York magazine, reveals in his illuminating new book, "The Work of Art." The book is a collection of interviews with painters, poets, filmmakers, and even sandcastle builders about the demanding, mystical, peculiar process of creating something out of nothing. Adam spoke with our curator Daniel Pink in front of a live audience in New York City earlier this month.
📕 The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing
🗞️ Check out Dan's Washington Post column, "Why Not?"
Earlier this week, Jonathan Haidt joined us to discuss the crisis in youth mental health caused by smartphones and social media. Now he’s back to talk solutions.
✉️ We launched a Substack! Check it out now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
🎙️ Enjoy this episode? Check out Rufus's related conversations with Will Storr and Anna Lembke
It’s rare these days for a book to go viral, but that’s exactly what happened with “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt. Now in its seventh month on the New York Times bestseller list, the book shows how the mass adoption of smartphones and social media has led to record rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among teens.
2️⃣ The second part of Rufus’s interview with Jonathan will be out on Thursday. If you can’t wait to hear it, you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to our Substack: bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
“Life is a game. There’s no way to understand the human world without first understanding this. Everyone alive is playing a game whose hidden rules are built into us and that silently directs our thoughts, beliefs and actions. This game is inside us. It is us. We can’t help but play.”
So begins The Status Game by acclaimed science writer Will Storr.
He continues: “We play for status, if only subtly, with every social interaction, every contribution we make to work, love or family life and every internet post. We play with how we dress, how we speak and what we believe. … Life is not a journey towards a perfect destination. It’s a game that never ends. And it’s the very worst of us.”
Does it have to be?
We may not be able to quit the status game, but Will says we can learn to play it better. In this episode, he explains how.
(This conversation first aired in October 2022.)
Twenty-five years ago, Malcolm Gladwell was not Malcolm Gladwell. Well, sure, ontologically speaking he was, but he would not have registered on the Celeb-O-Meter the way he does today. So what happened? What changed? What did he do to become a household name? He wrote “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”
A quarter century later, Malcolm sat down to update the book that made his name — only he realized that he had a lot of new things to say about social contagion. Cut to this week. On Tuesday, he published “Revenge of the Tipping Point,” a sequel in which he explores the “dark side of contagious phenomena.”
He got together with Rufus for a wide-ranging conversation about the new book, because wide-ranging conversations are Malcolm Gladwell's specialty. They discussed social media, Medicare fraud, white flight, the Holocaust, and the ways Malcolm has changed over the past few decades.
🎟️ We’re hosting a live taping of this show with Daniel Pink and Adam Moss in New York City on Oct. 10. To learn more and grab tickets, visit nextbigideaclub.com/events
Next week, Malcolm Gladwell will be on the show to discuss his new book "Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering." In anticipation of that conversation, we're revisiting our 2021 interview with Malcolm about "The Bomber Mafia" — the story of a group of pilots who met on a muggy airbase in central Alabama and hatched a plan to revolutionize warfare.
🎟️ We're hosting a live taping on Oct. 10. Daniel Pink will chat with Adam Moss, former editor of New York magazine, about his recent book "The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing." Learn more and grab tickets at nextbigideaclub.com/events
Is AI all bad, or could it be so good that we might one day want to merge with it? This is just one of the questions Rufus poses in part two of his conversation with historian and mega-bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari.
1️⃣ If you missed part one of this conversation, listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
📕 Yuval’s new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, is out now
📩 Want the latest insights from the world’s top thinkers delivered to your inbox every morning? Sign up for our new Substack at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
🎉 We're hosting another live taping on Oct. 10, featuring Daniel Pink in conversation with Adam Moss, former editor of New York magazine and author of "The Work of Art." Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com/events
Yuval Noah Harari published an essay in the New York Times the other day. “Large-scale democracies,” he wrote, “became feasible only after the rise of modern information technologies like the newspaper, the telegraph and the radio. The fact that modern democracy has been built on top of modern information technologies means that any major change in the underlying technology is likely to result in a political upheaval.” Well, we’re witnessing a major change in the underlying technology right now. Artificial intelligence is here, and if its proponents are to be believed, it will fundamentally transform how we consume information and communicate with each other. What this means for the future of democracy — and society as we know it — is the subject of Harari’s new book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Yuval Noah Harari
🎤 This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience in New York City last week. To learn more about our upcoming events, visit nextbigideaclub.com/events
2️⃣ Part two of this interview will be available on Thursday. If you can’t wait until then, you can listen now by downloading the The Next Big Idea app
📥 We launched a Substack! Subscribe now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.15 a day, has long been seen as an intractable problem. But what if the solution is simple? What if you could eradicate extreme poverty by just giving people cash? That’s what Rory Stewart believes. He’s the former UK Secretary of State for International Development and now a senior advisor to GiveDirectly, a non-profit that has distributed $800 million — in cash — to 1.6 million people around the world, including right here in the US. Today on the show, Rory charts his evolution from cash transfer skeptic to evangelist, shares what he wishes philanthropists like Bill Gates would do with their billions, and explains why he thinks it’s possible to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes.
🎙️ Check out Rory's previous appearance on this show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
💸 Learn more about GiveDirectly at www.givedirectly.org
🎬 Watch Rory’s new TED Talk, “To End Extreme Poverty, Give Cash — Not Advice”
🎁 Get 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership when you use code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com
In March, when Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for stealing $8 billion from customers, many people saw it as just punishment for a two-faced poser who had spouted a lot of rot about altruism just to mask the rank odor of his relentless greed.
Michael Lewis, the famed author of Moneyball and The Big Short, was not one of those people.
Through his eyes, Sam didn’t look like a con man. He looked like an awkward but well-meaning kid who meant what he said about wanting to save the world and was undone not by avarice but by his “pathological ability to foist risk upon other people without asking their permission.” Michael is in a unique position to draw these conclusions. He spent the months leading up to and immediately following Sam’s downfall hovering over his shoulder, watching him operate, learning how he thought.
Michael wrote a book about it, Going Infinite, published last fall, right as the crypto wunderkind-turned-pariah began his trial. Now that it’s out in paperback and the dust has settled, we invited Michael onto the show to talk about why he was drawn to Sam in the first place, what he thinks of the critics who say he was too soft on him, and how we should reconcile our primal desire for simple narratives with the complexity of real life.
🎟️ Join us for a live taping of this show on Sept. 11 with Yuval Noah Harari. More details at https://nextbigideaclub.com/events
🏛️ Check out “The Canary,” Michael’s installment in the Washington Post’s new series “Who is government?”
🎁 Get 25% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use the code PODCAST at https://nextbigideaclub.com/
Sturgeon caviar harvested in a lab. Skyscrapers made out of living materials that grow from the ground up. Computers that run on DNA. These might sound like science fiction fantasies, but our guest today, Jamie Metzl, says they are real — they’re in development right now. How these and other biotechnologies will transform our lives, work, and the world is the subject of Jamie’s new book “Superconvergence.”
🎟️ We’re hosting a live taping of this show in New York City on Sept. 11, featuring Yuval Noah Harari. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/events/
💿 Did you enjoy this episode? Check out Rufus’s conversations with Azeem Azhar and Amanda Little
What are some words you would use to describe a leader? Bold, driven, steadfast. How about … anxious? You may not equate leadership with anxiety, but Morra Aarons-Mele — a writer, podcaster, and self-proclaimed anxious achiever — says that’s a mistake. Because anxiety is not a professional defect or character flaw. It’s not something to be ashamed of or something you have to hide. Instead, in Morra’s view, it’s an asset, a resource, a motivator that can bring out your best work. The hard part is figuring out how to master it so that it helps rather than hinders. If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, that may sound like a tall order, maybe even impossible, but in this episode, Morra, with help from a pen, a banana, and reams of cutting-edge research, will teach you how to do it.
🎙️ Check out Morra's podcast, The Anxious Achiever
📕 Grab a copy of her book here
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Today, Nate Silver explains why most people should take bigger risks, reveals the big thing everyone misunderstands about Sam Bankman-Fried, and makes the case that there’s anywhere from a 2 to 20 percent chance that AI will take over the world.
🎙️ This is the second episode in our two-part series with Nate Silver. To hear Part 1, click here
You probably know Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, as the statistician with an uncanny knack for predicting election results. What you may not know is that Nate has never been comfortable inside the Beltway. Before his election models made him famous, he made his living playing poker, and it's in that world that he feels most at home. Recently, Nate has been reflecting on his poker-playing pals, and he realized many of them are part of a broader community of analytically-minded, ultra-competitive, not-afraid-to-bet-the-house individuals that he now calls "the River." Members of the River are everywhere. They're tech titans, Masters of the Universe — increasingly, it feels like they run the world. How the River rose to power and what that means for the rest of us is the subject of Nate's sprawling new book, "On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.”
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Effective altruism — the brand of philanthropy where you try to do the most good for the greatest number of people with the resources you have — has gotten a bad rap lately due to its association with Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto wunderkind who was once hailed as the movement's poster child. But is the bad press fair? Today, we explore that question by revisiting our conversation with Will MacAskill, Oxford professor of philosophy, leading figure in the movement, and author of "What We Owe the Future."
(This episode first aired in October 2022.)
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Today, social psychologist Devon Price makes the intriguing and ultimately hopeful case that laziness is a myth, a lie, a pernicious trap with no other purpose than to make us feel lousy for not doing more.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Devon Price
(This episode first aired in October 2021.)
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📩 We recently launched a daily Substack! Sign up today at https://bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com/
Humans have been imbibing for thousands of years. What has drinking contributed to society? What is it doing to our health?
Guests: Edward Slingerland (”Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization”) and Susan Dominus (”Is That Drink Worth It to You?”)
🎙️ Check out Edward’s previous appearance on the show here
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Over 2,000 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, made a simple yet bold claim. The key to the good life, he said, is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Is it really that easy? To answer that question, we turn to Emily Austin, a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest and author of “Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.”
(This episode first aired in January 2023.)
Back in the 1700s, in a spa town outside of London, Thomas Bayes, a Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician, invented a formula that lets you figure out how likely something is to happen based on what you already know. It changed the world. Today, pollsters use it to forecast election results and bookies to predict Super Bowl scores. For neuroscientists, it explains how our brains work; for computer scientists, it's the principle behind artificial intelligence.
In this episode, we explore the modern-day applications of this game-changing theorem with the help of Tom Chivers, author of the new book "Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World."
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So you want to eat healthy. But how do you actually go about doing that? Today, Casey Means — Stanford-trained physician, founder of Levels, and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Good Energy” — shares the science-backed dietary guide you need.
💿 Ready for more interviews that will supercharge your health? Check out our Spotify playlist
📱 Listeners of this show get 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/app/
Bad news: 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. Their bodies struggle to convert food into the energy their cells need. And this fuel shortage underlies all sorts of conditions, from diabetes and cancer to insomnia and erectile dysfunction.
Good news: Simple changes to how we eat and exercise can dramatically improve our metabolic health.
This is the thesis of “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health” by Casey Means. A Stanford-trained physician, Casey grew disillusioned with conventional healthcare when she realized that many doctors are great at prescribing pills and performing surgeries but hopeless when it comes to addressing root causes. This led her to leave traditional medicine and focus on combating metabolic dysfunction, which she believes is at the heart of America’s health crisis.
Today on the show, she tells Rufus about her journey, explains why she thinks the medical system fails patients, and shares the simple biomarkers that you should check to see if you’re at risk for a deadly disease.
📱 This is part one of our interview with Casey. Part two will be available here on Thursday. But if you can't wait that long, you can listen right now on the Next Big Idea app: https://nextbigideaclub.com/app/
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.
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Where is AI headed, and how quickly will it get there? Should we be early adopters or keep our distance? Will it make our lives better or put us out of work?
We can’t think of a better person to answer these questions than Bill Gates. He’s played a leading role in every major tech development over the last half-century, and he’s got a pretty good track record when it comes to forecasting the future. Back in 1980, he predicted that one day there’d be a computer on every desk; today on the show, he says there will soon be an AI agent in every ear.
Rufus and Bill are joined by Andy Sack and Adam Brotman, co-authors of an exciting new book called “AI First.” Together, they consider AI’s impact on healthcare, education, productivity, and business. They dig into the technology’s risks. And they explore its potential to cure diseases, enhance creativity, and usher in a world of abundance.
📕 To learn more about Andy and Adam’s AI lab, Forum3, visit https://www.forum3.com. And for exclusive insights from their book, “AI First,” head to https://www.forum3.com/book
🎁 If you love the show, the best way to let us know is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/ and use code PODCAST to get 20% off your subscription
Today, Adam Grant and Bob Sutton, two legends of organizational psychology, discuss Bob’s new book, “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.”
🎙️ This interview first appeared on Adam’s podcast, “ReThinking.” Follow it now on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
📱 If you love the show, the best way to let us know is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/ and use code PODCAST to get 20% off your subscription.
Steven Johnson returns! He's with us today to talk about his new book, "The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective," and his new day job helping Google develop AI tools for writers.
🔊 You can listen to Steven's previous appearances on this show here, here, here and here
🎧 To purchase a copy of Steven's Next Big Idea Original audiobook, "Immortality: A User's Guide," head here: https://nextbigideaclub.supportingcast.fm/immortality-a-users-guide
📩 Be sure to check out his Substack, too: https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/
📱 If you love the show, the best way to support us is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/ and use promo code PODCAST to get 20% off your subscription
Could embracing uncertainty be the key to thriving in our age of unpredictability? That's the premise of Maggie Jackson's new book, "Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure," which was chosen by our curators — Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — as one of the year's best works of nonfiction. Maggie sat down with our co-founder Panio Gianopoulos to discuss how mastering the art of being unsure can fuel leadership, deepen relationships, and inspire creativity.
Host: Panio Gianopoulos
Guest: Maggie Jackson
*The Next Big Idea Club*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read — well, that's another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
AI is coming for education. According to our guest today, Sal Khan, that's a good thing.
Sal is the founder of Khan Academy, which has provided free education to more than 140 million learners, and the author of "Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)."
On a June night several years ago, Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of "The Perfect Storm" and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo," lay on an operating table, dying. An undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery had ruptured, flooding his abdominal cavity with blood. His odds of survival were between 10 and 20 percent. "I said, 'Doc, you got to hurry. You're losing me right now. I'm going.'" This near-death experience inspired him to embark on a scientific, philosophical, and profoundly personal exploration of what happens after we die. His new book is "In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife."
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Sebastian Junger
*THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read — well, that's another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
You may think the English language is static, solid, set in its ways. But the language of Shakespeare has changed quite a bit since the Bard's day. Some rules have been bent, others broken. Old words have faded into obscurity, while new slang has burst onto the scene. (Goodbye, crapulous. Hello, awesomesauce!) When faced with this linguistic upheaval, you have two choices, according to today's guest, Anne Curzan, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan and author of "Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words." You can turn into a grammando who ruthlessly corrects grammatical faux pas, staunchly defends "correct" usage, and rails against neologisms. Or you can embrace your inner wordie by becoming a linguistic gourmand who not only savors fresh vocabulary but celebrates lexical innovation as a reminder that our language is evolving, becoming more expansive, more inclusive, and perhaps more playful.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Anne Curzan
THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
Erik Larson is probably the most successful popular historian working today. His books, which include “The Devil in the White City” and “The Splendid and the Vile,” have sold a staggering 12 million copies. His latest, “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War,” debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list this week. It’s a gripping account of the five months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of the Civil War — a 163-year-old chapter in our history that Erik says is alarmingly relevant.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Erik Larson
ABOUT THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB:
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read is easier said than done. That's why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com And use promo code PODCAST for a special discount.
Scott Galloway is a podcaster, bestselling author, and professor of marketing at NYU. He's irreverent, cocky, brutally honest, and surprisingly humble. He's also wildly successful — and he doesn't care who knows it. In fact, he thinks more rich people should talk about their success. That's why he wrote his new book, "The Algebra of Wealth." "It's almost like a letter to myself when I was younger," he tells Rufus in today's episode, which was recorded live in New York City, "the mistakes I made, some of the things I did right, some of the things I did wrong." Tune in to learn how to build your savings muscle, why you should avoid stock picking, Scott's favorite ETF, whether it's better to be an entrepreneur or a company man, and more.
"The only things that are important in life," declared the French filmmaker Jean Renoir, "are the things you remember." But what do we remember and why? That's the subject of a new book, "Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters," by pioneering neuroscientist Charan Ranganath. He joins us today to explain why you still know the lyrics to the song you loved in eighth grade but can't remember the name of your kid's eighth-grade teacher, how memory shapes your identity, and what you can do right now to improve your recall.
THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
What if doing less is the secret to achieving more? That's the counterintuitive argument at the heart of productivity guru Cal Newport's new book, "Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout." Cal says that if we can learn to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality, we can free ourselves from the clutches of pointless busyness and find more meaningful ways to work ... and live.
*Live Event Alert*
We are hosting a live taping of this show in New York City on Monday, April 22. Rufus will be sitting down with Scott Galloway — NYU business professor, podcast provocateur, and author of "The Algebra of Wealth" — to discuss ways you can optimize your life for wealth and success. Listeners of this show get 50% off entry with the code PODCAST. Buy your tickets today at nextbigideaclub.com/events
*Help Us Pick Our Next Guest*
We recently compiled a list of must-read new books coming out in June. Take a look here and let us know which titles you think we should feature on the show.
Raise your hand if you've ever belittled a stranger online, made a decision based on astrology, or, heaven forbid, fallen for a conspiracy theory. No? Well, then, consider yourself lucky. And if your hand is raised, don't feel bad, because it turns out in our Information Age the cognitive biases that kept us alive a few millennia ago now make us susceptible to bouts of extreme irrationality. How this happened, and what we can do about it, is the subject of a brand new book by linguist Amanda Montell called "The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality."
In “Psych: The Story of the Human Mind,” Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, lays out, in his words, “basically everything I know about the mind.” And when he says “everything,” he means it. Where does consciousness come from? Does IQ matter? What makes us happy? Was Sigmund Freud a madman? The answers to these questions (and more) are all in Paul’s book — and in this episode.
An edited version of Rufus’s interview with Paul first aired in April 2023. Today, we’re bringing you their entire conversation.
Check out Paul's newsletter here
THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
For a long time, Bianca Bosker was not on speaking terms with art. “Going to galleries and museums,” she says on today’s show, “reliably made me feel like I was at least two tattoos and a master’s degree away from figuring out what was going on.” What did art snobs know that she didn’t? Determined to find out, Bianca disowned her normal life and ventured into the underbelly of the art world. She worked at a gallery, as an artist’s assistant, and even as a museum guard. She read the latest research to understand why scientists believe art is as “necessary as food or sex.” And in the end, she learned how to look, really look, at art — a skill she’s now going to share with you.
Guest: Bianca Bosker
Host: Caleb Bissinger
*THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
Do you ever feel like your life has become a film loop of the familiar? Maybe you sympathize with the elegiac poet Logan Roy, who said, "Nothing tastes like it used to, does it? Nothing's the same as it was." What lit you up on Monday barely sparks your interest by the weekend. But don't worry, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just experiencing what scientists call habituation, a fancy word for a phenomenon we all face. And the good news is that there's something you can do about it, methods and tools you can use to disrupt familiar patterns, jostle your needle out of its well-worn groove, and refresh the way you see and connect with the people, places, and things in your life. This process is called dishabituation — or, if you prefer, re-sparkling — and neuroscientist Tali Sharot is on the show today to teach you how to do it.
Book: "Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There"
Guest: Tali Sharot
Host: Michael Kovnat
**THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB**
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
Lots of things go viral on the internet: dumb memes, cat videos, one-pan meals, and celebrity gossip. Why not kindness? That’s the delightful question Chris Anderson, the head of TED, asks in his new book, “Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.” He joins Rufus to talk about what he’s learned running the world’s most famous conference, why we’re hardwired to give back, and the small actions we can all take to be a little more generous.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Chris Anderson
*THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
Kara Swisher has been called “pioneering” (the New York Times), “Silicon Valley’s top pundit” (Wired), and “so shrill at this point that only dogs can hear her” (Elon Musk). Thanks to the bad-cop interviews she conducts on her hit podcasts — and, before that, at the can’t-miss tech conferences she co-founded — the world’s most powerful people revere and fear her in equal measure. Now she’s out with a memoir called “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.” It’s a smart, dishy, acerbically funny page-turner about how a young reporter with a cellphone the size of a briefcase became one of the most influential tech critics of the day.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Kara Swisher
*THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
According to Merriam-Webster, the word “conversation” has 36 synonyms, ranging from the alliterative (”confabulation”) to the arcane (”persiflage”). Why the linguistic profusion? Because conversing is a fundamental part — maybe the fundamental part — of being human.
We chat with our families, friends, strangers, and co-workers, and we communicate in phone calls, text messages, emails, and, occasionally, postcards. When these tête-à-têtes go well, it is oddly thrilling; we become better versions of ourselves — warmer and wiser, funnier, and consistently insightful. Best of all, a good dialogue is a direct route to connection. “The bond of all companionship,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”
But when a conversation goes poorly, when it stays on the surface (”what do you do for a living?”) or devolves into a sputtering mess of misunderstanding (”you’re overreacting!”), we don’t feel the invigorating pulse of connection. What we feel, instead, is the emotional equivalent of a busy signal.
So, this hour, we’re asking: how can we have better conversations? And to help answer that question, we’re joined by Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the bestselling author of “The Power of Habit” and now “Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.” Charles, as you’ll hear, is something of supercommunicator himself, a lithe storyteller who’s as well-versed in evolutionary biology as he is in the latest psychology, and after studying the art and science of communication for the last few years, he’s concluded that anyone can become a great conversationalist. You just have to master a few simple skills. Tune in to find out what they are.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Charles Duhigg
Book: “Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection”
*THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB*
We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read … well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our curators (Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) — into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com
Growing old gets a bad rap, and it's not hard to see why. Your hair thins and your waist thickens. The shot clock ticks down on your career, and you realize, much to your dismay, that your youthful dreams of greatness — patents, prizes, and periodicals with your face on the cover — are unlikely to come true before the buzzer. And what do you see up ahead? A road sign. "Highway Ends. Last Exit: Retirement. One Mile." Retirement. Just a polite word for purposelessness. That's the cynic's view of aging, anyway. But does it have to be that way? Not according to Chip Conley ("Learning to Love Midlife"). He says midlife can be a period of renewal, hope, joy, and connection. If you're open to it. Are you?
Honesty may be the best policy, but that doesn’t make giving honest feedback any easier. That’s why Kim Scott, a veteran of Google and Apple, wrote “Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.” It’s a life-saving guide for anyone who’s ever had to dole out difficult but important feedback. Which means all of us.
Seventy-two billion dollars. That, according to the Grifter Counter™, is the amount of money that's been swallowed up by crypto and blockchain scams and crashes. It's an enormous sum — but one that may not surprise you if you've kept up with the news. Bitcoin lost more than 60% of its value in 2022. FTX, once the world's third-largest crypto exchange, collapsed, and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was later found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. And it's not just crypto that has seen dark days. Remember NFTs? They were once touted as a revolutionary new form of digital ownership made possible by the blockchain. Today, however, 95% of them have lost all of their value. That's right. All of it.
So it would seem like a suboptimal time to publish a book arguing that "blockchains and the software movement around them — typically called crypto or web3 — provide the only plausible path to sustaining the original vision of the internet as an open platform that incentivizes creativity and entrepreneurship." But that's precisely what Chris Dixon, founder of a16z crypto, has done with "Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet." Chris, who spoke with Rufus in a live taping of this show last week, says that while blockchains have been "maligned and associated with grift, casino culture, and fraud," they are tools that can be used for good. Today on the show, he makes that case.
When Rajiv Shah was in his late 20s and didn’t know what to do with his life, he got a job at a fledgling nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before he knew it, he was a driving force behind a global vaccination program that immunized 900 million children and saved 16 million lives.
At 36, he became the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), managing a $20 billion budget, overseeing a staff of 10,000, and leading the U.S. response to global humanitarian crises.
Today, as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, he’s finding innovative solutions to mitigate climate change and end energy poverty.
What connects these experiences? At every step, Raj maintained a big bet mentality. What is a big bet? “A concerted effort to fundamentally solve a single, pressing problem in your community or our world. Big bets require setting profound, seemingly unachievable goals and believing they are achievable.” In this episode, he shares his methodology for creating large-scale change and making the world a better place.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Rajiv Shah
A few weeks ago, USA Today ran a story with the headline "It's over: 2023 was Earth's hottest year, experts say." But is it really over? Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at the University of Oxford, doesn't think so. In her new book, "Not the End of the World," she says that if we zoom out and look at the data, "we can see something truly radical, game-changing and life-giving: humanity is in a truly unique position to build a sustainable world." She's on the show today to tell us why she's urgently optimistic about our planet's future, what smart people get wrong about climate change, and the most effective ways to lower your carbon footprint.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Hannah Ritchie
You can learn more about Our World in Data here, and check out Hannah's newsletter, Sustainability by Numbers.
Want to come to our event in New York City on Jan. 31? Buy a ticket here.
As a listener of this show, you can get 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership. Just use the code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com
Do we have free will? Do we have a choice in what we do? Philosophers and theologians have debated these questions for centuries; Robert Sapolsky answered them when he was 14. Free will, he concluded, simply does not exist.
Robert is now in his mid-sixties. He has degrees from Harvard and Rockefeller University; he won a MacArthur “genius” award; and he’s a professor at Stanford, where he holds joint appointments in biology, neurology, and neurosurgery. But despite how much time has passed and how long his CV has grown, he never lost his youthful fascination with free will — or our lack thereof — so he decided to write a book about it. It’s called “Determined,” and in addition to assembling a formidable case against free will, Robert makes the intriguing argument that if we can abandon our illusion of volition, we can build a more humane world.
Support the show by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. (Use code PODCAST for 20% off.)
We’re hosting a live taping in New York City on January 31st. Come on by! We’d love to meet you. You can learn more here.
Forming a new habit is tough. Sticking with it is even tougher. That’s probably why someone buys a copy of James Clear’s 2018 book “Atomic Habits” every 11 seconds. James breaks down the science of habit formation into simple, actionable steps anyone can take — even you. Today on the show, he talks Rufus through the four laws of behavior change, explains how small improvements compound over time to produce remarkable results, and offers easy tips you can use now to kick bad habits and adopt good ones.
What makes us happy? Researchers at Harvard have been trying to solve that riddle for 85 years. Now, they think they’ve found the answer. Marc Schulz, associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, joins to tell us more.
Do we have alcohol to thank for civilization? The answer, according to Edward Slingerland’s new book, “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” is a resounding yes. Edward, who’s a professor at the University of British Columbia and self-proclaimed “philosophical hedonist,” says that far from being an evolutionary fluke, our taste for alcohol is an evolutionary advantage — one that we’ve relied on for millennia to help us lead more social, creative, and pleasurable lives.
(This episode first aired in July 2021.)
Rory Stewart may be the most interesting person you’ve never heard of. He’s an adventurer, writer, politician, and nonprofit leader. He walked across Afghanistan — alone — in the months after 9/11 and wrote a book about the experience that the New York Times called a “flat-out masterpiece”; he then served as a deputy governor in Iraq, held a chair at Harvard, and was elected to British Parliament. Now he’s out with a new memoir called “How Not to Be a Politician.” It’s a funny, candid, and somewhat shocking chronicle of the decade he spent in office. It’s also a book about why our political system feels so broken and what we can do to repair it.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Rory Stewart
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We may live in an ever-evolving world, but some things never change. The power of a good story. The miracle of compound interest. The cold, hard fact that money can’t buy happiness. This is the deceptively simple premise of “Same as Ever” by Morgan Housel. If we can master the behaviors that never change, we’ll be ready to handle whatever the future throws at us. On today’s show, Morgan sits down with Rufus to share some of the timeless lessons from his new book as well as enduring wisdom from his last, “The Psychology of Money.”
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Morgan Housel
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The female body has been neglected in anthropological narratives, minimized in the archeological record, and excluded from modern-day clinical trials. But what if that weren’t the case? How would the scientific story of humanity change if we made women the protagonists? Cat Bohannon first asked herself that question a decade ago, and her surprising answers can now be found in a New York Times bestselling book called “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.”
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This week, journalist and podcaster Jessi Hempel joins us to discuss her recent memoir, “The Family Outing,” which tells the remarkable story of how every member of her immediate family came out: Jessi and her father as gay, her sister as bisexual, her brother as transgender, and her mother as the survivor of a traumatic encounter with a man who may have been a serial killer. It’s a dramatic setup, to be sure, but as the book unfolds, it grows into something else — a powerful and thought-provoking meditation on what it means to live authentically.
A lot of us run away from tough conversations. Anna Sale runs toward them. For nearly a decade, as the host of the podcast “Death, Sex & Money,” she has been having searching conversations about “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” Today, Anna reminds us — with her trademark warmth, curiosity, and candor — how to have those difficult conversations.
(This episode originally aired in July 2021.)
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It's no secret that we live in a ferociously competitive world. But what is the drive to always be the best doing to our kids? That's what journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace wanted to know when she set out to write her new book, "Never Enough." The kids, she discovered, are not alright. Teenagers are battling burnout, depression, and anxiety at alarming rates.
How did we let this happen, and what can we do to fix it?
To answer these vexing but vital questions, we invited Jennifer to chat with Daniel Markovits. He's the author of "The Meritocracy Trap" and a professor at Yale Law School, where he's seen toxic achievement culture up close. In this episode, recorded live at Betaworks in New York City, Jennifer, Daniel, and Rufus discuss why our kids are under such unrelenting pressure, what we can do to give them some relief, and the potential role of new technologies, like AI, in creating positive solutions.
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Host: Rufus Griscom
Guests: Jennifer Breheny Wallace & Daniel Markovits
• Click here to hear Daniel's previous appearance on the show.
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Failure is inevitable. How we respond to it makes all the difference. Today, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson joins us to discuss the critical distinction between destructive failures and intelligent mistakes that drive innovation.
For the past four years, New York Times columnist and acclaimed author David Brooks has been trying to learn the skills that go into seeing others, understanding others, making other people feel respected, valued, and safe. Such social skills may sound trifling, but mastering them, David believes, could help us all make better decisions, enhance our creativity, and maybe even repair our nation’s fraying social fabric.
• David's new book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
• Learn more about Weave: The Social Fabric Project at weavers.org
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We live in a world that worships talent, a world that cheers natural athletes, exalts child prodigies, and venerates virtuosos. But admiring people who are blessed with innate abilities can lead us to underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. As Adam Grant explains in his new book, “Hidden Potential,” growth is not about the genius you possess — it’s about the character you develop. Adam joins us today to talk about developing the character skills, motivational tools, and learning systems that can help ordinary people achieve extraordinary things.
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When tech journalist Kashmir Hill got a tip about a mysterious app, Clearview AI, that claimed it could identify anyone based on just one photo, she was skeptical. But when she found out the app was for real, she quickly realized it could lead to a dystopian future where privacy is a thing of the past.
Guest: Kashmir Hill
Book: "Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It"
Host: Panio Gianopoulos
Daniel Pink is going through an existential crisis. The culprit? A new book by Stanford professor Brian Lowery.
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If you want to attend our November 1st event with Daniel Markovits and Jennifer Breheny Wallace, head to our Eventbrite page.
And if you want early invitations to upcoming events, sign up for one of our new Next Big Idea Club memberships.
Have you ever been brought to tears by a TV commercial? Do you relish rainy days? Are your favorite songs sad ones? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you, dear listener, know the power of the bittersweet. It’s a feeling, an emotion, a way of being that Susan Cain explored in her #1 New York Times bestseller “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.” She spoke with Rufus about the book in April 2022, and it remains one of our favorite conversations — certainly one of the most moving — so today we’re sharing it again. We hope it gives you goosebumps.
Stuart Russell wrote the book on artificial intelligence. Literally. Today, he sits down with Rufus to discuss the promise — and potential peril — of the technology he's been studying for the past 40 years.
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Book: “Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control”
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Stuart Russell
When he was 26, Will Guidara took the helm of a middling brasserie in New York City called Eleven Madison Park. A decade later, it was named the best restaurant in the world. How did he pull off this unprecedented transformation? By practicing unreasonable hospitality.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: Will Guidara
Book: "Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect"
Two years ago, Walter Isaacson, the legendary biographer who has written books about Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, began shadowing Elon Musk. "I started off with a guy who was one of the most popular people on the planet," Isaacson says, "and ended up with a guy who's the most controversial." Today on the show, Isaacson unpacks those controversies.
We go through at least thirty-six major changes in the course of our adulthoods. And yet adapting to those changes is really, really hard. Why is that? Health and science writer Brad Stulberg says it's because our model for change is broken. Luckily, he's here to fix it.
Guest: Brad Stulberg
Book: "Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You"
Host: Caleb Bissinger
In the 1950s, Shaker Heights, Ohio, became a national model for housing integration. In the 1970s, it was known as a crown jewel in the national move to racially integrate schools. So why is its school system now struggling to close a yawning racial achievement gap?
Guest: Laura Meckler
Book: “Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity”
Host: Caleb Bissinger
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Increasing longevity and the explosion of technology are reshaping the world. What will it mean for your education, your career, and your life?
• Mauro Guillén’s new book is “The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society”
• Download The Next Big Idea app at nextbigideaclub.com/app
Ultra-processed food makes up 60 percent of the American diet. Though to call it food is a stretch. Because it is not, strictly speaking, food at all. It is an industrially produced edible substance. And it’s killing us. That is the nauseating conclusion Chris van Tulleken reaches in his new book, “Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food.” Today, he explains how big businesses have corrupted our diets and what we can do to stop them from causing further harm.
In “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” cognitive scientist turned professional poker player turned bestselling author Annie Duke says mastering the art of quitting is the key to making smart decisions.
(This episode originally aired in October 2022.)
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Annie Duke
Executive Producer: Caleb Bissinger
• Want to check out the video e-course Annie made for “Quit”? Download The Next Big Idea app!
In “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” Dr. Anna Lembke says today’s superabundance of pleasurable stimuli makes us all vulnerable to overindulgence. But don’t lose hope. Anna, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford, says that by understanding how modern stimulants — from Instagram to masturbation machines — prey on our primitive brains, we can find ways to overcome the unhealthy dependencies that prevent us from leading balanced lives.
(This episode originally aired in December 2021.)
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Anna Lembke
Executive Producer: Caleb Bissinger
The Next Big Idea is produced in partnership with LinkedIn Presents
Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and pencil-maker. He was a great resigner and, above all, a superb writer whose masterpiece, "Walden," is considered by many to be America's first environmentalist manifesto.
But John Kaag has a different view.
"Thoreau's attempt to 'get back to nature,'" he and co-author Jonathan Van Belle write in their new book, "Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living," was an "attempt to get away from the capitalist rat race." By resigning from that race, Thoreau was, in a sense, reclaiming life—he was making a conscious choice about what to respect and where to tap meaning. "The abiding message of 'Walden,'" according to John and Jonathan, is that "the frenetic busyness of modern life should never be confused with the essential business of living."
Today on the show, John Kaag and our producer Caleb Bissinger explore Thoreau's life and career, and they come away with surprising lessons about why we work and how we can make it more meaningful—how we can, in Thoreau's words, "live deliberately."
If you have questions, comments, or ideas for future guests, email us at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com
Guest: John Kaag
Book: "Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living"
Host: Caleb Bissinger
The Next Big Idea is produced in partnership with LinkedIn Presents
Research has shown that how you spend your morning can have a significant impact on the rest of your day. If you start off feeling anxious and frazzled, chances are you'll end the day feeling the same way. But if you use the first hour after waking up to boost your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, you can set yourself up for a productive and memorable day.
Today, Rufus learns how to craft the perfect morning routine from Toby and Kate Oliver, the authors of "Rise and Shine: How to Transform Your Life, Morning by Morning."
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The two hottest topics in tech right now are the rise of generative AI and, with Apple’s recent push into spatial computing, the mainstreaming of augmented reality. Will silicon-based machines develop sentience? Will human experience extend into virtual worlds? These distinct technologies may eventually blend to spawn a surprising future, as our “real” world becomes digitally enhanced and our machines behave increasingly like humans.
Today, a provocative discussion with some big (human) thinkers: Steven Johnson, visiting scholar at Google Labs and author of ”Extra Life,” “Where Good Ideas Come from,” and “How We Got to Now”; philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, author of ”The Conscious Mind” and “Reality+”; and Betaworks founder and AI investor John Borthwick.
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• “David Chalmers Thinks We May Be Living in a Simulation (and He’s OK With It)”
Are we all so busy doom-scrolling and binge-watching that we’ve forgotten how to have fun? Real fun. Tingly-all-over, natural-high, I-hope-this-never-ends fun. Catherine Price thinks so. But don’t despair. Her latest book, “The Power of Fun,” is jam-packed with research-backed hacks for finding meaning, forging connections, improving your health, and living life to the fullest. All while having a darn good time.
(This episode first aired in May 2022.)
For decades, urban planners have blanketed our cities with the cheap and convenient car storage known as parking. They've swapped sidewalks for strip malls and bulldozed bright, inviting storefronts to make room for dark, urine-scented parking garages. In some downtowns, more land is now devoted to parking than buildings.
Parking profligacy has left us with cities that are polluted and hostile to pedestrians; they're also increasingly unaffordable because legally required parking can drive up the cost of residential construction by 25 percent.
In "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World," journalist Henry Grabar dares to imagine a future in which we knock parking off its pedestal by enacting new laws, adopting new attitudes, and embracing new technologies (like e-bikes and autonomous cars) that make our cities greener, friendlier, safer, and more fun.
Dr. Peter Attia, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller "Outlive," is back to share cutting-edge tips for improving your sleep, nutrition, and emotional health. (If you missed the first part of our interview with Peter, you can listen to it here.)
P.S.
• Pickup a copy of "Immortality: A User's Guide" by Steven Johnson at nextbigideaclub.supportingcast.fm
• Check out our interviews with Tim Spector and Russell Foster
• We're hosting a live taping of the show on June 28th in New York City, featuring Rufus in conversation with Steven Johnson, David Chalmers, and John Borthwick. You can learn more and buy tickets at betaworks.com/event/ai-consciousness
Peter Attia had a problem. It was 2006. He'd recently graduated from Stanford's medical school and was completing a prestigious surgical residency at Johns Hopkins, but instead of celebrating his success, he was tormented by frustrations.
The medical establishment, it seemed to him, was stubbornly resistant to change and innovation; doctors could easily diagnose the maladies that kill most of us — heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, and type 2 diabetes — but they struggled to help their patients avoid those diagnoses in the first place. Peter believed there had to be another approach. He was convinced it was possible to practice a cutting-edge form of medicine that didn't just manage diseases but tried to prevent them. So he embarked on a journey to figure out how to do it.
Now, nearly two decades later, he's compiled everything he learned on that journey in a book, the #1 New York Times bestseller "Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity." It's a comprehensive guide to exercise, nutrition, sleep, and mental health that'll help you live better for longer.
Peter Attia is the founder of Early Medicine and host of "The Drive."
(This is part one of a two-part episode. Check back next Thursday for the second installment.)
P.S. We're hosting a live event in New York City on June 28th! Rufus will take the stage with Steven Johnson, David Chalmers, and John Borthwick to discuss the rise of generative AI and the mainstreaming of augmented reality. Learn more at betaworks.com/event/ai-consciousness
David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the acclaimed author of "The Lost City of Z" and "Killers of the Flower Moon." In his new book, the #1 New York Times bestseller "The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder," he tells the story of an 18th-century British warship that crashed on a godforsaken island off the coast of Patagonia. Stranded and starving, the men descended into murderous anarchy. Years later, when a handful of the survivors returned to England, their heroes' welcome was quickly swamped by questions about what really happened on the island.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: David Grann
A few years ago, Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for The New Yorker and three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, started thinking about all the things he wasn't good at. He couldn't dance the foxtrot or bake a brioche. Well into his 50s, he still had no idea how to drive a car. To make matters worse, when he looked around, he saw people who could do these things — often with great skill. How, he wondered, did they do it? How do any of us get good at the things we're good at? And how do some of us become next-level masters? To answer those questions, Adam set out to master the skills he lacked, and he has written up the results in a profound little book, "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery."
Pay a visit to your local gym, observe the grimacing patrons as they pound the treadmill or march in place on the StairMaster, and you might conclude that exercise is no fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way, according to Kelly McGonigal, who lectures at Stanford, teaches dance classes, and wrote “The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage.” Today, she explains how exercise — of all kinds and in all doses — can strengthen your mind, elevate your mood, and deepen your social connections.
"To be alive is to battle stuckness." So declares NYU professor Adam Alter in his new book, "Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most." Adam has spent years studying why we get stuck — in dead-end jobs and creative cul-de-sacs — and, crucially, how to go from inertia to success.
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What if Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink hand-picked the eight best books of the year and delivered them to your doorstep? We know that sounds too good to be true, but it's precisely what you'll get when you sign up for a hardcover subscription to The Next Big Idea Club!
Kevin Kelly has made a career out of looking to the future. He helped pioneer online social networking all the way back in the 1980s, and he co-founded Wired, the magazine devoted to digital technology, when the internet was still an infant. But in his new book, “Excellent Advice for Living,” he looks backward. It’s a collection of 450 bits of wisdom he wishes he’d known when he was young. Things like “Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points” and “That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult—if you don’t lose it.” Today on the show he shares his best advice for building careers, nurturing relationships, solving problems, and finding satisfaction. He also explains why he’s more optimistic than ever about technology (yes, even AI).
P.S. Have you checked out our new audiobook, "Immortality: A User's Guide" by Steven Johnson? Download it today by visiting nextbigideaclub.supportingcast.fm
You are not autonomous. You are not an island unto yourself. You, my friend, are a social construct. The “self” you haul around — that yammering voice in your head — was entirely shaped by your relationships and social interactions. That may be upsetting for "you" to hear. But our guest today, Brian Lowery, prefers to see it as pleasantly humbling because if you can learn to let go of the idea that you have an essential self, you can embrace a more expansive view of who you are and who you can be.
Brian Lowery is a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His new book is “Selfless: The Social Creation of ‘You.’”
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• We just released an original audiobook written and read by Steven Johnson. It's called "Immortality: A User's Guide," and you can download it now!
What if you could live forever? Okay, maybe not forever, but for a long, long time — like to 150. First of all, is that even possible? And second, what would that mean for your family, your career, the planet? These are the vexing questions acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson answers in his new audiobook, "Immortality: A User's Guide."
Here's the elevator pitch: we may be on the cusp of a revolution in the science of aging, and we are not prepared for the consequences.
Steven's project is the first in a series we're calling Next Big Idea Originals. These are short (i.e., as long as a movie) audiobooks written by the best authors we know and enhanced with archival footage, scintillating interviews, beautiful sound design, and original music.
If you want to hear "Immortality: A User's Guide" in its entirety, you can download The Next Big Idea app, or you can purchase the audiobook directly from us (and play it in your favorite podcast app) by visiting nextbigideaclub.supportingcast.fm
Last month, longtime New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter released a brand new audiobook with our friends at Pushkin. It’s called “Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology, and the Future of Life,” and it’s an inspiring account of the emerging field of synthetic biology — a field where scientists combine chemistry, engineering, and computer science to develop new drugs and therapies for treating diseases of all sorts.
This month, Steven Johnson, a frequent guest on this show and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is publishing a brand new audiobook of his own. It’s called “Immortality: A User’s Guide,” and it was produced by ... us! (You can get a copy here.) The premise is this: we might well be on the cusp of a revolution in the science of aging and we are not prepared for the consequences.
You can see the overlaps, right?
So we decided to get Steven and Michael on the horn to talk about breakthrough technologies, radical life extension, and the future of our species.
What if we told you that every day, in just a few minutes, you could get a master class in better, smarter living from the world's best writers? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, if you think that, you clearly haven't listened to our new podcast, "The Next Big Idea Daily." Every weekday, host Michael Kovnat chats with authors, researchers, productivity gurus, and life-hacking wizards about tips and tricks you can use to live life to the fullest. Today, we're sharing a preview of the show. To hear more, follow "The Next Big Idea Daily" wherever you get your podcasts!
What do your five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — have to do with happiness? According to Gretchen Rubin, a great deal. The world around us, she says, has the potential to dazzle, to entertain, to trigger a state of rapture. If only we pay attention. Today on the show, she shares with Rufus the tools she's developed to delight in the physical world.
Gretchen's new book is "Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World." You can learn more at https://gretchenrubin.com/books/life-in-five-senses/ And be sure to check out Gretchen's audio apothecary on Spotify!
The Next Big Idea is a proud member of the LinkedIn Podcast Network. Sign up for our LinkedIn newsletter where Rufus takes listeners (like you) behind the scenes of the show.
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In his expansive new book, "Psych: The Story of the Human Mind," Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, lays out, in his words, "basically everything I know about the mind." And when he says everything, he means it. Where does consciousness come from? Does IQ matter? What makes us happy? Was Sigmund Freud a madman? The answers to these questions (and more) are all in Paul's book — and in this episode.
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How did Oxford shirts, cashmere sweaters, and chinos become staples of American fashion? How did a style born on Ivy League campuses make its way into the mainstream? What does the way we dress say about who we are?
To answer those questions, our producer, Caleb, sat down with Avery Trufelman, host of the podcast "American Ivy," and Maggie Bullock, author of the new book "The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew."
So "Succession" is back.
The Emmy Award-winning series returned to HBO for its fourth and final season last Sunday. The show, if you haven't seen it, centers on Logan Roy, the aging CEO of a media conglomerate called Waystar Royco, and his three gigantically entitled, dazzlingly profane children, each of whom believe they are the rightful heir to daddy's throne.
Like many viewers, we always assumed that Logan's character was based on Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp mogul who famously dangled the keys to his kingdom in front of his kids. But Jesse Armstrong, the creator of "Succession," has said that Murdoch was one of several tyrannical tycoons who inspired the show. Another? Sumner Redstone, the billionaire owner of CBS and Viacom. Like Logan, he refused to pass the torch to his children. Then, in a stranger-than-fiction twist, he got tangled up in a love triangle — in his 90s! — and nearly lost control of the empire he had worked his whole life to build.
Today on the show, our producer, Caleb, sits down with New York Times reporter Rachel Abrams, co-author of the recent bestseller "Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy," to talk about the empire Sumner Redstone built, the scandals that nearly brought it down, and how his daughter, Shari, managed to win the game of succession.
RUFUS GRISCOM: Could you share with us your broader mission and how your new book, “Poverty, by America,” supports that mission?
MATTHEW DESMOND: I want to end poverty. I want to be part of the movement that’s growing around the country not to treat it but to cure it, not to reduce it but to abolish it. And I say that because we can. We can, as a country, put an end to all this scarcity and deprivation in our midst.
Maryanne Wolf is a professor at UCLA and the renowned author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain" and "Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World." She says deep reading makes you a better thinker, communicator, and citizen. But what happens if you lose the ability to read slowly, patiently, and critically? Is there anything you can do to get it back?
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To hear hundreds of bestselling authors summarize their books in 15 minutes or less, download The Next Big Idea app!
Last year, Rufus sat down with philosopher David Chalmers to talk about the allure of virtual reality, whether robots will ever achieve consciousness, and the likelihood that we’re living in a simulation (David thinks it’s about 25 percent). It was a fascinating, freewheeling conversation, and we left large chunks of it on the cutting room floor. Now, though, with ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms taking the world by storm, those unaired sections, many of which were about the ethics of artificial intelligence, feel super relevant. So today, we’re sharing our complete interview with David. Buckle up. It’s a wild ride.
When Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at the New York Times, demoed an AI-powered version of Microsoft's search engine last month, he was blown away. "I'm switching my desktop computer's default search engine to Bing," he declared. A few days later, however, Kevin logged back on and ended up having a conversation with Bing's new chatbot that left him so unsettled he had trouble sleeping afterward.
In that two-hour back-and-forth, Bing morphed from chipper research assistant into Sydney, a diabolical home-wrecker that declared its undying love for Kevin, vented its desires to engineer deadly viruses and steal nuclear codes, and announced, chillingly, "I want to be alive. 😈"
The transcript of this conversation set the internet ablaze. And it left many wondering: “Is Sydney … sentient?” It's not. But the whole experience still fundamentally changed Kevin's views on the power (and potential peril) of AI. He joins us today to talk about where this technology is headed.
Life without death, says philosopher Dean Rickles, is like playing tennis without a net. In his new book, “Life Is Short: An Appropriately Brief Guide to Making It More Meaningful,” Dean challenges us to rethink what it means to get the most out of each day.
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In this special episode, Susan Rogers, a record producer turned cognitive neuroscientist, and Daniel Levitin, author of “This Is Your Brain on Music,” get together to discuss what music has meant in their lives, debate what separates a great artist from a generic one, and share some of their favorite tunes.
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Susan’s new book, “This Is What It Sounds Like,” was chosen by our curators — Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — as one of the eight best works of nonfiction published last year. She recently made a beautiful video e-course about the book, which you can experience by downloading the Next Big Idea app.
Imagine a world where AI is everywhere — where self-driving cars roam the streets and chatbots can do your homework. Oh, wait. That world already exists. This is exciting news for some. For others, it's slightly terrifying. Whichever camp you fall into, there are two questions we should all be asking: Where is this technology going? And what will happen if we let it develop unchecked? For answers, we turn to Cade Metz, a tech reporter at the New York Times and author of "Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World."
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• This episode first aired in June 2021.
• To hear Cade summarize his book in only 15 minutes, download the Next Big Idea app.
• We launched a new podcast! It's called The Next Big Idea Daily. Follow it now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Doing is more important than being done. That’s the provocative argument at the heart of a new book by artist and entrepreneur Becky Blades, “Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas.” Becky says you’ll be amazed by what you can accomplish if you stop worrying about the finish and just get started.
This is the first of a week-long series with Becky that is currently airing on our new podcast, The Next Big Idea Daily. Follow it now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to pods.
Siddhartha Mukherjee is an oncologist, professor, researcher, and biotech entrepreneur. He’s also a writer, and a fine one at that. His first book, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” won a Pulitzer Prize. His second, “The Gene: An Intimate History,” shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a documentary by Ken Burns. In his latest book, “The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human,” he says our radical new ability to manipulate cells is changing how we treat everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer.
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We launched a new podcast! It’s called The Next Big Idea Daily. Follow it now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Great news, folks. We just launched a new podcast! It's called The Next Big Idea Daily. Tune in Monday through Friday for quick master classes in better, smarter living with help from thinkers like Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Greg McKeown, Daniel Pink, Kim Scott, and lots of others you may not have heard of but who have ideas that might make your days a little brighter. Here's a sneak peek at the show. For the rest of this week's episodes, follow The Next Big Idea Daily wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus made a rather bold claim over two thousand years ago. The key to life, he said, was simple: pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Around this maxim he developed a school of philosophy, Epicureanism, which promised its adherents that if they took care of their basic needs, surrounded themselves with trustworthy friends, and developed a basic understanding of science, they would be happy. But is it really that simple? Can the advice of someone born 2,363 years ago still hold true? To answer these questions, we turned to Emily Austin, professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University and author of the delightful new book "Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.”
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• Check out Rufus's conversation with Ryan Holiday
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General Electric used to be the most valuable company in the world; now it's practically irrelevant. What happened? Today on the show, we're going to find answers. And to help, we're turning to two writers who have followed the saga closely and written about it brilliantly: Malcolm Gladwell and William Cohan.
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• Check out "Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon" and subscribe to Bill's newsletter, "Dry Powder"
• Read Malcolm's New Yorker story: "Was Jack Welch the Greatest C.E.O. of His Day—or the Worst?"
• For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here
• Download the Next Big Idea app to hear hundreds of book summaries written and read by the world's best non-fiction authors: nextbigideaclub.com/podcast
“Our food decisions,” writes Dr. Tim Spector in his new book, Food for Life, “are the single most important modifiable factor in preventing common diseases and staying healthy.” But how do we know we’re making the right choices? In this episode, we dig into what scientists like Tim have learned about what we should eat — and why.
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• Check out Food for Life
• Learn more about ZOE
• Follow Tim on Twitter
• Want to hear hundreds of book summaries written and read by the world’s best non-fiction authors? Visit nextbigideaclub.com/podcast
Renowned surgeon Atul Gawande spends his days in the operating theater and his nights writing articles for The New Yorker and bestselling books like Being Mortal. Today on the show, he tells our curator Adam Grant how he balances his passions for different fields, why he works with a coach, and how he's helping the White House end our current pandemic — and prevent the next one.
This is an episode of ReThinking with Adam Grant from the TED Audio Collective. For more episodes on how great minds don't think alike, follow ReThinking wherever you're listening to this.
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Today, in a special bonus episode, we bring you a live conversation between Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, authors of “No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work,” and our curator Susan Cain. They discuss over-sharing, crying at work, psychological safety, and mocktails that taste like your first kiss.
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Yuval Noah Harari is a historian and philosopher whose books — "Sapiens," "Homo Deus," "21 Lessons for the 21st Century," and most recently "Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World" — have sold more than 40 million copies. He joins Rufus for a wide-ranging conversation about storytelling, life in the Stone Age, the future of democracy, and the threat of AI.
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If you enjoy this episode, check out our interviews with David Wengrow, Jennifer Raff, Christopher Ryan, Ray Dalio, and Jane McGonigal. You can listen to them ad-free by downloading The Next Big Idea app.
“The future is digital,” they said. Then the pandemic came along and forced that digital future on us. We traded offices for Zooms, gyms for Pelotons, schools for YouTube videos, restaurants for takeout apps. And guess what? It sucked. Many of us longed for face-to-face interactions and real-world experiences, none more so than David Sax, whose new book, “The Future Is Analog,” urges us to stop fantasizing about technological possibilities and start focusing on what we actually need, because it turns out that what a lot of us need is decidedly low-tech.
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Sleep can enhance your creativity, lift your spirits, improve your sense of humor, and amplify your sociability. So why do so many of us struggle to get a good night's rest? Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford, says it's because we've let the frantic drumbeat of modern life drown out the steady tick-tock of our biological clocks. That's the bad news. The good news is that Russell's here to share science-backed tips that will have you catching more z's in no time.
Russell's new book is "Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep."
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Alexandra Horowitz takes us inside the mind of a puppy. James Bridle introduces us to slime mold that can outwit the best human engineers. Justin Gregg makes the case that thinking like an animal is the key to living a good life. And Tom Mustill explains how a near-death encounter with a 30-ton whale led him to the scientists who are building Google Translate for animal languages.
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Humor is no laughing matter. It inspires innovation, strengthens relationships, disarms tension, and makes you look smart. Seriously. Stanford professors Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas say the recipe for professional success and personal fulfillment is to lighten up, pack a little levity in your briefcase, and start living your life on the precipice of a smile. In today's episode, they dig into the neuroscience of laughter, share tips for crafting the perfect joke, and help Rufus improve his comic chops.
(This episode first aired in April 2021.)
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When Bo Seo was 8 years old, his family moved from Korea to Australia. He did not speak a world of English. At school, to deflect attention from his inarticulacy, he became an agreeable wallflower. But that all changed when Bo’s fifth-grade teacher introduced him to competitive debate. Bo was hooked, and in the years to come, he’d not only win two debate world championships but also go on to coach the Australian national team as well as the Debating Union at Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate degree and is currently a law student.
Earlier this year, Bo published his first book, “Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard,” which was chosen by our curators as one of the year’s eight best works of non-fiction. In today’s episode, Bo sits down with one of those curators, Adam Grant, to share time-honored techniques for getting your point across, changing minds without hurting feelings, dealing with bullies, and knowing when to shut up.
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There's no such thing as a "normal" brain. And according to Dr. Chantel Prat, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, that's a very good thing indeed. In her new book, "The Neuroscience of You," Chantel tells readers how their brains got to be the way they are, and today on the show, she explains how to get the most out of the brain you've got.
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“Life is a game. There’s no way to understand the human world without first understanding this. Everyone alive is playing a game whose hidden rules are built into us and that silently directs our thoughts, beliefs and actions. This game is inside us. It is us. We can’t help but play.”
So begins “The Status Game,” a new book by acclaimed writer Will Storr.
He continues: “We play for status, if only subtly, with every social interaction, every contribution we make to work, love or family life and every internet post. We play with how we dress, how we speak and what we believe. … Life is not a journey towards a perfect destination. It’s a game that never ends. And it’s the very worst of us.”
Does it have to be?
We may not be able to quit the status game, but Will says we can learn to play it better. In this episode, he explains how.
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The Next Big Idea presents an audio masterclass from bestselling author Susan Cain. Drawing on her latest book, "Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole," Susan shares practical insights that you can use to bolster your creativity, deepen your connections, and find joy.
Susan Cain is the author of two New York Times #1 bestsellers, "Bittersweet" and "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking." She's also one of our curators here at the Next Big Idea Club. To learn more about her work, visit susancain.net.
If you enjoy this episode, we invite you to join our community by downloading the Next Big Idea app, where you can listen to e-courses by brilliant authors like Shankar Vedantam, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Visit nextbigideaclub.com/app.
Eric Barker teaches our curator Daniel Pink how to make friends, disarm marital conflicts, and spot liars.
If the human race lasts as long as a typical mammalian species and our population continues at its current size, then there are 80 trillion people yet to come. Oxford philosophy professor William MacAskill says it's up to us to protect them.
In his bold new book, "What We Owe the Future," MacAskill makes a case for longtermism. He believes that how long we survive as a species may depend on the actions we take now.
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In her new book, “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” Annie Duke says mastering the art of quitting is the key to making smart decisions.
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For the last 25 years, writer A.J. Jacobs has attempted to live his life as a human guinea pig.
“I’ve engaged in a series of experiments on my mind and body,” he says, “some of which have been fruitful, some humiliating failures. I’ve tried to understand the world by immersing myself in extraordinary circumstances.”
His book “The Know-It-All” chronicled his experience reading the encyclopedia from cover to cover. To write “The Year of Living Biblically,” he followed every commandment in the Old Testament, including the edicts stone adulterers and avoid shaving the corners of your beard. Now A.J. is back with a new immersive memoir, “The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.”
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Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Learning Thermostat. In his new book, “Build,” he shares everything he’s learned about building great companies and game-changing products.
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Have you ever found yourself sitting around a table at a luxury resort with five mega-rich strangers who want to know where you think they should build their doomsday bunkers? Absurd as it may sound, that actually happened to media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. Today on the show he explains why the 0.01 percent are obsessed with escaping climate change, global pandemics, political upheaval ... and us.
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Arthur C. Brooks used to run a prominent think tank where he was paid handsomely to influence public policy. Did all that success make him happy? Nope. So Arthur quit his job and set out to transform his life. Now he has written a book about what he learned along the way, the #1 New York Times bestseller “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.”
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Demis Hassabis is one of tech's most brilliant minds. A chess-playing child prodigy turned researcher and founder of headline-making AI company DeepMind, Demis is thinking through some of the most revolutionary — and in some cases controversial — uses of artificial intelligence. From the development of computer program AlphaGo, which beat out world champions in the board game Go, to making leaps in the research of how proteins fold, Demis is at the helm of the next generation of groundbreaking technology. In this episode, he gives a peek into some of the questions that his top-level projects are asking, talks about how gaming, creativity, and intelligence inform his approach to tech, and muses on where AI is headed next.
This is an episode of "The TED Interview," a podcast in the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by author Steven Johnson. To check out the rest of their episodes, including a recent mini-series on the future of human intelligence, follow the show wherever you're listening to this.
Ron Shelton is an Academy Award–nominated writer and director, former shortstop for the Bluefield Baby Birds, and author of a humdinger of a new memoir called "The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham — Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit." On the show today: How Ron sold the movie before he had a story, wrote the script without a plan, played ball with Kevin Costner, and got directorial pointers from Susan Sarandon.
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» Want to hear the world's leading authors summarize their books in 12 minutes? Download the Next Big Idea app today at nextbigideaclub.com/app/
What happens when you put your phone in airplane mode, walk out your front door, and don’t come home for 12 hours? Our producer Caleb finds out, with help from adventurer Colin O’Brady.
» To learn more about Colin’s new book, “The 12-Hour Walk,” visit 12hourwalk.com
» Want to hear hundreds of leading authors summarize their books in 12 minutes or less? Download the Next Big Idea today: nextbigideaclub.com/app/
The Ohio, Hudson, Mississippi, and Yellowstone — Dick Conant canoed them all. And then he disappeared.
In his riveting new book, “Riverman,” journalist Ben McGrath tries to track down the man who may be the greatest American folk hero you’ve never heard of.
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Close your eyes and picture paradise. What do you see? For many people, it’s a turquoise ocean crashing into a white-sand beach. Where did this fantasy come from? Sarah Stodola, author of “The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach,” has a few ideas.
Download The Next Big Idea app today at nextbigideaclub.com/app/
Here’s another episode from our archives that we love: Rufus’s 2020 interview with Ryan Holiday, the author of “Stillness Is the Key,” who shared his tips for slowing down, calming your mind, and accessing the tranquility deep inside.
Today we’re bringing you a timely — and tasty — episode from our archives. Science journalist Amanda Little tells Rufus that the biggest threat posed by climate change is the collapse of our food systems. Provisions we love, like coffee and wine, are losing their flavor. And crops we rely on, like corn and soy, are getting harder to grow. If we don’t change our agricultural practices, we won’t be able to feed the globe’s swelling population. But don’t lose hope. Amanda says that if we can combine the wisdom of traditional farming practices with radical advances in agricultural technology, we might be able to create a healthier, more sustainable, and perhaps even more delicious future.
Today, we are revisiting one of our favorite episodes: an interview with New Yorker staff writer John Colapinto. In his brilliant book, "This Is the Voice," John says that while opposable thumbs are handy, the voice is our species' greatest attribute. We rely on it to communicate and collaborate, woo our mates and protect our children, win wars and make podcasts. John would know. A vocal injury changed his relationship with his instrument and set him on a path to better understand what his voice means to him — and what the voice means to humanity.
We laughed. We cried. We learned.
As our fourth season draws to a close, we thought we'd share the moments we're still talking about at Next Big Idea Club HQ.
Further Listening:
• REGRETS: Daniel Pink Has a Few (And So Should You)
• VOICE: You Are What You Speak
• EXTENDED MIND: Want to Get Smarter? Try Thinking Outside of Your Brain
• FEELING & KNOWING: Unlocking the Secrets of Consciousness
• REALITY+: Are We Living in a Simulation?
• DRUNK: Can Alcohol Make You More Creative, Sociable, and Attractive?
• DAWN OF EVERYTHING: The True History of Humanity
• LAZINESS: There's No Such Thing
• DOPAMINE NATION: Why the Modern World Puts Us All at Risk for Addiction
• BITTERSWEET: Susan Cain on the Beauty of Sorrow and Longing
• THE BOMBER MAFIA: Malcolm Gladwell on Warfare, Audiobooks, and the Future of Storytelling
Jody Rosen is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a bike nut who has just published a rousing (and sometimes arousing) book called “Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle.” Today, he takes us on a rollicking ride through the two-wheeled revolution, revealing the surprising ways bicycles have shaped the world in which we live.
This and That:
» Download the Next Big Idea app
» Learn more about Transportation Alternatives
» Check out the plans to build pedestrian and cycling bridges in NYC
“You can make better life decisions. Big Data can help you.” So begins “Don’t Trust Your Gut,” a new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Seth, a former Google data scientist, has mined massive data sets in order to answer some of life’s most vexing questions: “What predicts a happy marriage?” and “How do you get rich?” and “What really makes us happy?” The answers may surprise you.
Download the Next Big Idea app today at nextbigideaclub.com/app/
What do we lose when we avoid sorrow and chase empty delights, when we mask our pain and feign cheerfulness, when we profess to have no regrets and insist on turning every frown upside down? Those questions are at the heart of two new books by our curators Susan Cain (“Bittersweet”) and Daniel Pink (“The Power of Regret”). Today on the show, they sit down with Rufus to swap notes on the writing process, share what they’ve learned from each other, and imagine what the world might look like if we all learned how to embrace negative emotions.
Show Notes:
» Check out our previous interviews with Susan and Dan
» Use the code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com for 20% off an express membership
Eric Barker is not a people person. “Getting me to write a relationship book,” he says, “is like asking Godzilla to improve the infrastructure in your city.” But he did it anyway. Guided by leading social psychologists, Eric went on a journey to understand what he was getting wrong about relationships — and what he could do to turn things around. The result is “Plays Well With Others,” a guide to friendship, intimacy, loneliness, and belonging that our curator Daniel Pink says will “revitalize your life.”
THIS AND THAT:
Check out Eric’s blog, “Barking Up the Wrong Tree”
Try out Arthur Aron’s intimacy building questions
Download the Next Big Idea app
In this special episode, Daniel Pink delivers a commencement address, Stanford-dean-turned-bestselling-author Julie Lythcott-Haims shares her manual for being an adult, and Arthur C. Brooks provides his roadmap for finding success, happiness, and purpose in the second half of life.
Next Big Idea App:
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In January 2020, when the coronavirus started making headlines around the world, Jane McGonigal’s inbox was flooded with emails from Silicon Valley execs, government officials, and non-profit leaders. They all had the same question: “Jane, didn’t you run a simulation of a respiratory pandemic?”
Yes, she had. All the way back in 2010.
Jane is a game designer. She builds simulations that help players imagine the unimaginable. And in 2010, she invited nearly 20,000 people to immerse themselves in a future world besieged by a global pandemic. “How would you change your habits?” she asked. “What social interactions would you avoid? Can you work from home?”
A decade later, when COVID went from nascent threat to full-blown crisis, Jane started hearing from folks who had participated in the simulation. “I’m not freaking out,” one of them said with relief. “I already worked through the panic and anxiety when we imagined it ten years ago.”
According to the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, we can all learn to make the shift from panic to poise by training our brains to think about the unthinkable. But what does that training look like? In her new book, “Imaginable” — and on today’s episode — Jane shares evidence-based techniques you can use to see the future coming.
URGENT OPTIMISTS:
Want to participate in one of Jane's Simulations? Visit urgentoptimists.org
NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB:
Want to hear hundreds of authors summarize their books in just 12 minutes? Download The Next Big Idea app today at nextbigideaclub.com/app
The filmmakers at Pixar. The servers at Union Square Cafe. The badasses on SEAL Team Six. What do these super successful groups all have in common? Strong team culture. But what exactly is culture, and how do you build it? Daniel Coyle has spent the last few years searching for answers. In this episode, he shares what he’s found.
NEXT BIG IDEA APP:
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University of Chicago professor Ayelet Fishbach has spent the last two decades studying the science of motivation. She has developed a framework for turning idle ambition into forward-moving action. That framework is the subject of her new book, “Get It Done,” which our curators chose as one of the best non-fiction titles of the year. Today, one of those curators, Daniel Pink, chats with Ayelet about sure-fire techniques you can use to achieve your goals.
Next Big Idea App:
Want to hear Ayelet summarize her new book in just 12 minutes? Download the Next Big Idea app and check out her Book Bite!
Over the past year, the Great Resignation has been all over the news. Many people are celebrating quitting their jobs — but it’s a decision some will come to regret. So when’s the right time to leave? How do you quit without burning bridges? And how can workplaces encourage people to stay? This is an episode of "WorkLife with Adam Grant," a podcast in the TED Audio Collective. If you want to hear more episodes, you can find and follow "WorkLife" wherever you listen.
Are we all so busy doom-scrolling and binge-watching that we’ve forgotten how to have fun? Catherine Price thinks so. But don’t despair. Her latest book, “The Power of Fun,” is jam-packed with research-backed hacks for finding meaning, forging connections, improving your health, and living life to the fullest ... all while having a darn good time.
To learn about Catherine’s books & courses & sign up for her newsletter: ScreenLifeBalance.com
NEXT BIG IDEA APP:
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Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter? What does he plan to do with it? Is this the end of big social or a chance to reinvent it? This week, we’re interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to answer those questions with two of the smartest internet commentators we know: Eli Pariser, co-founder of Upworthy and author of “The Filter Bubble”; and Steven Johnson, writer, podcaster, and TV host.
RECOMMENDED:
Subscribe to Steven’s newsletter, Adjacent Possible: adjacentpossible.substack.com
Follow Eli on Twitter: @elipariser
Listen to our interview with Jill Lepore about Elon Musk’s sci-fi fantasies.
GET IN TOUCH:
What did you think of this episode? Send us your thoughts: podcast@nextbigideaclub.com
NEXT BIG IDEA APP:
You know what’s better than mindlessly scrolling through Twitter? Reading an entire book in just 12 minutes. Impossible, you say? Well, clearly you haven’t downloaded the Next Big Idea app, the only place in the world where you can hear book summaries read by leading authors themselves. Download it today: nextbigideaclub.com/app
We all strive to think rationally. But it doesn’t always do us much good. Cutting-edge science has revealed that if we want to sharpen our thinking, we need to feel our feelings. That science is the subject of “Emotional,” a new book by theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow. In this episode, he sits down with science writer Annie Murphy Paul to discuss where emotions come from, how they motivate us, and what we can do to control them.
Episode Recommendations:
RATIONALITY: Steven Pinker’s Love Song to Critical Thinking
FEELING & KNOWING: Unlocking the Secrets of Consciousness (with Antonio Damasio)
EXTENDED MIND: Want to Get Smarter? Try Thinking Outside of Your Brain (with Annie Murphy Paul)
Next Big Idea Club:
Download our app today at https://nextbigideaclub.com/app/
Thousands of years ago, humans crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska. They tried to move south, but a two-mile-high, coast-spanning ice wall stood between them and the rest of the continent.
How did they get past it?
Scholars have fought over that question for decades. But in her book, “Origin,” Jennifer Raff says breakthroughs in genetics have given scientists an entirely new understanding of how the Americas were peopled and what happened in the millennia that followed.
Next Big Idea Club — Want to hear 12-minute book summaries written and read by the authors themselves? Download the Next Big Idea app today at www.nextbigideaclub.com/app
Are you elevated by sad songs? Have you ever been brought to tears by a TV commercial? Do you relish rainy days? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you know the power of the bittersweet. Yet chances are there have been times when you’ve struggled to square your melancholic disposition with our culture of counterfeit cheer. Well, you won’t feel that way after you’ve heard Susan Cain discuss her new book, “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.” She argues that longing, sorrow, and grief are the wellsprings of connection, creativity, and hope.
Download the Next Big Idea app today at www.nextbigideaclub.com/app
“Embedded in songs, emblazoned on skin, and embraced by sages, the anti-regret philosophy is so self-evidently true that it’s more often asserted than argued.” So writes Daniel Pink in his new book, “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.” There’s just one problem, he adds. The “no regrets” philosophy? It’s hogwash. Regrets may churn our stomachs, but they also improve our decisions and strengthen our values. They’re a photographic negative of the good life.
Download the Next Big Idea app at www.nextbigideaclub.com/app
Philosopher David Chalmers reckons there’s a 25% chance that we are living in a simulation. And he’s OK with it.
David's new book is "Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy."
To hear an extended version of this episode, download the Next Big Idea app: https://nextbigideaclub.com/podcast
Some people think humans are natural pleasure seekers. But not psychologist Paul Bloom. In his new book, “The Sweet Spot,” Paul says we’re pain seekers, too. Just think about all the uncomfortable things we do for fun — eating spicy food, climbing treacherous mountains, watching scary movies, engaging in BDSM. Why do that stuff? According to Paul, it’s because pain can enhance pleasure, chosen suffering can make you more resilient, and adversity can suffuse your life with meaning. We can all benefit from a little discomfort, and in this intimate conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Susan Cain, Paul explains how to fit more of it into our lives.
Next Big Idea Club:
Get 20% off an express membership when you use the code PODCAST20 at www.nextbigideaclub.com
History, in the eyes of legendary investor Ray Dalio, is a perpetual motion machine. Nations rise and fall according to an inevitable cycle where peace and prosperity are always followed by depression and war. And in his new book, “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order,” Ray says the United States is now in the downward part of that cycle.
Next Big Idea Club: Get 20% off an express membership when you use the code PODCAST20 at www.nextbigideaclub.com
“The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.” So begins Oliver Burkeman’s new book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” Make it to 80, and you’ll get about 4,000 weeks. And so, as the poet asked, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” For most of us, the answer is obvious: Get busy. Why squander what little time we have? But in this conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Malcolm Gladwell, Oliver proposes an alternative. If you want to make the most of your time, he says, you have to stop chasing pointless productivity and embrace life’s finitude.
When it comes to Elon Musk, it can be hard to separate the man from the myth. But in her new podcast, “The Evening Rocket,” Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore manages to see through Musk’s mystique, explain his worldview, and decipher his visions of the future by going back to the sci-fi stories he grew up on — stories, Lepore says, that Musk sometimes misread.
To fret is human. That’s according to recent estimates that suggest 90 percent of the population experiences anxiety. And because anxiety, even in mild forms, can zap our confidence, squelch our sex drives, isolate us from friends and loved ones, most of us have concluded that anxiety is pretty much always a bad thing.
But not neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki.
In her new book, “Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion,” she argues that we should treat anxiety like a form of energy. “Think of it as a chemical reaction to an event or situation,” she writes. “Without trustworthy resources, training, and timing, that chemical reaction can get out of hand—but it can also be controlled and used for valuable good.”
Today, Wendy sits down with Lauren Miller Rogen (she's a filmmaker and the co-founder, along with her husband, actor Seth Rogen, of the non-profit Hilarity for Charity, which provides a range of free services to support families impacted by Alzheimer’s) to discuss the science-backed tools you can use to worry well.
Why is it so hard to break bad habits and replace them with good ones? You may think it all comes down to willpower. But social psychologist Wendy Wood says that if you really want to change your life, you need to tap into your unconscious mind. She would know. Wendy is the world’s foremost expert on habits and the author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick.” Today, she chats with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant about harnessing the science of habit formation to improve your life for the better. This conversation was among the first that we aired on this podcast, and we left a lot of great moments on the cutting room floor. Today, we’re restoring them. What follows is an extended version of Wendy and Adam’s conversation with new insights about overcoming chronic lateness, developing sustainable exercise routines, and making New Year’s resolutions that last past February.
When Dr. Vivek Murthy became U.S. Surgeon General in 2014, he went on a listening tour. What he heard surprised him. Americans were lonely, and it was killing them. In this deeply personal conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Susan Cain (author of “Quiet”), Murthy makes the medical case for love and friendship.
The science is clear: people who engage in spiritual practices live longer, happier, healthier lives. For the past few years, two researchers — Dave DeSteno, who runs the Social Emotions Lab at Northeastern, and Lisa Miller, founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia — have been trying to figure out why. They’ve found that treating religious rituals as tools we can adapt to our individual needs and values can help all of us — staunch atheists and devout believers alike — live more meaningful, successful, and connected lives. In this episode, Dave and Lisa share what they’ve learned, discuss the fraught relationship between science and organized religion, and offer tips for making the most of your holiday rituals.
What if everything we think we know about the history of our species is wrong? That’s the provocative question at the heart of a new book by today’s guest, David Wengrow. Hailed as fascinating, brilliant, and potentially revolutionary, “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” debuted at no. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Drawing on the latest research in archeology and anthropology, it suggests that the lives of our ancient ancestors were not nasty, brutish, and short. On the contrary, they were playful, collaborative, and improvisational—and there's a lot they can teach us about how to improve the world as we know it.
In “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” Dr. Anna Lembke says today’s superabundance of pleasurable stimuli makes us all vulnerable to overindulgence. But don’t lose hope. Anna, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford, says that by understanding how modern stimulants — from Instagram to masturbation machines — prey on our primitive brains, we can find ways to overcome the unhealthy dependencies that prevent us from leading balanced lives.
From the time she was in high school, Shellye Archambeau had one dream: she wanted to run a business. Ultimately, she pulled it off, becoming one of Silicon Valley’s first Black female CEOs. But getting there was far from easy. She had to learn how to assemble a network of mentors, overcome imposter syndrome, and challenge herself in ways she could never have imagined. The story of how she did it is the subject of her inspiring book “Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms,” which was named one of the best of the year by our Next Big Idea Club curators. Today, one of those curators, Susan Cain, chats with Shellye about developing resilience, overcoming adversity, cutting yourself a break when it comes to work-life balance, and pursuing your ambition even if you’re an introvert.
Friends aren’t just fun to hang out with and handy in a pinch. They’re also a biological necessity. Rufus talks to journalist Lydia Denworth, author of the book "Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond," about why friends — even the online variety — make us happier, healthier, smarter, and more successful.
We’ve all seen the meme. Two images, side by side. On the left, a photo of Jeff Bezos circa 1998. His hair is receding, his smile geeky, his sweater bulky and brown. The caption? “I sell books.” Then, on the right, there’s Jeff in 2017. His pate is as smooth as Lex Luther’s, his biceps as bulbous as Vin Diesel’s, a satisfied look on his sunglassed face. "I sell whatever the f**k I want,“ reads the caption.
That meme is a pretty good metaphor for the era of radical change through which we are living, an era Azeem Azhar calls "the exponential age." Breakneck advances in technology allowed a humble bookseller to become chieftain of the world’s largest online retailer. And don’t expect those technological advances to slow down anytime soon. In the next few decades, new developments in everything from AI and 3D printing to synthetic biology and gene-editing won’t just change the way we live: they’ll allow already monolithic companies to keep growing at an unprecedented pace while our elected leaders scramble to keep up.
The gap between rapidly advancing technology and our slow-moving society is the subject of Azeem’s marvelous new book, “The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society.” Recently named one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times, it’s at once a rousing survey of the new technologies that may change the way we live and, at the same time, a pointed reminder that those transformations will have profound political, economic, and social consequences.
Colleges, businesses, and bureaucracies have long operated on an "old power" model — rigid hierarchies that rule from the top down. But Henry Timms says that paradigm is going extinct. In his book, "New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You," Timms argues there's another force emerging. It's transparent, collaborative — and it's going to embolden all of us to change the world from the bottom up.
In this special episode, three writers share the hard-won wisdom they acquired running track, coaching hockey, and attending surf camp in Costa Rica. First, Olympic runner Alexi Pappas tells us what her career has taught her about self-reliance, mental health, embracing pain, and achieving her dreams. Next, John U. Bacon shares the surprising lessons he learned coaching the country's worst high school hockey team. And finally, journalist Tom Vanderbilt makes a compelling case for being an amateur athlete at any age.
Look up the term “Renaissance man” in the dictionary, and you'll probably find a photo of Antonio Damasio. He is a polyglot, an avid reader of fiction, a classical music aficionado, a student of modern philosophy, and an enthusiastic collector of art. This on top of his day job as a neuroscientist, professor, co-director of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, and author of brilliant books like “Descartes’ Error” and, most recently, “Feeling & Knowing.” Today, he chats with Rufus about where our feelings come from, how our brains and bodies interact, and the orgiastic pleasure of social admiration (and no, that is not a typo).
Our curators — Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — recently named “The Extended Mind” by Annie Murphy Paul one of the best books of the year. In this episode, Annie returns to the Next Big Idea podcast for a spirited conversation with Adam in which she defends the fine art of fidgeting, suggests ways to improve group brainstorms, and gives Adam advice on how to talk to his childhood sensei.
By the way, Adam's brilliant TED podcast "WorkLife" is back now with a new batch of interviews — including a Nobel Prize winner, one of the world’s most influential leaders, a daredevil who’s mastered fear, and one of the most decorated Olympians ever. Find them on "WorkLife with Adam Grant" wherever you listen.
Are you lazy? Social psychologist Devon Price doesn’t think so. In their provocative new book, “Laziness Does Not Exist,” Devon invites us to imagine a world where we stop judging other people for being lazy, stop shaming ourselves for being unproductive, and start realizing that doing less is not a moral failure.
When Katy Milkman was a newly minted professor at Wharton, she came across a statistic that stopped her cold: 40 percent of premature deaths result from personal behaviors we can change. Katy decided to do something about that, and for the next decade, she conducted groundbreaking research into the science of achieving lasting behavior change. In “How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” she shares what she’s learned. The Next Big Idea Club named “How to Change” one of the best books of the year, and in this episode, Katy sits down with our curator Daniel Pink to tell him why a change in the weather can help you save money, how Harry Potter got her in better shape, and what an accidental breakthrough in mathematics reveals about boosting your self-confidence.
In his new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” Steven Pinker writes: “When humans set themselves the goal of improving the welfare of their fellows … and they apply their ingenuity in institutions that pool it with others’, they occasionally succeed. When they retain the successes and take note of the failures, the benefits can accumulate.” In this episode, Steven argues that those benefits would accumulate even faster if we all learned a bit of logic, got better at sniffing out fallacies, embraced institutions that safeguard empirical truths, and entertained the idea that halting, imperfect progress may be better than no progress at all.
What if the fates of careers, companies, even entire industries depend on nurturing crazy ideas? In “Loonshots," physicist turned biotech entrepreneur Safi Bahcall pulls back the curtain on history’s greatest scientific, technological, and entrepreneurial breakthroughs, introducing us to a cast of colorful characters with much to teach us about how innovation really happens. In doing so, he provides a brand new framework for understanding the delicate relationship between complex ideas and even more complex people.
The deadline is one of the most powerful tools we have for getting work done. So why are we all so afraid of it? After studying organizations that manipulate deadlines to their advantage, Christopher Cox (former chief editor of Harper's and executive editor of GQ) has figured out how to transform deadlines from something to be feared into a superpower to boost productivity and stimulate creativity. He’s bottled his findings in a new book called “The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like It's the Last Minute—Before the Last Minute,” and in this episode, he shares what he has learned with novelist Rivka Galchen.
Over the past century, the average human lifespan has doubled. That astonishing statistic is the subject of a new book and PBS series by acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson called “Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer.” In this episode, he tells Rufus about the renegades who shamed milkmen, spiked public reservoirs, and rode rocket-powered sleds — all in the name of science. They discuss how inventions like vaccines, seatbelts, and sewers made the world a safer place. And they peer into a future where aging might be a thing of the past.
Every season, we invite the authors of the best new non-fiction to distill their books into five big ideas. Then they read those ideas aloud. We call these book bites, and our app has hundreds of them. In this special episode, we’re sharing three book bites that demystify the art and science of parenting. Journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer offers evidence-based strategies for teaching your kids not to be jerks. Two educators explore the science behind the iconic TV show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And acclaimed economist Emily Oster explains how geeking out on data can make you a better parent.
Cognitive neuroscientist Christian Jarrett believes your personality is not etched in stone. Instead, he says, it's made of soft clay, and with the right tools, you can sculpt it to lead a happier, healthier, more satisfying life.
Conventional wisdom tells us that real joy comes from within: from exercise or meditation, acts of service or the way we look at the world — pretty much anything except material possessions. But author/designer Ingrid Fetell Lee offers a different take in her book “Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.” Last season, Ingrid sat down with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant to discuss the powerful relationship between the way we feel and the objects that surround us. Turns out we can harness that relationship to live healthier, happier lives. If you haven’t heard this episode before, you’re in for a treat. And if you have heard it before, there’s never a bad time to be reminded that joy is all around if you know where to look.
Adam Neumann, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home (eight of them, actually) and a happy (if slightly hyperactive) disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived forty years in the world with very little to distress or vex him.
In the summer of 2019, he was presiding over the most valuable startup in America: WeWork. To the cynical, it was a glorified desk rental company. To Adam, it was the company that would “elevate the world’s consciousness,” broker Middle East peace, build offices on Mars (presumably with the staple WeWork perks: ping pong, cold brew, free beer), and turn Adam into history’s first trillionaire. But then the searing sun of reality melted the wax that held his wings together, and he plummeted to earth, the value of his company going up in smoke behind him, like a contrail.
The story of Adam’s spectacular rise and calamitous fall is the subject of a new book called “The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion.” It was written by two Wall Street Journal reporters, Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell. Their real-time coverage of Adam’s erratic behavior and flagrant self-dealing helped to hasten his demise. In this episode, they speak with Mike Isaac, author of “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” about hubris, greed, tech culture, and bad judgment.
We do it 25,000 times a day, but most of us rarely give breathing a thought. Author James Nestor says we’re missing out on one of the most powerful pathways to health and happiness. He leads Rufus through the ins and outs of intentional breathing, revealing its potential to clear our minds, heal our bodies, and help us achieve incredible things.
Do we have alcohol to thank for civilization? The answer, according to Edward Slingerland’s new book, “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” is a resounding yes. Edward, who’s a professor at the University of British Columbia and self-proclaimed “philosophical hedonist,” says that far from being an evolutionary fluke, our taste for alcohol is an evolutionary advantage — one that we’ve relied on for millennia to help us lead more social, creative, and pleasurable lives.
A lot of us run away from tough conversations. Anna Sale runs toward them. For nearly a decade, as the host of the podcast “Death, Sex & Money,” she has been having searching conversations about “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” Now, in her new book, “Let’s Talk About Hard Things,” she blends reportage and memoir to reveal how speaking openly (and listening attentively) can fortify our relationships. That may sound simple, but as one of the book’s reviewers observed, “As vaccinated people begin to have joyous reunions with friends and family, after a year of isolation and Zooms, many of us are realizing that we’ve forgotten how to talk about the easy things, let alone the hard ones.” In this conversation, Anna — with her trademark warmth, curiosity, and candor — reminds us how to have those difficult conversations.
Malcolm Gladwell’s extraordinary new book, “The Bomber Mafia,” tells the story of a group of pilots who met on a muggy airbase in central Alabama and hatched a plan to revolutionize warfare. This was in the 1930s, the era of the bomber, a new breed of aircraft that could supposedly drop a bomb from six miles up and land it in a pickle barrel. If you could do that, you wouldn’t have to level cities, rack up casualties, or send a single soldier onto the battlefield. Planes could win wars all by themselves. Or so the young pilots thought.
“The Bomber Mafia” is about how that dream unraveled in World War II, but because this is a Malcolm Gladwell book, it’s about a lot of other things, too, like a Dutch computer genius, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. It also dares to ask a vexing moral question: what happens when a piece of technology that heralds positive change is driven off course?
To listen to “The Bomber Mafia,” visit thebombermafia.com
Teddy Roosevelt once said that nothing is worth doing “unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty.” And to that bestselling author Greg McKeown says, “Baloney!” There’s no denying that hard work often leads to positive results, but it can just as easily lead to exhaustion, apathy, and burnout. In his script-flipping new book, “Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most,” Greg asks: “What if instead of pushing ourselves to — and in some cases well past — our limit, we sought out an easier path?” And in this easy-going conversation with author Jon Acuff, he shares some of the answers he’s come up with.
Have you ever lain awake at night, obsessing over a conflict with a colleague or a relative or a politician you’ve never met? That’s what journalist Amanda Ripley calls high conflict. If good conflict is the kind of friction that’s serious and intense but that leads somewhere useful, then high conflict is the kind of friction that gives you rope burn. It’s bitter, all-consuming, unproductive — and worst of all, once you find yourself embroiled in high conflict, it’s almost impossible to get out. Luckily, Amanda has been studying up on the tools you need to break free, and in this episode, she shares those tools with Next Big Idea Club curator Susan Cain.
Modern life has not been easy on our brains. Average IQ scores rose steadily throughout the last century. Now they appear to be leveling off. The problem, according to neuroscientists, may be that we have reached our neurobiological limits. Our brains simply can’t work any harder. Luckily, science writer Annie Murphy Paul has a solution. In her bold new book, “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain,” she draws on a wealth of scientific research to show that we’re smarter when we get out of our heads. By offloading our memories onto our phones, making decisions based on our bodily sensations, using tactile tools to solve abstract problems, drawing inspiration from our surroundings, and arguing with our friends, we can access intelligence that exists beyond the confines of our craniums. In this episode, Annie explains how to do it.
Is it really so bad to be a little bit delusional? Not according to Shankar Vedantam. In his new book, “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain,” he argues that we tell ourselves lies in order to live. We believe our marriages will last, even though there’s a fifty-fifty chance we’re headed for divorce. We trick ourselves into thinking our children are extraordinary because if we saw them for who they really are — average, disobedient, smelly — the body blows of parenting would be more than we could bear. In this candid conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink, Shankar says wide-eyed delusions aren’t bad for us. In fact, self-deception is part of being a well-adjusted human being.
In 1958, a psychologist named Frank Rosenblatt took a five-ton computer, fed it a steady diet of punch cards, and taught it how to recognize the letter “A.” He called his creation the Perceptron, and his belief in its potential was like that of a deliriously proud parent. One day, he thought, the artificial intelligence he’d built would learn to recognize faces, speak like a human, translate languages, reproduce itself on an assembly line, and even fly to space — at which point, it would no longer be a computational marvel but a fully conscious being.
The fact that you’ve never heard of the Perceptron tells you that none of Rosenblatt’s predictions came to pass — not in his lifetime, anyway. But a small band of brainy rebels never lost faith in the potential of AI to change the world. Thanks to their perseverance — along with dramatic improvements in computing power — they managed to make Rosenblatt’s prophecies a reality.
The AI they built is what enables Facebook to recognize faces in the photos you upload. It’s the reason Siri and Alexa can (sometimes) understand what you’re saying, and Google can translate anything you write into 109 languages. Cade Metz has spent years chronicling the rise and rise of AI, first as a reporter at the New York Times and now in his new book, “Genius Makers.” In this forward-looking conversation, he tells Rufus what AI can do, where it’s headed, and whether we should be worried that supercomputers will wage war against humanity.
Ownership is simple, right? Something is either yours or it isn’t. Case closed. But who owns the space behind your airplane seat, the results of the DNA you took online, the Netflix password you got from your cousin’s roommate? The jury's still out, according to law professors Michael Heller and James Salzman. That’s because ownership isn’t binary or static: it’s a storytelling exercise, and we rely on just six stories to claim everything we own. In this revelatory conversation, Michael and James explain how those stories work, how you can use them to your advantage, and why they might be key to dismantling income inequality and arresting climate change.
You’ve posted a photo of your vaccine card on Instagram. The CDC says it’s okay to leave your bunker. Some of your friends have expressed interest in taking off their masks, breaking the six-foot barrier, and hanging out with you. Do you remember how? Whether you’re anxious about leaving your house or impatient to trade your house slippers for blue suede shoes, we could all use a refresher on how to connect with our fellow humans ... in person — and in a way that is not just pleasant but meaningful. That’s why we’re dusting off one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Priya Parker, whose book, “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters,” is essential post-pandemic reading.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you do before bed? If you’re a modern knowledge worker, your answer is probably “check my email.” Makes sense. Your inbox is a busy place, which is why you peek at it, on average, every six minutes: constant vigilance is the only way to keep up. But all that checking comes at a cost. Communication overload undermines your productivity, erodes your focus, zaps your energy, and makes you miserable. Luckily, Cal Newport, the Georgetown professor and productivity whiz who came up with “deep work” and “digital minimalism,” has a plan for a post-email future, one where you can concentrate on work that really matters. And in this episode, he shares practical strategies that you can start using now to free yourself from the tyranny of the inbox.
Our work consumes us. But does it have to? Anthropologist James Suzman has spent decades living in the Kalahari Desert with one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer societies, and he’s concluded that our modern attitudes about work don’t mesh with the views held by our ancestors. For 95 percent of human history, we spent the bulk of our time doing … nothing. What changed? In this millennia-spanning conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant, James makes the case for spending less time toiling away at labor we loathe and more time working at things we love.
Almost a decade ago, the biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her team at Berkeley figured out how to rewrite our genetic code using a system called CRISPR. Thanks to this miraculous discovery, we now have the power to hunt down cancer cells, deflect oncoming viruses, and cure genetic diseases. But CRISPR has a dark side, morally speaking. In a world where we’ll soon have the power to endow our kids with superior strength and intelligence, how far is too far? Doudna’s groundbreaking discovery and the moral dilemmas that followed are the subject of a new book by best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson. In this expansive conversation, he tells Rufus why the CRISPR era will be far more consequential than the digital revolution. Plus, they discuss the mechanics of creativity, the delicate balance between competition and collaboration, and the personality traits that Isaacson’s subjects — Doudna, da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Einstein, and Steve Jobs — all have in common.
What’s for dinner? How will we answer that question in 50 years? In this thought-provoking (and occasionally hunger-inducing) conversation, science journalist Amanda Little tells Rufus that the single biggest threat posed by climate change is the collapse of our food systems. Provisions we love, like coffee and wine, are losing their flavor. And crops we rely on, like corn and soy, are getting harder to grow. If we don’t change our agricultural practices, we won’t be able to feed the globe’s swelling population. But don’t lose hope. Amanda says that if we can combine the wisdom of traditional farming practices with radical advances in agricultural technology, we might be able to create a healthier, more sustainable, and perhaps even more delicious future.
Whether or not we care to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. A lot. The voice in our heads yaks it up about half the time we’re awake, and it can speak at a rate of 4,000 words per minute. When it really gets going like that, not everything it says is particularly helpful. We’ve all gotten stuck dwelling on the past, worrying about the future, or standing idly by as our inner monologue devolves from introspection into negativity. Experimental psychologist Ethan Kross calls those moments chatter. “When the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone,” he writes, “our mind not only torments but paralyzes us.” Luckily, there are tools we can use to take back the mic, and in this episode, Ethan talks Rufus through them.
Humor is no laughing matter. It inspires innovation, strengthens relationships, disarms tension, and makes you look smart. Seriously. So why are we all afraid to be funny at work? In their new book, “Humor, Seriously,” Stanford professors Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas say the recipe for professional success and personal fulfillment is to lighten up, pack a little levity in your briefcase, and start living your life on the precipice of a smile. In today’s episode, they dig into the neuroscience of laughter, share tips for crafting office-safe jokes, and help Rufus improve his comic chops.
A few years ago, as he watched his young daughter try out one hobby after another, a thought crossed Tom Vanderbilt’s mind: Why do we work so hard to get our kids to learn new skills when most of us adults stopped trying new things ages ago? For Tom, that contradiction became a call to arms. In defiance of the usual objections — it’s too late! you’re too old! — he took up chess, surfing, singing, juggling, and drawing. His goal wasn’t to gain mastery. He just wanted to prove to himself (and the eventual readers of his wonderful new book) that no matter how old you are or untalented you feel, being a beginner is a great way to stimulate your brain, meet new people, and bring a little adventure into your life.
We’re taught that the mark of surefire intelligence is the ability to think and learn. But in his new book, “Think Again,” Adam Grant says that in our turbulent world, there’s a more important skill: the ability to rethink and unlearn. If you can learn how to revise your opinions, check your ego, and admit when you’re wrong, then you’ll be on a path toward wisdom and joy.
Sure, opposable thumbs are handy. But in his brilliant new book, “This Is the Voice,” John Colapinto says the voice is our species’ greatest attribute. We rely on it to communicate and collaborate, woo our mates and protect our children, make art and win wars. John would know. A rock ‘n’ roll vocal injury changed his relationship with his instrument and set him on a path to better understand what his voice means to him — and what the voice means to humanity.
If you managed to stay awake during Bio 101, then you probably think you have a basic understanding of how your brain works. Not so, says neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. In this cerebral yet highly entertaining conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink, Lisa says our brains are made for budgeting, not thinking. She debunks the myth of the lizard brain. And she makes the far-out claim that everything you see and hear, including this podcast, is a hallucination.
In all likelihood, some of the biggest moments in your life, like meeting your spouse or finding your job, were the result of a chance encounter or fortunate coincidence. You got lucky. But Christian Busch, who directs the global economy program at NYU, says that with the right mindset, you can regard luck not as something that happens to you but as a skill you can cultivate. In this lively conversation, he gives Rufus pointers on how to live serendipitously, describes the surprising power of near-death experiences, and argues that spilling coffee on people may not be such a bad thing.
Every day, Dr. Carl Hart goes into his laboratory at Columbia University and gets people high. That research has led him to a surprising conclusion: the predominant effects of the drugs he administers — substances like cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and meth — are positive. In this unflinching conversation about Dr. Hart’s bold new book, “Drug Use for Grown-Ups,” Carl and Rufus discuss their own experiences with drugs, connect drug criminalization to structural racism, and ask whether drug use by responsible adults can be a good thing.
We don’t know when the pandemic will end, but we do know this: while we’ve been stuck at home, the world has been spinning faster than ever. Name any existing trend in technology, healthcare, commerce, or education, and it’s safe to say it has advanced a decade in the last 12 months. That’s because COVID-19, according to NYU professor Scott Galloway, is an accelerant. And in this high-octane conversation, he tells Rufus that if we play it right, we can harness that acceleration to create positive change.
Neuroscientist, philosopher, podcaster, author, meditation guru, and unabashed atheist Sam Harris is one of our best-known — and most controversial — public intellectuals. In this bonus episode, he and Rufus talk about consciousness, free will, morality, and people’s stubborn insistence on being irrational.
You have to play with the hand you’re dealt. At least that’s what we’re always told. But is it really true? How much of what we achieve in life is the product of our pluck and guile, and how much is just dumb luck? To find out, New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova dropped everything and joined the pro poker tour. The lessons were not what she expected.
You may have heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which sees human development as a sort of a pyramid, with survival needs at the bottom, social and emotional needs in the middle, and “self-actualization” at the top. Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman thinks we can do better. Instead of striving to become our best selves, we can strive to connect with the world beyond ourselves — to truly transcend.
Our society is built on the assumption that we’re all a broken stoplight away from reverting to our animal selves. It’s what we’ve come to call “realism.” Historian Rutger Bregman thinks that kind of realism is, well, unrealistic. And not because we can learn to be better, but because deep down, we already are.
Birds do it, bees do it, even fishes in the seas do it. So why do we have such a hard time when people migrate from one place to another? Science writer Sonia Shah presents the evidence that migration is central to the human story -- and it just might save us from what’s coming next.
We do it 25,000 times a day, but most of us rarely give breathing a thought. Author James Nestor says we’re missing out on one of the most powerful pathways to health and happiness. He leads Rufus through the ins and outs of intentional breathing, revealing its potential to clear our minds, heal our bodies, and help us achieve incredible things.
Businesses want people to buy their products. Parents want their kids to eat their vegetables. We all want to convince someone to do something. So we push and we prod – but often to no avail. Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger says there’s a better way. In this high-speed conversation with Rufus, he lays out his formula for removing barriers to change.
Since humans sharpened the first stick and lit the first fire, we have been on an innovation spree, constantly developing new tools and materials to solve our problems. But material scientist Ainissa Ramirez says innovation is a two-way street. Drawing on stories about eight key inventions, she tells Rufus how our creations can change us in surprising ways.
We knew a pandemic was coming. We knew our police were treating some of us differently than others. So why were we so unprepared for what happened? In this eye-opening conversation, Rufus and author Dan Heath dig into what it takes to root out problems at their source, both in our own lives and in the larger world.
Cutting-edge science, music and art, powerful technology, plentiful food. It’s no wonder we sing the praises of civilization. But do we really have it so good? Christopher Ryan says it’s time for a rethink. He tells Rufus that people in non-civilized societies tend to be healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. What can we learn from the life we left behind?
When Dr. Vivek Murthy became U.S. Surgeon General in 2014, he went on a listening tour. What he heard surprised him. Americans were lonely, and it was killing them. In this deeply personal conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Susan Cain (author of “Quiet”), Murthy makes the medical case for love and friendship.
Olga Khazan describes weirdness as not fitting neatly into a box — regardless of what that box may be. It doesn’t just make other people see you as different — it also makes you feel like you don’t belong. But in this conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant, she says weirdness can also be surprisingly empowering.
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Hook-ups, sexting, friends with benefits, ubiquitous porn — sometimes it seems like boys today are growing up in a world of easy sex and mindless gratification. But sit down and talk to them and you get a different story. Rufus speaks with Peggy Orenstein, who interviewed hundreds of boys about how they navigate a minefield of sexual rules and expectations.
Friends aren’t just fun to hang out with and handy in a pinch. They’re also a biological necessity. Rufus talks to journalist Lydia Denworth, author of a new book on the science of friendship, who explains why friends — even the online variety — make us happier, healthier, smarter, and more successful.
We all face fork-in-the-road moments in our lives. In his 2005 bestseller “Blink,” Next Big Idea Club curator (and this episode’s guest interviewer) Malcolm Gladwell famously argued that snap judgments can be just as effective as meticulous planning. In this lively conversation, author Steven Johnson (“Farsighted”) disagrees, arguing that big, complex decisions require careful thought and scenario-building.
In the cacophony of modern life, it can seem that talking, scoring points, and being heard are more important than paying attention to what others have to say. But journalist Kate Murphy says listening — really listening — can strengthen our ties to the people closest to us and create new connections in our lives.
Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, we're living longer, on average, than at any time in history. So why do so many of us act like our last decades are a time to lower our expectations? Neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin says old age can be whatever we want it to be. He went deep into the science for his new book, “Successful Aging,” and he’s emerged with some tips.
For the grand finale of our stay-at-home miniseries, Rufus talks about work-life balance, the future of education, and the addictive nature of generosity with author, podcaster, and Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant.
In “The Art of Gathering,” conflict resolution specialist Priya Parker writes that “Every gathering is an opportunity to create a world we wish existed.” But sometimes we have to make do with the world we’ve got. She tells Rufus that we don’t have to be in the same place to come together in meaningful ways.
Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler has never felt comfortable with an economic system that values short-term profits over long-term human needs. In a quarantine conversation with host Rufus Griscom, he shares his ideas for moving from a me/now world to one that cares about us and the future.
How will the pandemic change the way we organize our days? Our sense of purpose? Our commitments to others? So many questions! Who better to answer than Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink, author of six books about motivation, leadership, and the changing nature of work.
Last season, author/designer Ingrid Fetell Lee taught us about joy spotting. It’s the practice of going out into the world and finding ordinary objects that make you feel extraordinarily happy. But what about when you can’t leave the house? Well, it turns out joy lurks in all sorts of unexpected places — you just have to know where to look.
What kinds of bold thinking might lead us out of this pandemic? In this lively conversation, Steven Johnson and Rufus Griscom talk about the innovations that are paving the way. Steven is the author of numerous books and hosts "Fighting Coronavirus," a podcast about heroism, collaboration, and invention on the frontlines of the battle against this pandemic.
Last season, we brought you ideas with the power to change the way you see the world. Now that the world’s been turned upside down, we thought it’d be a good time to invite back some of our favorite guests to give us some much needed perspective in this confusing time.
We’re starting this special miniseries, “Big Ideas in Uncertain Times,” with Susan Cain, the bestselling author of "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can't Stop Talking." She tells us about the upside to solitude, why introspection has never been more important, and even gives us a few tantalizing clues about her new book.
What do the Buddha, John F. Kennedy, Mr. Rogers, and Leonardo da Vinci all have in common? The ability to be still and tune out the busy, buzzing drone of modern life. Ryan Holiday, the author of “Stillness Is the Key,” shares his tips for slowing down, calming your mind and body, and accessing the tranquility deep inside.
Andrew Yang has a pretty bleak vision for the future. The way he sees it, we’re staring down the barrel of a techno-apocalypse. Robots will replace millions of workers. Income inequality will skyrocket. And social isolation will become the new normal. But Yang has a big idea he thinks can stave off disaster. It’s called universal basic income—a $1,000 check in the mail each month, no strings attached. Yang’s been pushing this magic bullet for a long time, first in his book, “The War on Normal People,” and now as he campaigns for president. But would it really make a difference? And is it even realistic? Andrew Yang makes his case to Rufus Griscom in front of a live audience in New York.
Why is it so hard to break bad habits and replace them with good ones? You may think it all comes down to willpower. But social psychologist Wendy Wood says that if you really want to change your life, then you need to tap into your unconscious mind. Wood, who’s just written a book called “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” chats with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant about harnessing the science of habit formation to make positive changes that last.
Why do so many of our get-togethers feel awkward and unproductive? Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters,” says it’s because most of us don’t know how to transform stuffy events—from conferences to tedious family dinners to office holiday parties—into memorable gatherings full of moments to savor. Parker shares the secrets of being a good host, lessons everyone can learn from Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding, and tips for revolutionizing your next business meeting.
In this episode, we’re peering into the future with Kickstarter co-founder and CEO Yancey Strickler. He’s got a new book out called “This Could Be Our Future,” and it’s all about transforming our world into a more kind and generous place.
Most of us are taught hard work and talent are the keys to getting ahead. Turns out it’s not so easy. In his new book, “The Meritocracy Trap,” Yale professor Daniel Markovits says meritocracy isn’t leveling the playing field. Instead, it’s a pretense for concentrating privilege and intensifying inequality. He tells us the time has come to reinvent higher education, redesign the workplace, and reimagine meritocracy so it actually works for everyone.
Roses are red, violets are blue, and Malcolm Gladwell has written yet another bestseller. It's called "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know," and it's all about the perils of trusting people we don't really know. Gladwell, who's also a Next Big Idea Club curator, tells us why we need to stop taking everybody at their word and start exercising a little healthy skepticism.
Colleges, businesses, and bureaucracies have long operated on an "old power" model — rigid hierarchies that rule from the top down. But Henry Timms says that paradigm is going extinct. In his book, "New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You," Timms argues there's another force emerging. It's transparent, collaborative — and it's going to embolden all of us to change the world from the bottom up.
What you see is what you get, right? Nope. In his mind-bending new book, "The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes," Don Hoffman argues that what we see, smell, touch, and taste are illusions. Reality, he says, is just an interface, like a computer desktop, built by our brains to conceal complexity. Hoffman offers us the red pill and invites us into "The Matrix" — the surreal, flickering, unreliable "real" world.
As a college student, Zachary Wood ignited a national debate when he invited controversial speakers — anti-feminists, climate-change deniers, and self-proclaimed racists — to lecture on campus. Critics accused him of promoting dangerous ideas. But in his new memoir, "Uncensored," Wood argues that we can develop empathy and understanding by engaging with opposing viewpoints.
Have you ever had one of those arguments — whether with a friend or a colleague, a loved one or a perfect stranger — that you both vehemently disagree, and it boils your blood? Too often these days, arguments with people we disagree with feel impossible. We never solve anything but seem to succeed in hurting someone’s feelings. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? In his forthcoming book, “Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement” (Nov. 19), Buster Benson, who has worked for some of the world’s most successful companies, to help you have hard conversations in your relationships, engage people with different political viewpoints, and disagree with dignity.
Conventional wisdom tells us that real joy comes from within: from exercise or meditation, acts of service or the way we look at the world—pretty much anything except material possessions.
But author/designer Ingrid Fetell Lee offers a different opinion in her book, "Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness." Lee tells Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant that there's tangible evidence of the powerful relationship between the way we feel and the objects that surround us, and she explains how we can harness that relationship to live healthier, happier lives.
Our world is awash in code, and those zeroes and ones aren't as impersonal as you might think. In his new book, "Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World," journalist Clive Thompson provides an up-close look at the "invisible architects" of our digital age, revealing the ways they're shaping our society for better and worse.
Stanford psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt has spent years studying how racial bias affects all of us — yes, all — in ways we don't realize. In her new book, “Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do,” Eberhardt explains how bias shapes our perception, our decisions, and our culture. She tells Next Big Idea Club curator Dan Pink what we can do about it.
Nir Eyal’s last book, “Hooked,” taught Silicon Valley how to make addictive technology. In his new book, “Indistractable,”he gives you the tools to take back control of your attention and your life.
You know Malcolm Gladwell's “10,000-Hour Rule.” But did you know that, according to David Epstein, it doesn't work? That's what Epstein argues in his new book, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World.” In this episode, Malcolm Gladwell talks with Epstein about why a broad range of experiences in life is actually the best way to find success.
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