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Think Again – a Big Think Podcast

We surprise some of the world’s brightest minds with ideas they’re not at all prepared to discuss. With host Jason Gots and special guests Neil Gaiman, Alan Alda, Salman Rushdie, Mary-Louise Parker, Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Saul Williams, Henry Rollins, Bill Nye, George Takei, Maria Popova, and many more . . . You’ve got 10 minutes with Einstein. What do you talk about? Black holes? Time travel? Why not gambling? The Art of War? Contemporary parenting? Some of the best conversations happen when we’re pushed outside of our comfort zones. So each week on Think Again, we surprise smart people you’ve probably heard of with hand-picked gems from Big Think’s interview archives on every imaginable subject. The conversation could go anywhere. SINCE 2008, BIG THINK has captured on video the best ideas of the world’s leading thinkers and doers in every field, renowned experts including neurologist Oliver Sacks, physicist Stephen Hawking, behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman, authors Margaret Atwood and Marylinne Robinson, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, painter Chuck Close, and philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Copyright: © @ 2015 Think Again

Latest Episodes:

56. Jonathon Keats (Experimental Philosopher) – The Trickster/Castles in the Sky Jul 23, 2016

Show notes

"Experimental philosopher" and science writer Jonathon Keats, who famously created pornography for plants and sold real estate in the alternate dimensions proposed by string theory, believes that we "need to ascend to the meta level" to find creative ways of reopening closed conversations. His new book You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future, explores the myth and the relevance of a self-mythologizing sometime genius, sometime crackpot whose vast imagination holds some keys to solving the massive problems we now face as a species.

On this week's episode of Think Again–a Big Think Podcast, Jonathon and host Jason Gots discuss social taboos, Fuller's legacy, the "mediated" nature of contemporary life, the power of comedy in society, and so much more.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Jim Gaffigan on political correctness in comedy, Dan Savage on sex education, and Mary Roach on diharrhea in the armed forces.

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55. Mary Roach (Science Writer) – To Nietszche His Own Jul 16, 2016

Show notes

Sex toy book parties! Penis transplants! Decomposition labs! These are just a few of the places the intrepid, New York Times bestselling author Mary Roach takes us in hilarious, curiosity-driven books like Bonk:: The Curious Science of Sex and her latest, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. It's some of the best, most engaging science writing out there.

On this week's episode of Think Again–a Big Think Podcast, Mary and host Jason Gots discuss some of the above, then enter more the more abstract territory of dark matter, Nietzche's atheism, and emotional connection with artificial intelligence. It's a weird and wonderful talk adventure.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Philosopher Simon Critchley on Nietzsche, Physicist Lisa Randall on Dark Matter, Sherry Turkle on Emotions and AI

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54. LIVE! Sarah Jones (actor/playwright) – Jul 09, 2016

Show notes

Sarah Jones is a Tony and Obie award-winning playwright and performer. She's unlike any other artist in her uncanny ability to create, become, and instantly switch between characters, convincingly inhabiting their physicality and their consciousness. Sarah's 2004 one woman show BRIDGE & TUNNEL channeled the symphony of voices that make up New York City's five boroughs. She returns this fall to the Manhattan Theatre Club with SELL/BUY/DATE, in which she plays all characters in a sex-ed class from the future that doubles as a brilliant, satirical commentary on life in 2016.

On May 20th, 2016, almost exactly a year after we launched, Think Again did an episode live with Sarah Jones as part of NYC Podfest, at CakeShop NYC. Host Jason Gots knew in advance that Sarah might be slipping into and out of character, but not which characters, or when. Over the course of the hour, Sarah became and responded to the surprise discussion clips as Rashid, an out-of-work rapper, Lorraine, a Jewish grandmother, Bella, a millennial, and many more. Far from stereotypes, these were fully-fleshed people with brilliant insights grounded in their radically different life experiences.

Above all, it was a hell of a lot of fun for the 100+ people present, and we're delighted to share it now with you.

Surprise clips in this episode: Douglas Rushkoff on collaboration in the digital economy, Angie MacArthur on types of attention, Parag Khanna on World War III

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53. Sean Wilentz (Historian) – The Culture Strikes Back Jul 02, 2016

Show notes

The stakes are extraordinarily high in this election. We’re at a crossroads. I think the current politics are a continuation of the fight we’ve been having since the ‘60s.The expansion of an African-American middle class, the changes in family norms, in gender and sexual norms . . .Lots of people felt threatened by that. Lots of people resisted that.

But the war is only going to be settled now. – Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz is a Princeton professor and the Bancroft-Prize-Winning Author of The Rise of American Democracy. He’s also a major music historian and the author of Bob Dylan in America, and the official historian of Bob Dylan’s website. His new book The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politicsargues that there are two keys to understanding American politics––the theme of party politics and outsider resistance to it, and the theme of economic and social egalitarianism. He argues that all positive change in American political history has happened within the system of party politics.

On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Wilentz and host Jason Gots discuss identity politics, human life on Mars, and the culture war that began when the counterculture "won" the battle in the late '60s, and which Wilentz argues is reaching a final cataclysm with the election of 2016.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Comedian Lewis Black on political correctness, Bill Nye on colonizing Mars.

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52. Jim Gaffigan (Comedian) – You're Attacking My Grandpa? Jun 25, 2016

Show notes

“It’s funny or it’s not funny. In the end, people are not coming

to my show because I’m not cursing” – Jim Gaffigan

Jim Gaffigan is a Grammy nominated stand-up comedian and the New York Times best-selling author of “Dad is Fat” and other books, and he’s about to launch the second season of his semi-fictitious TV show, The Jim Gaffigan Show.

On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Jim and host Jason Gots talk about the gift of loving what you do for a living, "othering" people we disagree with, and how bigotry is a bipartisan phenomenon. Trump comes up, as do The Simpsons, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, New Yorkers' weird ideas about the Midwest and vice versa, and Jim's Grandpa (sort of).

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on the Trump phenomenon, Dan Pontefract on working with purpose.

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51. Krista Tippett (Author, Host, "On Being") – We Are Made by What Would Break Us Jun 18, 2016

Show notes

"That is one of the most mysterious things about human existence: that we are made by what would break us, repeatedly. That life is hard, and the only guarantee we have is that even at our moments of greatest accomplishment, something will happen that we didn’t expect." – Krista Tippett

Krista Tippett is the Peabody award-winning host of the radio program and podcast On Being, in which she and her guests discuss the deeper mysteries of the universe and human existence, which can be difficult things to talk about. Her new book is called Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. It distills and organizes some of the insights she’s gained over 12 years of talking to spiritual, scientific, artistic and social pioneers about many, many things, but maybe fundamentally about how to live a good life.

On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Krista and host Jason Gots discuss the things that are most difficult and most necessary to talk about––the divides across which our words and our courage fail.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Amy Cuddy on body language, Russell Simmons on the ethics of veganism, and Max Bazerman on cognitive blind spots.

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50. Ethan Hawke (Actor, Author) – The High, Hard Road/Ghosts of the Apache Wars Jun 11, 2016

Show notes

“Whenever we start seeing people as other, we just get lost. There were so many decent cowboys trying to do the right thing. And so many decent First Nation people trying to do the right thing. And there were so many liars, and cheaters, and people trying to get ahead. So many people with short term goals screwing everything up.”

After his breakout roles in Dead Poets Society and Reality Bites, actor, director, and author Ethan Hawke has followed his own path as an artist, starting a theater company, writing two novels, acting in decade-spanning film productions directed by Richard Linklater including, most recently the amazing Boyhood. He’s just published his first graphic novel, which he wrote with artist Greg Ruth. It’s called INDEH: A Story of the Apache Wars, and its tells a complex and very human story of relations between the Apaches and the white Americans who ultimately took over their lands.

On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Ethan Hawke and host Jason Gots discuss fatherhood, perpetual warfare, and the daily struggle between light and dark within every person. It's a raw, intense, sometimes laugh-out-loud conversation that spans continents and decades in under an hour.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Sam Harris on spirituality, Steven Kotler on Steroids (not literally ON them), and Jerry Kaplan on robot wars.

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49. Geoff Dyer (Author) – Ordinary Epiphanies Jun 04, 2016

Show notes

Novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer is one of the English language's most mordant and poetic observers of art, travel, and human behavior. He's the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Windham Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. In his most recent book White Sands, weaving stories about places to which he has recently traveled with images and memories that have persisted since childhood, Dyer tries “to work out what a certain place—a certain way of marking the landscape—means; what it’s trying to tell us; what we go to it for.”

On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Dyer talks revenge, hallucinogens, the criminal brain, Geoff's disappointing trip to see the Northern Lights and more, and there is a spontaneous William Blake smackdown, much to the chagrin of host Jason Gots.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Michael Gazzaniga, Lawrence Krauss, and Maia Szalavitz

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48. Mary-Louise Parker (Actress, Author): Virtual Empathy?/Lessons Relearned May 28, 2016

Show notes

Death, Bob Marley, parenthood, gratitude, and what to do in the face of incalculable suffering. These are just a few of the topics raised in this episode's vulnerable, searching discussion with Tony, Emmy, Obie, and two-time Golden Globe award-winning actress and author Mary-Louise Parker.

She’s won many awards -- Tony, Obie, Golden Globe, Emmy -- for her roles in the Showtime series Weeds, the TV miniseries of Angels in America, and the play Proof, among other things. Unbeknownst to many people until now, she’s also a seriously talented writer. Her first book, Dear Mr. You, is a series of letters to men, real and hypothetical, living and dead, who have had a meaningful impact on her life.

Surprise interview clips from Henry Rollins and Ralph Rivera set Mary-Louise and host Jason Gots off on a conversation about the limits of empathy, the power of music, and the fact that likability is way overrated.

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47. Kate Tempest (rapper/poet/novelist): Lost and Found in South London May 21, 2016

Show notes

"When you’re writing a novel, it’s agony. It’s complete agony. It’s a horrible thing to put yourself through. All of the instinctive kind of rushes of creativity, the energized outpourings, anybody can do that. That’s not what makes you a writer. The bit of this job that makes you a writer is when you don’t feel like that. When you feel like you never deserved to even imagine that you could have been a writer. When you hate every word that you’ve made. When you doubt every single part of your brain. To sit down in that space and work because you’ve got a deadline to meet, because you’ve got a novel to write. You know to ignore your brain in that moment, because your brain is defeating you. You have to be able to trust your hand."

– Kate Tempest, in this episode

Kate Tempest is a force of nature. She won the coveted Ted Hughes award for her epic poem Brand New Ancients, which she toured internationally as a stage show to massive critical acclaim. Her novelistic 2014 rap album Everybody Down takes hip-hop in entirely new directions. And with 2016's The Bricks That Built the Houses, she has reworked these ideas into a deeply moving and powerful novel (her first) about four friends in her native South London.

Our conversation starts here, with the challenges and discipline of novel-writing and travels through deep and personal territory, as Kate talks passionately about art and the human heart in our "tragic and troubling times".

NOT TO BE MISSED: Kate's breathtaking, spontaneous poetic monologue at the very end of the show.

On this week's episode of Think Again - A Big Think Podcast, Kate and host Jason Gots go deep into these topics and more.

Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Augusten Burroughs on writer's block and William Shatner on science and imagination.

Kate Tempest song sampled in the show: Europe is Lost

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