The Next Big Idea
The 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.
Episodes
As America Turns 250, Are You in the Mood to Celebrate?
"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? “W
THE GOD TEST (Part 2): Can Humanity Pass the Cosmic Reckoning?
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?
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Fora ➡️ Build and scale your own
THE GOD TEST (Part 1): Are You Ready for Superintelligence?
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 aut
You Have 72 Free Hours a Week. How Do You Want to Spend Them?
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 YouTu
Are You Playing Someone Else’s Game?
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, ev
This World Cup Is Messy. Watch It Anyway.
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 t
The Case for AI Optimism with Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
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 s
Best Of: The Power of Thinking Outside Your Brain
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
Want to Be Happier? Try Talking to Strangers.
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 belief
Best Of: Gretchen Rubin’s Guide to Getting Out of Your Head and Into the World
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
The Case for Speechmaking in the Age of Doomscrolling
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 grea
Best Of: Stop Chasing More. Start Embracing Your Limits.
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
When Will AI Empty Your Dishwasher? (with Nicholas Thompson)
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 bud
Best Of: An Epicurean Guide to the Good Life
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 wo
What if Uncertainty Isn’t Such a Bad Thing?
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.
Granola ➡️ If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai/idea
You Can Grow Your Brain. Here’s How.
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 tha
Turning Constraints Into Breakthroughs with David Epstein
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.
📦 Get David’s new book delivered straight to your door by joining the Next Big Idea Club! Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com (use code PODCAST for 20% off).
🔗 SPONSORED BY:
Granola — If meetings are e
You're in the Hospitality Business (Whether You Know It or Not)
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
We're Still Thinking About This Conversation with Will Guidara
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 Gu
Here’s Our Favorite Book of the Season
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.
📚 READY FOR MORE?
Join the Next Big Idea Club at
“Beliefs Are Tools, Not Truths”
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.
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 a
The History and Future of Apple
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 trillio
Best Of: Tony Fadell’s Guide to Building Products, Startups and Careers
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.)
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subsc
Demis Hassabis Wants to Build AGI. Should We Trust Him?
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
Patrick Radden Keefe on a Double Life, a Gilded City and a Mysterious Death
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 we
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay
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.
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
If you enjoyed this conversation, check ou
Best Of: The New Science of Improving Your Memory
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
How to Find the Meaning of Your Life (with Arthur C. Brooks)
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
The Surprising Power of Oversharing
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 succe
How a Mormon Journalist Became a Degenerate Gambler
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
Michael Pollan on Food, Psychedelics and His Next Book
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 ab
The Story of Stories
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 firesi
Best Of: How To Connect With Anyone
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 (occasi
A War Correspondent on the Crisis in Iran
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 l
How AI Could Change Everything in the Next 1,000 Days
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 wit
Do We Even Need Politicians?
“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
Inside the Most Creative Friendship in History
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,
Michael Pollan on the Mystery of Consciousness
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
The Science of Change
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 Si
Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life
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.
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You
A Practical Guide to Achieving Excellence
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 abo
Does "Mattering" Explain Everything?
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?
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! Check out our episodes here.
If you enjoyed this conversation, we think you'll like Jennifer’s previous appearance on the show, her episode
The Superpower You Didn’t Know You Had
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 forth
‘It’s a Real Company Run by Fake People’
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 G
CRYPTO: Is It Quietly Transforming the Global Economy?
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 t
Why the Blockchain Is Still Critical to Our Future
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 blockcha
Reading Rewired the Human Brain. What Happens If We Stop Doing It?
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?
Sp
How to Make Your Holiday Gatherings Memorable
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
FLOURISH: Daniel Coyle on the Art and Science of Feeling Alive
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 s
Kari Leibowitz Loves Winter (And You Can Too)
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 lear
Best Of: How Successful Groups Work
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 cultu
AI and the Future of the University
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 Matthe
Best Of: David Brooks on the Art of Seeing Others Deeply
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.
Th
STRONG GROUND: Brené Brown on the Daring Leadership the World Needs Now
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 Isaac
Brené Brown on courageous leadership (from ReThinking with Adam Grant)
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
Walter Isaacson on The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
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
Best Of: Decoding Elon Musk
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: What the Crash of 1929 Says About Today
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
(2
Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson on What Running Can Teach Us
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 an
COMMON KNOWLEDGE: Steven Pinker on Awkward Dates, Cancel Culture and the Necessity of Norms
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,
A Food Crisis Is Brewing. Are We Ready?
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, w
The Future Is Going to Be Great
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.”
—
(7:37) “Stop sleeping. Rush to
PRIMAL INTELLIGENCE: You’re Smarter Than You Realize
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 storie
STEVEN PINKER: How Common Knowledge and Rationality Make the World Go Round
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
AI & THE BRAIN: How Different Are They?
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
Best Of: Jonathan Haidt on What Social Media Is Doing to Our Kids
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
ARTHUR C. BROOKS: Success Won’t Make You Happy — Here’s What Will
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 le
THE FUTURE OF WRITING: A Conversation with Ethan Mollick and Steven Johnson
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 supercha
Best Of: Sebastian Junger’s Journey to the Edge and Back
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 r
INTUITION: The Science of Trusting Your Gut
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
Can Rogue Archeologists Bring the Past Back to Life?
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
📱 Sign up for Next Big Idea Club+ on Apple Podcasts, and you’ll get ad-free listening, bonus episodes, subscriber-only shows, and more.
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get dail
WHAT WE VALUE: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Making Better Choices
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'
SUPER AGERS (Part 2): Eric Topol on Sleep, GLP-1s, and AI
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 sev
SUPER AGERS (Part 1): The Revolutionary New Science of Longevity
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 ba
GENIUS MYTH: The Dangerous Allure of Rule-Breakers
Sign up for our Substack!
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 quali
Best Of: Life Lessons From Wired Co-Founder Kevin Kelly
Sign up for our daily Substack here!
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 h
AI FIRST: The Tsunami Is Already Here
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 trea
Best Of: Michael Lewis Runs Toward Pleasure
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 foi
How Susan Cain Found Her Voice
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
HOPE FOR CYNICS: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness
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 lif
Recommended
Conspiracy Files with Paige Carter
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
The Theory of Psychoanalysis - Carl Jung
A Life Engineered
پادکست بهزاد بلور | Behzad Bolour's Podcast
The Rabbit Hole: Conspiracy Theories
The Swerve Podcast: Obscure Topics | Conspiracy Theories
The Conspiracy Podcast
Cult of Conspiracy
Dispatches from Reality
The Conspiracy Files
TechnoSnobCast
