Afleveringen
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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.
đŹ The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes â â â â hereâ â â â .
đ± Follow Rufus on â â â LinkedInâ â â , subscribe to our â â â Substackâ â â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
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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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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.
đŹ 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
đŹ The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes â â â hereâ â â .
đ± Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
đ The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
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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 â â â hereâ â â .
Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , 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, â All We Sayâ , "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.
đŹ 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.”
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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.
đŹ 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.
đ§ Check out Nick’s previous appearance on the show here.
đŠ Join the Next Big Idea Club and we’ll send you a copy of David Epstein’s new book, Inside the Box, and an invitation to a members-only Q&A with David on May 26. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com/
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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.
đ 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.
đŠ 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).
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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.
đ READY FOR MORE?
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The entire interview is available now in the Next Big Idea app
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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.
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes â â â hereâ â â .
Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
Check out Nir’s previous appearance on the show â hereâ .
The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
Sponsored By:
Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family at â â meetfabric.com/nbiâ â
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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?
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes â â â hereâ â â .
Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
Sponsored By:
Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family at â â meetfabric.com/nbiâ â
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Shopify — Start your $1/month trial at â â â â â shopify.com/nbiâ â â -
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 â â â hereâ â â .
Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
Sponsored By:
Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family at â â meetfabric.com/nbiâ â
Factor — Head to â â â factormeals.com/idea50offâ â â and use code idea50off to get 50% off your first box
Granola — Get three months free at â â granola.ai/ideaâ â
Shopify — Start your $1/month trial at â â â â â shopify.com/nbiâ â â -
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.
The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes â â â hereâ â â .
Follow Rufus on â â LinkedInâ â , subscribe to our â â Substackâ â , or send us an email at â [email protected]â .
The best way to support the show is by becoming a Next Big Idea Club member. Learn more at â â nextbigideaclub.comâ â , and use code PODCAST for a super secret discount (spoiler: it’s 20% off).
Sponsored By:
Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family at â â meetfabric.com/nbiâ â
Factor — Head to â â â factormeals.com/idea50offâ â â and use code idea50off to get 50% off your first box
Granola — Get three months free at â â granola.ai/ideaâ â
Shopify — Start your $1/month trial at â â â â â shopify.com/nbiâ â â - Laat meer zien
