Afleveringen
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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.
1๏ธโฃ If you missed the first half of Sara’s interview, you can find it here
๐งช Want to hear more of our interviews with brilliant scientists? Check out this playlist
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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.
๐ 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
๐ Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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It’s the winter solstice this week, which means we have officially hit the darkest time of the year. But dark doesn’t have to mean bleak. That’s the premise of “How To Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days,” a new book by Stanford-trained social psychologist Kari Leibowitz, who joins us today to share a few warming tips on how to beat the wintertime blues.
๐ฑ Today’s episode comes from our sister podcast, The Next Big Idea Daily. Follow it now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen -
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.
๐ This Is Strategy by Seth Godin
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๐๏ธ 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.
๐ Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership or gift when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com -
Today, master woodworker Callum Robinson on craft, history, family, and our relationship with the natural world.
๐ Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman
๐๏ธ For more bite-sized big ideas, follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
๐ Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription 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.
๐๏ธ Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple or Spotify
๐ Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership or gift when you use PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com -
You’re probably used to looking for so-called good jobs and avoiding bad ones, but we might be better off looking for jobs that fit, that are a good match for our talents and personality. This approach would be better for employers and employees alike, according to Andre Martin, author of “Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever.”
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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.)
๐ Unreasonable Hospitality
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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.
๐ Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul
๐ฌ 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.
๐ The Art of the Interesting
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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.
โ๏ธ To hear the rest of Cal’s podclass, sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter. Get your special discount here
๐ 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.”
โจ 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.
๐ The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing
๐๏ธ 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.
โ๏ธ We launched a Substack! Check it out now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
๐๏ธ 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.
2๏ธโฃ 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.
๐๏ธ 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.
๐๏ธ 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.
1๏ธโฃ If you missed part one of this conversation, listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
๐ Yuval’s new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, is out now
๐ฉ 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
๐ 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 - Laat meer zien
