Rufus Griscom is a writer, podcaster, and longtime techno-optimist who has spent years interviewing the people building the future — from Bill Gates to Reid Hoffman to the founders of Anthropic.

For most of his career Rufus believed technology would overwhelmingly improve the human condition. But after dozens of conversations with the people closest to frontier AI, his view has shifted. He still believes AI could bring astonishing progress - from eradicating disease to ending repetitive labour - but now assigns a serious probability to catastrophic or authoritarian outcomes in our lifetimes.

We explore what changed his mind, why the AI “race dynamic” terrifies insiders more than outsiders realise, and how to stay sane when the stakes range from utopia to extinction.

Want more Rufus or his work?

🎙 Listen to The Next Big Idea podcast — interviews with the thinkers shaping the future
https://www.nextbigideaclub.com/podcast

📚 Explore The Next Big Idea Club — curated book picks by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain & Daniel Pink
https://www.nextbigideaclub.com

About the hosts

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠ , a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming, regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations?

Email us at [email protected]

Nemo the Mormon is a third-generation believer who grew up devout, orthodox, and deeply committed to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But over time, he began to discover uncomfortable truths: financial secrecy, historical cover-ups, and leaders who seemed more like businessmen than prophets. Convinced that honesty and accountability were core Christian values, Nemo became an outspoken internal critic - until last year, when he was excommunicated after appearing in the media to challenge the church’s leadership.

We explore Nemo’s journey from devoted missionary to vocal dissenter, what finally broke his trust in the institution, and how he now thinks about truth, authority, and belief.

Want to see more from Nemo?

🎥 Watch Nemo the Mormon on YouTube — his channel on Mormonism, belief, and truth

Follow him on Twitter/X for commentary and discussion

About the hosts

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠FarmKind⁠ , a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming, regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations?Email us at [email protected]

Spencer Greenberg is an entrepreneur, mathematician, and social scientist who has dedicated his career to helping people think more clearly and make better decisions.

After years of building tools to improve reasoning from personality tests to structured debate platforms, Spencer realised that the biggest challenge isn’t just giving people good information. It’s getting them to actually use it. Today, his work focuses on making psychological insights and rational thinking tools practical, engaging, and easy for anyone to apply in everyday life.

We explore why Spencer cares so deeply about truth-seeking, what makes people resistant to changing their minds, and how his projects (like Clearer Thinking and GuidedTrack) are helping people question assumptions, explore alternative perspectives, and live more intentionally.

Want more of Spencer and his work?

🧠 Check out Clearer Thinking — free tools and training to help you think better
🎙 Listen to Spencer’s podcast, Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

About the hosts

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found FarmKind , a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming, regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations?
Email us at [email protected]

Freddie deBoer is a writer, academic, and former teacher whose research and experience challenge one of society’s most deeply held beliefs: that education is the great equaliser.

After teaching students at every level - from special education classrooms to college lecture halls - Freddie had a change of heart. He came to believe that intelligence is largely inherited, that academic ability is far more stable than we like to admit, and that expecting every child to succeed in the same system can actually be cruel.

We explore the moment that led Freddie to question the promise of education, why well-funded interventions and elite schools rarely change outcomes, and what a more humane and realistic approach to schooling could look like.

📘 Check out The Cult of Smart — Freddie’s book on meritocracy, inequality, and the myth of potential
📰 Read his essays on education, politics, and culture at freddiedeboer.substack.com

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found FarmKind, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations?
Email us at [email protected]

Josh Greene is a Harvard psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher whose research has reshaped how we understand moral decision-making. But after publishing his book Moral Tribes, Josh changed his mind - realizing that explaining why people clash wasn’t enough. Since then, he’s focused on building tools to reduce division and promote cooperation.

We explore how Josh made that shift, what it means to be a “moral engineer,” and how projects like Giving Multiplier and a bipartisan trivia game are helping people bridge divides in an increasingly polarised world.

Want more Josh Greene or his work?

• Check out Josh’s lab and research
  
• Try Giving Multiplier — use code changedmymind for a matching bonus
  
• Play Tango — the trivia game tackling polarisation

About the hosts:
Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found FarmKind, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations?
Email us at [email protected]

Jamie Woodhouse is the leading advocate of Sentientism, a worldview that's about: (1) Using naturalistic evidence and reason to figure out what's real, and (2) Giving compassion for all sentient beings. We explore how Jamie changed his mind from Christianity to Sentientism, what it’s like to question your deepest beliefs and why staying intellectually flexible might be the greatest change anyone can make.

Want more Jamie Woodhouse or Sentientism?

• Check out the Sentientism podcast, which has over 200 episodes (also available on Spotify and YouTube)
• Check out the Sentientism website and community

About the hosts:

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us at [email protected]

Today we're joined by Joe Walker, host of The Joe Walker Podcast, where he conducts refreshingly in-depth conversations with the world's deepest thinkers. Joe has spoken with figures like Noam Chomsky, Daniel Kahneman, and Nassim Taleb, and is known for his extraordinary preparation process - sometimes investing over 200 hours of deep study for a single conversation.

We'll be exploring Joe's remarkable system for going from complete novice to discussing complex subjects with world experts in a matter of weeks – a process that includes textbooks, tutoring sessions, hundreds of flashcards, and in at least one case terraforming a hotel room with post-it notes. We'll also discuss how preparing for and having these conversations has shaped Joe's views on two topics: the risk posed by nuclear weapons, and the question of how people actually form and change their beliefs.

Want more Joe Walker? Check out his podcast. Here is the episode he recommended on evolutionary biology.

Things we mentioned:

• The Scout Mindset
• ⁠The Myth of the Framework⁠

About the hosts:

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us at [email protected]

We're joined by Noah Smith, an economist, former Bloomberg Opinion writer and now influential economic commentator through his blog Noahpinion.

In this conversation, we explore how Noah has changed his mind to be far less hopeful about making political progress and how he came to think — even before Trump’s election — that we were entering a decade of conservatism. We also discuss Noah’s unusual ability to change his mind in public and admit where he thinks he’s got a call wrong.

Want more Noah?

• Check out his post What remains of the progressive project?
• Check out his ⁠blog

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us at [email protected] or fill out this form.

About the hosts:

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

We're joined by Mark Bittman, whose career has taken him from America's most beloved cookbook author to one of our most outspoken food system critics, arguing that the modern food system is degrading human and planetary health.

We'll be discussing how Mark changed his mind from seeing the problem with the food system as primarily a matter of individual consumer choices to recognizing them as deeply embedded in corporate power and government policy. We’ll explore how this fundamentally changed his approach to fixing our food system: pivoting from a focus on teaching people how to cook well, to focusing on the structures and systems that make eating well hard for so many people.

Want more Mark Bittman?

• Check out his website The Bittman Project
• Check out his cookbooks
• Check out his writing for the New York Times
• Check out his podcast Food with Mark Bittman

About the hosts:

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠⁠⁠, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us at [email protected]

Josh Szeps is a seasoned broadcaster who left traditional media to start Uncomfortable Conversations, a project which aims to create a space for people who disagree on sensitive issues to engage in good-faith dialogue where participants and listeners can understand different perspectives, potentially change their minds, and discover common ground.

In this episode, we explore how Josh's views have evolved on how to create an information ecosystem that promotes understanding and mutual respect, rather than confusion and division. We'll discuss the different roles that traditional and new media play, and the roles they ought to play given their comparative advantages. We’ll discuss the value of public disagreement, the craft of doing it constructively, and its limits for actually changing our minds. We'll also discuss the boundaries of free speech and how to navigate a world where attention, not truth, is often the currency that matters most.

About the hosts:

Thom and Aidan left boring, stable careers in law and tech to found ⁠⁠⁠⁠FarmKind⁠⁠⁠⁠, a donation platform that helps people be a part of the solution to factory farming — regardless of their diet. While the podcast isn’t about animal welfare, it’s inspired by their daily experience grappling with a fundamental question: Why do people so rarely change their minds, even when confronted with compelling evidence? This curiosity drives their exploration of intellectual humility and the complex factors that enable (or prevent) meaningful belief change.

Thoughts? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us at [email protected]