The Next Big Idea

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.

📕 Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul

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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.

📕 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.

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🎁 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.”

✨ 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.

📕 The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing

🗞️ 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.

✉️ We launched a Substack! Check it out now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com

🎙️ 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.

2️⃣ 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.

🎟️ 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