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.

1️⃣ If you missed the first half of Sara’s interview, you can find it here

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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.

🕐 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

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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.

📱 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.

📕 This Is Strategy by Seth Godin

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🎙️ 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.

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Today, master woodworker Callum Robinson on craft, history, family, and our relationship with the natural world.

📕 Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman

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Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, wants you to think twice before putting your faith in Silicon Valley's promises.

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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.)

📕 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.

📕 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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