The Next Big Idea

What’s really fueling the race to build superintelligence? Science? Idealism? Money? Try spite. “These guys hate each other,” says Kevin Roose. “It’s grudges all the way down.” Those rivalries, it turns out, have pushed AI forward faster than any of them thinks is wise.

Kevin would know. Until recently, he was a tech columnist at the New York Times and co-host of the massively popular Hard Fork podcast. (If you miss his dulcet tones, he and Casey Newton will be back with a new show, Machine Gods, later this month.) He has also spent the last few years interviewing more than 150 of the people racing to build artificial general intelligence.

The result is his gripping new book, The AGI Chronicles, just out this week. It’s corporate thriller material: secret Slack channels, philosophical feuds, mystical beliefs, billion-dollar bets. But the stakes are extremely high. Can a small group of people with outsized influence over humanity’s future get along? Can they work together to make sure we build AI safely? And now that the rest of us are paying attention, what should we do about it?

🎧 Check out our conversations about AI with Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Sebastian Mallaby, Stuart Russell, and a younger Kevin Roose.

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected]

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Sequencing —  Go to sequencing.com and use promo code IDEA for 10% off

Our curator Daniel Pink recently sat down with Angela Duckworth to chat about her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best. Although we just had Angela on the show, we couldn’t resist sharing this conversation too. It’s live. It’s loose. And it covers a lot of ground we didn’t get to last time — like what Michael Phelps's childhood ZIP code had to do with his 28 Olympic medals (8:15), why Angela's house is full of avocados and physical therapy equipment (26:55), how a late-night cold call changed millions of lives (32:27), and how Daniel has made it in his career without a single mentor (41:52).

📚 This conversation was recorded live at an event hosted by Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore.

🎁 Join the Next Big Idea Club today, and we’ll send you a copy of Situated along with our two latest selections: Vibe by Adam Grant and What Could Possibly Go Right by Danny Meyer. Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST to get 20% off your membership.

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

🔗 Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Sequencing — Go to sequencing.com and use promo code IDEA for 10% off

Martin Seligman founded the positive psychology movement. Now, at 84, he’s shaking up the field all over again. He’s got a new book out. It’s called Agency. And in it, he says, he’s trying to “found a new field.” It’s called psychohistory. “I'm after the rigorous possibility that we can use the tools of psychology to go back in history to ask the questions: What produces innovation? What produces progress? And what produces stagnation?”

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Sequencing — They're offering our listeners up to 10% off your full Genome test, plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use promo code IDEA for 10% off.

Ten years ago, Angela Duckworth became one of the world’s most influential psychologists by making the case for grit. Though talent matters, she argued, it’s passion and perseverance that turn potential into achievement. Now she’s back with a new book called Situated that complicates that argument in a fascinating way.

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

"This Is Really Bad." That's the not-so-comforting headline of Stephen Witt's mega-viral New York Times essay about a dawning realization among Silicon Valley researchers that "AI may no longer be entirely within human control." The piece is a sobering account of the rogue-AI incidents that have everyone from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to King Charles warning of existential peril unless we slow down. But Witt isn't just another voice in the alarmist chorus. He lays out four concrete ways to rein in this technology before it's too late.

We talk about why we should investigate AI breakouts like plane crashes (7:39), how AI risk went from niche worry to political flashpoint (30:48), and why the smartest people in tech still can't agree on whether AI is just buggy software or a tiger we haven't learned to tame (44:44).

🎧 Check out Stephen's previous appearances on the show where we spoke about Jensen Huang and the robotics revolution

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected]

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

Do we have free will? Do we have a choice in what we do? Philosophers and theologians have debated these questions for centuries; Robert Sapolsky answered them when he was 14. Free will, he concluded, simply does not exist.

Robert is now in his sixties. He has degrees from Harvard and Rockefeller University; he won a MacArthur “genius” award; and he’s a professor at Stanford, where he holds joint appointments in biology, neurology, and neurosurgery. But despite how much time has passed and how long his CV has grown, he never lost his youthful fascination with free will — or our lack thereof — so he decided to write a book about it. It’s called Determined, and in addition to assembling a formidable case against free will, Robert makes the intriguing argument that if we can abandon our illusion of volition, we can build a more humane world.

(This episode first aired in January 2024.)

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

We’ve gotten very good at cutting people off. But have we forgotten how to work through our differences?

In The Art of Fighting, bestselling author and conflict resolution expert Priya Parker challenges the idea that disagreement is a sign of a broken relationship. She argues that avoiding difficult conversations can quietly erode the very connections we’re trying to protect. The answer isn’t to fight more, but to develop what she calls “healthy heat”: the ability to hold tension with care long enough to get somewhere new. 

In this conversation with Rufus, Priya reveals why lasting communities need conflict as much as love, how to recognize which fights are worth having, and why some couples actually schedule their arguments. She also shares how to ask better questions during disagreements, make apologies that lead to real repair, and know when it’s time to let a relationship end.

__________

🎧 Check out Priya's previous appearance on The Next Big Idea here

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected]

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

America was founded on a radical promise: all people are created equal. But for 250 years, some of the country’s most powerful thinkers have been arguing the opposite.

In Country of Lords, historian Kim Phillips-Fein traces the largely forgotten intellectual tradition that has defended hierarchy, from the Founding Fathers and Gilded Age industrialists to today’s tech elite. She reveals how inequality has repeatedly been reframed as natural, necessary, and even good for society, and why those arguments are resurfacing at a moment of extraordinary wealth concentration.

In this conversation with guest host Michael Kovnat, Kim explores the dark side of meritocracy, why some of America’s richest men believed wealth proved superiority, and how ideas once considered fringe are finding new life in Silicon Valley. With AI threatening to concentrate wealth even further, she asks a question that has followed America since its founding: how much inequality can a democracy survive?

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

Will Storr is the author of the dazzling books The Science of Storytelling and A Story Is a Deal, and in this episode, he tells us everything he knows about humanity’s greatest invention: story. More than just entertainment, Will argues, story is what we do and who we are. It’s how we make sense of the world, captivate, and persuade. And yet for all its power, storytelling isn’t some elusive magic trick — it’s a skill. One you can learn. Will’s here to show you how.

(This episode originally aired in February 2025.)

🎧 Listen to Will’s other appearance on the podcast here

🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here

📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected].

🔗 Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and pencil-maker. He was a great resigner and, above all, a superb writer whose masterpiece, "Walden," is considered by many to be America's first environmentalist manifesto.

But John Kaag has a different view.

"Thoreau's attempt to 'get back to nature,'" he and co-author Jonathan Van Belle wrote in their book, Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living, was an "attempt to get away from the capitalist rat race." By resigning from that race, Thoreau was, in a sense, reclaiming life—he was making a conscious choice about what to respect and where to tap meaning. "The abiding message of 'Walden,'" according to John and Jonathan, is that "the frenetic busyness of modern life should never be confused with the essential business of living."

In this episode, which first aired in July 2023, John Kaag and Caleb explore Thoreau's life and career, and they come away with surprising lessons about why we work and how we can make it more meaningful — how we can, in Thoreau's words, "live deliberately."

__________

Today's episode is sponsored by:

Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea

IM8 — Athletes. Doctors. They all drink IM8. Get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order when you use code NBI at im8health.com/nbi

Momentous — If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code IDEA for up to 35% off your entire first order

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Quince — Find your next fall favorites at quince.com/nbi. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

Shopify — It’s where you go to start your business, with everything you need already there from day one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/nbi

Upwork — Find freelancers for any project. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free