Arthur C. Brooks is an unlikely happiness guru.

He’s not a psychologist, philosopher, or mystic. He’s an economist and public policy analyst who, for years, ran a prominent think tank.

But rubbing shoulders with heads of state and titans of industry made him miserable. Confronted with the sobering realization that for too long he’d privileged work over connection and status over happiness, he left the c-suite and set about renovating the mission of his life.

Before long, Arthur was teaching at Harvard Business School. But he wasn’t teaching hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. He was teaching happiness. From a scientific perspective.

Now, the pursuit of happiness might not seem like your typical business school fare. But Arthur’s got a good line on this. As he writes in his new book, The Happiness Files:

“Your life is the most important management task you will ever undertake. It is, in fact, like a startup, where you are the founder, entrepreneur, and chief executive. And if you treat your life the way a great entrepreneur treats an exciting startup enterprise, your life will be happier, more meaningful, and more successful than it otherwise would be.”

So that’s what today’s show is all about. What does it mean to live your life like it’s a startup?

What you’ll learn:

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Anxiety can be painful and embarrassing, even downright debilitating. But author and podcaster Morra Aarons-Mele says it's also a force that you can use to your advantage. She's here today to teach you how.

Morra's most recent book is ⁠⁠The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower. And be sure to check out her podcast,⁠ The Anxious Achiever.⁠

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What if, thanks to AI, you can now research and write a book two, three, or even four times faster? For authors and AI pioneers Steven Johnson (Editorial Director, NotebookLM and Google Labs) and Ethan Mollick (Wharton professor and creator of One Useful Thing), that's the new reality. In this episode, they crack open their personal toolkits to reveal the prompts and workflows they use to supercharge their creativity.

What you’ll learn:

Further listening:

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Most of us like to think we could spot a con artist. But according to Emmy-winning television producer and investigative podcaster Johnathan Walton, the truth is much scarier: Scammers don’t look like strangers. They look like friends, neighbors, even soulmates. In his new book Anatomy of a Con Artist: The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves, Walton draws from his own jaw-dropping experience of being conned out of nearly $100,000 by someone he considered family. The good news? He turned that pain into purpose, and he’s here to help the rest of us avoid the same fate.

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On a June night several years ago, Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, lay on an operating table, dying. An undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery had ruptured, flooding his abdominal cavity with blood. His odds of survival were between 10 and 20 percent. "I said, 'Doc, you've got to hurry. You're losing me right now. I'm going.'" This near-death experience inspired him to embark on a scientific, philosophical, and profoundly personal exploration of what happens after we die.

Host: Caleb Bissinger

Guest: Sebastian Junger, author of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.

🎁 We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read — well, that's another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST to take 20% off your order.

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Happiness might not sound like a business strategy, but Arthur C. Brooks—Harvard professor, Atlantic columnist, and all-around happiness guru—says it’s the most important metric of all. In his new book ⁠The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life⁠, Arthur argues that your life is a startup, and you’re the founder, CEO, and maybe even the unpaid intern. Which means you’ve got to manage your most important asset: yourself.

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We all have eureka moments, sudden bursts of certainty that seem to come out of nowhere. What if you could summon that feeling on command? Laura Huang, a business school professor, has been studying that question. She’s found that for the world's most successful people, intuition isn't an accident. It's a skill. A tool they’ve sharpened. Today on the show: the practical steps you can take to turn a random hunch into your most reliable guide.

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In Robin Hood Math, mathematics professor Noah Giansiracusa shows how understanding a little math can help you push back against a world that keeps reducing you to a number.

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We have a pretty good idea what ancient civilizations looked like. But what did they taste, smell, and feel like?

📕 Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean

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If you’ve raised an adolescent (or been one), you already know it’s a life stage that can feel like an emotional rollercoaster—full of drama, defiance, and slammed doors. But what if all that chaos wasn’t a bug but a feature? Today we’re hearing from Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist Matt Richtel, who says adolescence is a brilliant, necessary phase of human development. In his new book ⁠How We Grow Up⁠, Matt explains how teenage brains are wired to question, rebel, and innovate—and how that friction might just be the thing that helps our species survive.

📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠, or ⁠wherever you listen⁠

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