The Next Big Idea

By Next Big Idea Club

What's The Next Big Idea about?

The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join our host, Rufus Griscom — along with our curators, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — for conversations that might just change the way you see the world. New episodes every Thursday.

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Summer Getaway #1: The Beac...

08.04.2022

Close your eyes and picture paradise. What do you see? For many people, it’s a turquoise ocean crashing into a white-sand beach. Where did this fantasy come from? Sarah Stodola, author of “The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, ...

The Next Big Idea episodes:

08.04.2022 Summer Getaway #1: The Beach (with Sarah Stodola) Close your eyes and picture paradise. What do you see? For many people, it’s a turquoise ocean crashing into a white-sand beach. Where did this fantasy come from? Sarah Stodola, author of “The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, ...
07.28.2022 Finding Stillness With Ryan Holiday Here’s another episode from our archives that we love: Rufus’s 2020 interview with Ryan Holiday, the author of “Stillness Is the Key,” who shared his tips for slowing down, calming your mind, and accessing the tranquility deep inside.
07.21.2022 Amanda Little on the Fate of Food Today we’re bringing you a timely — and tasty — episode from our archives. Science journalist Amanda Little tells Rufus that the biggest threat posed by climate change is the collapse of our food systems. Provisions we love, like coffee ...
07.14.2022 John Colapinto on the Power and Beauty of the Human Voice Today, we are revisiting one of our favorite episodes: an interview with New Yorker staff writer John Colapinto. In his brilliant book, "This Is the Voice," John says that while opposable thumbs are handy, the voice is our species' greatest ...
07.07.2022 THE ESSENTIALS: Our Favorite Moments From Season 4 We laughed. We cried. We learned. As our fourth season draws to a close, we thought we'd share the moments we're still talking about at Next Big Idea Club HQ. Further Listening: • REGRETS: Daniel Pink Has a Few (And ...
06.30.2022 BICYCLES: Are They the Future of Transportation? Jody Rosen is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a bike nut who has just published a rousing (and sometimes arousing) book called “Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle.” Today, he takes ...
06.23.2022 BIG DATA: Cracking the Codes of Love, Happiness and Success “You can make better life decisions. Big Data can help you.” So begins “Don’t Trust Your Gut,” a new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Seth, a former Google data scientist, has mined massive data sets in order to answer some of ...
06.16.2022 Susan Cain & Daniel Pink: Writing, Longing, and the Search for Meaning What do we lose when we avoid sorrow and chase empty delights, when we mask our pain and feign cheerfulness, when we profess to have no regrets and insist on turning every frown upside down? Those questions are at the ...
06.09.2022 RELATIONSHIPS: Why Everything You Know About Them Is (Mostly) Wrong Eric Barker is not a people person. “Getting me to write a relationship book,” he says, “is like asking Godzilla to improve the infrastructure in your city.” But he did it anyway. Guided by leading social psychologists, Eric went on ...
06.02.2022 How To Be a Grown-Up In this special episode, Daniel Pink delivers a commencement address, Stanford-dean-turned-bestselling-author Julie Lythcott-Haims shares her manual for being an adult, and Arthur C. Brooks provides his roadmap for finding success, happiness, and purpose in the second half of life. Next ...
05.26.2022 IMAGINABLE: How Anyone Can Predict the Future (Yes, Even You) In January 2020, when the coronavirus started making headlines around the world, Jane McGonigal’s inbox was flooded with emails from Silicon Valley execs, government officials, and non-profit leaders. They all had the same question: “Jane, didn’t you run a simulation ...
05.19.2022 CULTURE: How Successful Groups Work The filmmakers at Pixar. The servers at Union Square Cafe. The badasses on SEAL Team Six. What do these super successful groups all have in common? Strong team culture. But what exactly is culture, and how do you build it? ...
05.12.2022 GET IT DONE: How the Science of Motivation Can Help You Achieve Your Goals University of Chicago professor Ayelet Fishbach has spent the last two decades studying the science of motivation. She has developed a framework for turning idle ambition into forward-moving action. That framework is the subject of her new book, “Get It ...
05.08.2022 Bonus: The Not-So-Great Resignation (WorkLife with Adam Grant) Over the past year, the Great Resignation has been all over the news. Many people are celebrating quitting their jobs — but it’s a decision some will come to regret. So when’s the right time to leave? How do you ...
05.05.2022 FUN: How to Have More of It Are we all so busy doom-scrolling and binge-watching that we’ve forgotten how to have fun? Catherine Price thinks so. But don’t despair. Her latest book, “The Power of Fun,” is jam-packed with research-backed hacks for finding meaning, forging connections, improving ...
04.28.2022 TWITTER: What Elon Musk’s Acquisition Means for the Future of Social Media Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter? What does he plan to do with it? Is this the end of big social or a chance to reinvent it? This week, we’re interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to answer those questions with ...
04.21.2022 EMOTIONAL: Do Your Feelings Make You Smarter? We all strive to think rationally. But it doesn’t always do us much good. Cutting-edge science has revealed that if we want to sharpen our thinking, we need to feel our feelings. That science is the subject of “Emotional,” a ...
04.14.2022 ORIGIN: How Did Humans Migrate to the Americas? Thousands of years ago, humans crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska. They tried to move south, but a two-mile-high, coast-spanning ice wall stood between them and the rest of the continent. How did they get past it? Scholars ...
04.07.2022 BITTERSWEET: Susan Cain on the Beauty of Sorrow and Longing Are you elevated by sad songs? Have you ever been brought to tears by a TV commercial? Do you relish rainy days? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you know the power of the bittersweet. Yet ...
03.31.2022 Regrets: Daniel Pink Has a Few (And So Should You) “Embedded in songs, emblazoned on skin, and embraced by sages, the anti-regret philosophy is so self-evidently true that it’s more often asserted than argued.” So writes Daniel Pink in his new book, “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves ...
03.24.2022 REALITY+: Are We Living in a Simulation? Philosopher David Chalmers reckons there’s a 25% chance that we are living in a simulation. And he’s OK with it. David's new book is "Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy." To hear an extended version of this episode, ...
03.17.2022 HURT SO GOOD: The Pleasures of Suffering (Paul Bloom & Susan Cain) Some people think humans are natural pleasure seekers. But not psychologist Paul Bloom. In his new book, “The Sweet Spot,” Paul says we’re pain seekers, too. Just think about all the uncomfortable things we do for fun — eating spicy ...
03.10.2022 EMPIRE: Why Ray Dalio Thinks We May Be Headed for Civil War History, in the eyes of legendary investor Ray Dalio, is a perpetual motion machine. Nations rise and fall according to an inevitable cycle where peace and prosperity are always followed by depression and war. And in his new book, “Principles ...
03.03.2022 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR MORTALS: Malcolm Gladwell and Oliver Burkeman “The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.” So begins Oliver Burkeman’s new book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” Make it to 80, and you’ll get about 4,000 weeks. And so, as the poet asked, “What will ...
02.24.2022 EVENING ROCKET: Decoding Elon Musk’s Sci-Fi Visions of the Future When it comes to Elon Musk, it can be hard to separate the man from the myth. But in her new podcast, “The Evening Rocket,” Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore manages to see through Musk’s mystique, explain ...
02.18.2022 Book Bite #1: You Get Around 4,000 Weeks on Earth. How Should You Spend Them? Well, folks, we’ve reached the end of the line. Today, we’re pleased to share our most popular book bite of 2021, as chosen by the ravenously curious users of the Next Big Idea app: “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for ...
02.17.2022 Book Bite #2: Can You Get Ahead by Making Things Easier? Does life really have to be so hard? Not according to Greg McKeown it doesn’t. In “Effortless,” he says the path of least resistance is the one we should be on. Episode Recommendation: EFFORTLESS: Embrace the Easy Option Next Big ...
02.16.2022 Book Bite #3: How Do You Get Where You Want to Be? Today, at #3 in our countdown, “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Katy Milkman. It’s a deeply researched primer on how to defeat temptation, procrastination, and all the ...
02.15.2022 Book Bite #4: Is Your Inner Child Your Truest Self? Today, at #4 in our countdown of last year’s most popular book bites, “The Child in You” by Stefanie Stahl. Is your inner child your truest self? Clinical psychologist Stefanie Stahl thinks so, as do the one-and-a-half million readers who ...
02.14.2022 Book Bite #5: Is It Time To Rethink Everything You Know? Adam Grant needs no introduction, but we’ll give him one anyway. He’s an organizational psychologist at Wharton. He hosts the chart-topping “WorkLife” podcast. And to top it all off, he is one of our curators here at the Next Big ...
02.11.2022 Book Bite #6: Want to Know the Secret to Getting Smarter? Keeping up with the cognitive demands of modern life has pushed our brains to their limits. But if the world around us won’t change, then we have to. And to do that, according to science writer Annie Murphy Paul, we ...
02.10.2022 Book Bite #7: Why Won’t the Voice in Your Head Stop Talking? Today, at #7 in our countdown of last year’s best Book Bites, “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It” by Ethan Kross. The voice in your head can speak at a rate of ...
02.09.2022 Book Bite #8: What if Being Delusional Is Good for You? We tell ourselves lies in order to live. We believe our marriages will last, even though we know half of them end in divorce. We trick ourselves into thinking our children are extraordinary, because if we saw them for who ...
02.08.2022 Book Bite #9: Can You Upgrade Your Brain? In her new book, “Smarter Tomorrow,” neuroscientist Elizabeth Ricker says just 15 minutes of neurohacking a day can sharpen your mental skills, supercharge your creativity, and improve your life. You’re probably thinking, “Sounds great. But what’s neurohacking?” Listen and you’ll ...
02.07.2022 Book Bite #10: Is Ownership Just a Story? What if ownership isn’t a fact but a story? That’s the tantalizing premise of “Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives.” Its authors, Michael Heller and James Salzman, who teach law at Columbia and UCLA, respectively, use ...
02.04.2022 Book Bite #11: What Would the World Be Like Without Email? In “A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload” (#11 in our countdown of last year’s most popular Book Bites), Cal Newport doesn’t just dare to imagine a future where new forms of streamlined digital communication ...
02.03.2022 Book Bite #12: Where Does Consciousness Come From? Today, at #12 in our countdown of last year’s most popular Book Bites, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness by Mark Solms. Mark, who’s the director of neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, draws on ...
02.02.2022 Book Bite #13: Is There Such a Thing as Good Conflict? Today, #13 in our countdown of last year’s most popular Book Bites: “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out” by Amanda Ripley. Amanda says the best way to stop a minor spat from becoming an all-consuming ...
02.01.2022 Book Book #14: Are You a Binary Thinker in a Complex World? Do you see the world in black and white? You may not think so. You may think your perceptions are nuanced, your opinions technicolored. But research psychologist Kevin Dutton, who’s spent the last two decades teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, ...
01.31.2022 Book Bite #15: Is a Little Pain a Good Thing? Here’s something weird about humans. We like pain. Think about it. We eat spicy food, watch scary movies, run marathons, and take polar plunges. In today’s Book Bite — #15 in our countdown — psychologist Paul Bloom gets to the ...
01.28.2022 Book Bite #16: How Would You React to a Life-Changing Diagnosis? After Suleika Jaouad graduated from college, she moved to Paris, found a tiny apartment with a giant pink bathtub, and set out to become a foreign correspondent. But then she got a diagnosis that changed everything. Leukemia. Instead of covering ...
01.27.2022 Book Bite #17: Why Do Funny People Live Longer? Drum roll, please. Today, #17 in our countdown of the top 22 books of last year: “Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you).” For years, Stanford professors ...
01.26.2022 Book Bite #18: Would You Pass the CEO Test? Today, #18 in our countdown of the top 22 books of last year: “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders." In the decade he spent writing the “Corner Office” column for the New York Times, ...
01.25.2022 Book Bite #19: What Do da Vinci, Einstein, and Steve Jobs Have in Common? Today, #19 in our countdown of the top 22 books of last year, as chosen by users of our Next Big Idea app: “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” by Walter Isaacson. ...
01.24.2022 Book Bite #20: Can We Look to the Stars to Improve Life on Earth? In her debut book, “The Disordered Cosmos,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein says that although the right to know and understand the night sky should be universal, the scientific community often limits who can learn and disseminate the story of the cosmos. Chanda, ...
01.21.2022 Book Bite #21: Is Devotion to Your Job Ruining Your Life? If you caught yesterday’s episode, then you know we’re running a little experiment here at the Next Big Idea. We put together a list of the 22 Book Bites our app users listened to more than any others last year. ...
01.19.2022 Book Bite #22: Racism Costs Everyone. How Can We Prosper Together? Last year, we worked with some of the world’s best non-fiction writers to create audio summaries of their books. Until now, these summaries — we call them Book Bites — have only been available in the Next Big Idea app. ...
01.12.2022 GOOD ANXIETY: Can You Turn Worrying Into a Superpower? To fret is human. That’s according to recent estimates that suggest 90 percent of the population experiences anxiety. And because anxiety, even in mild forms, can zap our confidence, squelch our sex drives, isolate us from friends and loved ones, ...
01.05.2022 HACK YOUR HABITS: The Science of Making Changes That Stick Why is it so hard to break bad habits and replace them with good ones? You may think it all comes down to willpower. But social psychologist Wendy Wood says that if you really want to change your life, you ...
12.29.2021 TOGETHER: The Surgeon General’s Prescription for Health and Happiness When Dr. Vivek Murthy became U.S. Surgeon General in 2014, he went on a listening tour. What he heard surprised him. Americans were lonely, and it was killing them. In this deeply personal conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator ...

Older episodes

The Next Big Idea

What's The Next Big Idea about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Next Big Idea episodes:

Summer Getaway #1: The Beach (with Sarah Stodola)

Finding Stillness With Ryan Holiday

Amanda Little on the Fate of Food

John Colapinto on the Power and Beauty of the Human Voice

THE ESSENTIALS: Our Favorite Moments From Season 4

BICYCLES: Are They the Future of Transportation?

BIG DATA: Cracking the Codes of Love, Happiness and Success

Susan Cain & Daniel Pink: Writing, Longing, and the Search for Meaning

RELATIONSHIPS: Why Everything You Know About Them Is (Mostly) Wrong

How To Be a Grown-Up

IMAGINABLE: How Anyone Can Predict the Future (Yes, Even You)

CULTURE: How Successful Groups Work

GET IT DONE: How the Science of Motivation Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

Bonus: The Not-So-Great Resignation (WorkLife with Adam Grant)

FUN: How to Have More of It

TWITTER: What Elon Musk’s Acquisition Means for the Future of Social Media

EMOTIONAL: Do Your Feelings Make You Smarter?

ORIGIN: How Did Humans Migrate to the Americas?

BITTERSWEET: Susan Cain on the Beauty of Sorrow and Longing

Regrets: Daniel Pink Has a Few (And So Should You)

REALITY+: Are We Living in a Simulation?

HURT SO GOOD: The Pleasures of Suffering (Paul Bloom & Susan Cain)

EMPIRE: Why Ray Dalio Thinks We May Be Headed for Civil War

TIME MANAGEMENT FOR MORTALS: Malcolm Gladwell and Oliver Burkeman

EVENING ROCKET: Decoding Elon Musk’s Sci-Fi Visions of the Future

Book Bite #1: You Get Around 4,000 Weeks on Earth. How Should You Spend Them?

Book Bite #2: Can You Get Ahead by Making Things Easier?

Book Bite #3: How Do You Get Where You Want to Be?

Book Bite #4: Is Your Inner Child Your Truest Self?

Book Bite #5: Is It Time To Rethink Everything You Know?

Book Bite #6: Want to Know the Secret to Getting Smarter?

Book Bite #7: Why Won’t the Voice in Your Head Stop Talking?

Book Bite #8: What if Being Delusional Is Good for You?

Book Bite #9: Can You Upgrade Your Brain?

Book Bite #10: Is Ownership Just a Story?

Book Bite #11: What Would the World Be Like Without Email?

Book Bite #12: Where Does Consciousness Come From?

Book Bite #13: Is There Such a Thing as Good Conflict?

Book Book #14: Are You a Binary Thinker in a Complex World?

Book Bite #15: Is a Little Pain a Good Thing?

Book Bite #16: How Would You React to a Life-Changing Diagnosis?

Book Bite #17: Why Do Funny People Live Longer?

Book Bite #18: Would You Pass the CEO Test?

Book Bite #19: What Do da Vinci, Einstein, and Steve Jobs Have in Common?

Book Bite #20: Can We Look to the Stars to Improve Life on Earth?

Book Bite #21: Is Devotion to Your Job Ruining Your Life?

Book Bite #22: Racism Costs Everyone. How Can We Prosper Together?

GOOD ANXIETY: Can You Turn Worrying Into a Superpower?

HACK YOUR HABITS: The Science of Making Changes That Stick

TOGETHER: The Surgeon General’s Prescription for Health and Happiness

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