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The Next Big Idea

by Next Big Idea Club

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Latest episodes

  • Feel the AGI: Kevin Roose on the Strange, Intoxicating Race to Superintelligence

    October 8, 2026 · 1 hr 18 min

    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…

  • Daniel Pink and Angela Duckworth on Friction-Maxxing, Becoming a Mentor Magnet and the Problem with Solo Striving

    October 5, 2026 · 56 min

    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…

  • The One Word That Explains Progress

    October 1, 2026 · 1 hr 9 min

    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…

  • Angela Duckworth Now Thinks "Grit" Wasn't the Whole Story

    September 28, 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

    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…

  • AI Has Gone Rogue. Here’s What We Should Do About It.

    September 24, 2026 · 58 min

    "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…

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  • You Don't Have Free Will. That's Good News.

    September 21, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

    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…

  • The Art of Fighting

    September 17, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

    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…

  • Is America a ‘Country of Lords’?

    September 14, 2026 · 53 min

    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…

  • A Storytelling Masterclass with Will Storr

    September 10, 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

    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…

  • What Can Henry David Thoreau Teach Us About Work?

    September 7, 2026 · 46 min

    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…

  • How French Philosophy Wired Modern Thinking

    September 3, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

    How did a group of notoriously difficult French philosophers become intellectual rock stars on American college campuses — and how much do their ideas matter today?  In The Frenchmen, writer and editor Emily Eakin traces the unlikely rise…

  • A Nobel Prize Winner’s Plan to Save Democracy

    August 31, 2026 · 57 min

    Democracy is in the dumps. OK, that's a bit dramatic. But it's definitely not working as well as it used to. Good thing Daron Acemoglu — Nobel laureate, MIT Institute Professor, and one of the world's most-cited economists — has a plan to…

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About the show

The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join hosts Rufus Griscom and Caleb Bissinger — 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 Monday and Thursday. For ad inquiries, please reach out to: Network+NBI@yapmedia.com