Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and host of "The Most Interesting Thing in AI," joins Rufus and Caleb to explain why the machines may master our minds long before they master our muscles — and what that gap tells us about where AI is headed. Along the way: why human podcasters still beat AI ones, how Nick learned to stop worrying and love open source, and where he'd point an infinite AI budget. 🎧 Check out Nick’s previous appearance on the show here . 📦 Join the Next Big Idea Club and w...
May 21, 2026•54 min
The Greek philosopher Epicurus made a rather bold claim over two thousand years ago. The key to life, he said, is simple: pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Around this maxim he developed a school of philosophy, Epicureanism, which promised its adherents that if they took care of their basic needs, surrounded themselves with trustworthy friends, and developed a basic understanding of science, they would be happy. But is it really that simple? Can the advice of someone born 2,363 years ago still hol...
May 18, 2026•1 hr 12 min
You can run from uncertainty, but you can’t hide. The thing to do, says Simone Stolzoff, to develop comfort with ambiguity and build tolerance for the unknown. His new book is How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers . Granola ➡️ If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai/idea Incogni ➡️ Protect your personal information online and get an exclusive 60% off an annual plan at in...
May 14, 2026•55 min
In the last 20 years, there has been a dramatic change in our understanding of neuroplasticity — the brain’s capacity to grow new neurons. In the last five years, we’ve learned that your hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for learning and memory, can get bigger at any age. Majid Fotuhi, who teaches at Johns Hopkins, has been at the forefront of a new body of research demonstrating that lifestyle changes — tweaks to the way you exercise and eat, adjustments to your sleep and mindset ...
May 11, 2026•1 hr 20 min
Is freedom overrated? In his new book, Inside the Box , David Epstein argues that constraints, limits and obstacles are what stimulate creativity, innovation, collaboration and personal contentment. 📦 Get David’s new book delivered straight to your door by joining the Next Big Idea Club! Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com (use code PODCAST for 20% off). 🔗 SPONSORED BY: Granola — If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head ...
May 07, 2026•1 hr 27 min
For the last three years, Will Guidara has been on the road talking about unreasonable hospitality. He's met financiers and prison wardens, educators and athletes, Fortune 500 executives and small business owners. They kept asking the same question: "I get how this works in a restaurant, but how do I apply it in my business?" So Will wrote them an answer. It's called Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide . 🔗 SPONSORED BY: Granola — If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 3 min
In September 2023, Will Guidara told us the story of how he used two words to turn a middling brasserie into the best restaurant in the world. Those two words? Unreasonable hospitality. We're running that episode again today because, well, it's one of our all-time favorites. And because Will is coming back on the show on Monday to discuss his brand-new book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide . Consider this the appetizer. Sponsored By: Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fab...
Apr 30, 2026•1 hr 3 min
Every few months, we pick one book with the power to change how you see the world. Then we build an experience around it: author conversations, reading guides, key insights, and a community of people who love talking about ideas. In this episode, we reveal our latest pick. And stick around for a sneak peek of Rufus's conversation with the author. 📚 READY FOR MORE? Join the Next Big Idea Club at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST to save 20% on your membership The entire interview is avail...
Apr 27, 2026•40 min
What's standing between you and your goals? Focus? Discipline? Motivation? Nir Eyal points the finger somewhere else. Your beliefs. In his new book, Beyond Belief , he shows you how to trade them in for better ones — and finally get unstuck. The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . Follow Rufus on LinkedIn , subscribe to our Substack , or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com . Check out Nir’s previous appearance on the show here . The bes...
Apr 23, 2026•1 hr 22 min
In celebration of Apple's 50th birthday, we're probing the company's past and peering into its future with David Pogue — former New York Times tech columnist, current CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, and author of the recent New York Times bestseller Apple: The First 50 Years . We begin by looking backward, exploring the improbable story of the hippie pranksters who built the world's first trillion-dollar company. But we're not just here for the history. We also look ahead, asking: What cool ne...
Apr 20, 2026•1 hr 21 min
Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Thermostat. In his book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making , he shares everything he’s learned about building great companies and game-changing products. (This episode first aired in September 2022.) The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . Follow Rufus on LinkedIn , subscribe to our Substack , or send us an email at podcast@nextbigideaclub.com . The best way to su...
Apr 16, 2026•1 hr 2 min
When journalist Sebastian Mallaby approached Demis Hassabis, Google's AI chief and a man with a lifelong mission to build superintelligence, about writing his biography, he made the following pitch: "If you're going to disrupt people from head to toe, you owe them an explanation of why you're doing it. What motivates you? Why do something this dangerous?" Today, Sebastian tells us what answers he found. Sebastian's new book, The Infinity Machine, is out now. Pick up a copy from Amazon , Audible ...
Apr 13, 2026•1 hr 14 min
In 2023, Patrick Radden Keefe met a man who told him, "I might have a story for you." When you're Patrick — New Yorker staff writer, author of "some of the most memorable nonfiction books of the last decade" (that's the New York Times talking) — this is a hazard of the trade. But he heard the guy out. The guy said he knew a family whose 19-year-old son had died in mysterious circumstances. "He went off the balcony of a luxury apartment building overlooking the Thames." When the boy's parents sta...
Apr 09, 2026•58 min
It’s a big, bad, scary, lonely world out there. Lucky for us, Jenny Lawson — aka the Bloggess — has collected more than a hundred tricks and tools that have helped her keep going, and she shares them in her heartwarming and hilarious new book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay . The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . If you enjoyed this conversation, check out Arthur’s previous appearances on the show here and here . Follow Rufus on LinkedIn , subsc...
Apr 06, 2026•48 min
The French filmmaker Jean Renoir said, "The only things that are important in life are the things you remember." But what do you remember and why? That's the subject of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters by pioneering neuroscientist Charan Ranganath. He explains why you still know the lyrics to the song you loved in eighth grade but can't remember the name of your kid's eighth-grade teacher, how memory shapes your identity, and what you can do right now to impro...
Apr 02, 2026•1 hr 12 min
Let's face it, modern life is kind of a bummer. We're glued to our phones, starved for meaning, haunted by a gnawing sense of emptiness. Enter Arthur C. Brooks. He's a Harvard professor, happiness expert, and a man with a plan to help you find your why and build a life that actually fills you up. Arthur’s new book is The Meaning of Your Life. Learn more at https://www.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-of-your-life The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . If you enjoye...
Mar 30, 2026•1 hr 2 min
We’ve been told that “oversharing” (TMI) is a social sin. But our guest today, Leslie John, who teaches at Harvard Business School, argues that TLI (Too Little Information) is far more dangerous. In her new book, Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing , she shows how personal, vulnerable, even uncomfortable disclosures are the wellspring of trust, friendship, romance, and professional success. Watch The Next Big Idea on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . Follow Rufus on ...
Mar 26, 2026•1 hr 12 min
On a muggy spring day in 2018, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that transformed America. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court cleared the way for legal sports betting from coast to coast. Since then, all bets have been off: Americans have wagered more than $500 billion on sports. And now, thanks to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, we're betting on everything — the weather, where the next US airstrike will land in Iran, whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027. McKay Coppins...
Mar 23, 2026•54 min
Last week, we hosted a members-only Q&A with Michael Pollan. We covered food and diet, his writing process, psychedelics, and dreams. We also got into the microbiome, which happens to be the subject of Michael's new book (and a topic he thinks will fundamentally change how we understand health). The conversation was so good that we thought, Why keep this to ourselves? The episodes we mentioned about the origins of life with Sara Imari Walker? You can listen to them here and here . And if you...
Mar 19, 2026•50 min
What do the campfire, printing press, motion picture, and smartphone have in common? They're all storytelling technologies. Each one gave us a new medium through which to transmit tales, reshaping how we think, what we believe, and who holds power. And we may be on the brink of the most disruptive one yet. In his new book, The Story of Stories , Kevin Ashton traces the million-year arc from fireside gossip to the screen in your pocket. Now, with AI-generated imagery and displays approaching the ...
Mar 16, 2026•56 min
According to Merriam-Webster, the word "conversation" has 36 synonyms, ranging from the alliterative ("confabulation") to the arcane ("persiflage"). Why the linguistic profusion? Because conversing is a fundamental part — maybe the fundamental part — of being human. We chat with our families, friends, strangers, and co-workers, and we communicate in phone calls, text messages, emails, and (occasionally) postcards. When these tête-à-têtes go well, it is oddly thrilling; we become better versions ...
Mar 12, 2026•1 hr 5 min
As the war with Iran enters its second week, two big questions loom: How did we get here? And how will it end? We put those questions to Scott Anderson. Scott is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Sudan, and El Salvador. He’s also the author of King of Kings , a riveting account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. He helps us unpack the long, complicated history between the US and Iran — countries that were once close allies — and look...
Mar 09, 2026•40 min
Emad Mostaque co-founded Stability AI, the company behind the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, and he now runs Intelligent Internet, which builds open-source AI models. In his new book, The Last Economy , he argues that AI is about to make human intellect so cheap and abundant that the entire economic order — work, money, meaning — will crack apart. And he thinks this will take place within a thousand days. In this episode, he and Rufus talk about what happens if we sleepwalk into th...
Mar 05, 2026•1 hr 21 min
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” sneers a rebel henchman in Shakespeare’s “Henry VI.” Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has another idea: let’s fire all the politicians. She has a point, doesn’t she? Most of ’em are beholden to donors, allergic to accountability, and more interested in stuffing their reelection coffers than serving the public good. But what’s the alternative? Well, Hélène believes we could break the partisan gridlock and restore public trust by...
Mar 02, 2026•55 min
On the surface, Ian Leslie's book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs is a dual biography of the greatest songwriting duo the world has ever seen. So not exactly standard Next Big Idea territory. But what’s remarkable about Ian's book, which I've been pressing on everyone I know, whether they're Beatlemaniacs or the opposite (i.e., Rolling Stones fans), is that through the narrative of this tender, tempestuous, radically inventive partnership — romance, really — genuinely big ideas emerge abo...
Feb 26, 2026•1 hr 1 min
Five years ago, Michael Pollan — the acclaimed author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind — went looking for an answer to one of life's great mysteries: "How does three pounds of brain matter generate subjective experience?" The result is his luminous new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness , which comes out tomorrow. Great journalists like Michael have a nose for story and a knack for timing. Both are on display in A World Appears . It's ...
Feb 23, 2026•1 hr 17 min
The only constant is change. You’ve heard it a thousand times. But here’s what the cliche leaves out: Change may be inevitable, but how you respond to it — and who you become because of it — that part’s up to you. Maya Shankar knows a thing or two about this. She’s studied change as a cognitive scientist, explored it on her podcast “ A Slight Change of Plans,” and now written a book — The Other Side of Change — about how the hardest moments of our lives can transform us … for the better. In the ...
Feb 19, 2026•52 min
Do you ever feel like you're drowning in health advice? Eat this, not that. Take this supplement, but only after popping this other one first. Here’s the good news: Most of it doesn't matter. In Eat Your Ice Cream , renowned physician Ezekiel Emanuel shares six simple rules for living longer — and gives you permission to ignore pretty much everything else. The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes here . If you enjoyed this conversation, check out our interviews with Rus...
Feb 12, 2026•1 hr 11 min
If you’ve spent any time on social media in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed the rise of what Brad Stulberg calls “hustle-culture greatness” — influencers who promote labyrinthine morning routines, ruthlessly optimized habits, and ascetic self-discipline. “That is not excellence,” says Brad. “That is a bunch of elaborate kabuki that masquerades as the real thing.” The real thing is about challenging yourself in worthwhile endeavors, focusing on what matters most, and expressing the un...
Feb 05, 2026•1 hr 5 min
In her new book, Mattering , Jennifer Wallace argues that our deepest crises — loneliness, anxiety, political rage — stem from a single unmet need: the need to matter. How did this happen, and what can we do about it? The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! Check out our episodes here . If you enjoyed this conversation, we think you'll like Jennifer’s previous appearance on the show , her episode of The Next Big Idea Daily , and Rebecca Goldstein’s book bite for The Mattering Instinct . Follow ...
Jan 29, 2026•54 min
