The Next Big Idea

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

Last refreshed: June 18th, 2026 at 9:22 AM

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Episodes

Are You Playing Someone Else’s Game?

GPAs. Citations. Step counts. Likes. We love a good metric, don't we? It tells you exactly where you stand, no arguing. Mention a 4.0 to a high schooler and they'll know exactly what you mean. Tell a fellow Fitbit-wearer you just hit 10,000 and they'll nod approvingly. But that clarity has a price. To make a metric that clean, that portable, you have to sand off all the nuance, all the context, everything that made the thing worth measuring in the first place. And philosopher C. Thi Nguyen think...

Jun 18, 2026•1 hr 15 min

This World Cup Is Messy. Watch It Anyway.

The World Cup kicked off over the weekend, and so far the mood is meh. Fans are fuming over sell-your-kidney ticket prices, frightened by reports that ICE may target matches, tailgates, and sports bars, and generally feeling down on this quadrennial celebration. We wanted to know: Is there any joy left in this thing? So we called up Simon Kuper. He's a columnist at the Financial Times, "one of the best sportswriters in the English language today" (The New Yorker), and author of the Next Big Idea...

Jun 15, 2026•43 min

The Case for AI Optimism with Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Nearly half of all Americans believe AI is bad for humanity. Peter Diamandis is not one of them. On his podcast, Moonshots , and in his new book, We Are as Gods , co-written with the inimitable Steven Kotler, he makes the case that artificial intelligence is already ushering in a world of abundance — think radical life extension, 10 billion humanoid robots, and agents that do your job while you're sipping a latte. He knows it may not be all sunshine and hydroponic roses, but he believes our futu...

Jun 11, 2026•1 hr 6 min

Best Of: The Power of Thinking Outside Your Brain

Modern life has not been easy on our brains. Average IQ scores rose steadily throughout the last century. Now they appear to be leveling off. The problem, according to neuroscientists, may be that we have reached our neurobiological limits. Our brains simply can’t work any harder. Luckily, science writer Annie Murphy Paul has a solution. In her book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain , she draws on a wealth of scientific research to show that we’re smarter when we get out...

Jun 08, 2026•1 hr 13 min

Want to Be Happier? Try Talking to Strangers.

Nicholas Epley is a mind reader. But he doesn’t have ESP or practice hypnosis. He's not telepathic or clairvoyant. Sure, you could ask him to read your fortune, but you'd be better off with a Magic 8 Ball. When we say Nick is a mind reader, what we mean is he studies mind reading at the University of Chicago — studies, as he puts it, "how we make inferences about each other's thoughts and beliefs and attitudes, and mostly how we screw that up." Today, he makes small talk — and big talk — with Ru...

Jun 04, 2026•1 hr 17 min

Best Of: Gretchen Rubin’s Guide to Getting Out of Your Head and Into the World

What do your five senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch — have to do with happiness? According to Gretchen Rubin, a great deal. The world around us, she says, has the potential to dazzle, to entertain, to trigger a state of rapture. If only we pay attention. Today on the show, she shares the tools she's developed to delight in the physical world. She spoke to Rufus in April 2023 about her book Life in Five Senses . Sponsored By: Fora — Become a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/idea ...

Jun 01, 2026•55 min

The Case for Speechmaking in the Age of Doomscrolling

America's a funny place. It's not a country with a fixed geographic or religious identity. We don't have a common story of divine creation. "What we have," writes Ben Rhodes in his new book, ⁠All We Say⁠ , "are words." The words of the founding documents, yes — but also "the words of speeches spoken by Americans who call us to be that better version of ourselves." Ben has spent more time with great American speeches than just about anyone. For eight years, he was a speechwriter in the Obama Whit...

May 28, 2026•1 hr 7 min

Best Of: Stop Chasing More. Start Embracing Your Limits.

In his mega-bestseller Four Thousand Weeks , Oliver Burkeman showed that the finitude of life “isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief.” In his follow-up book, Meditations for Mortals , he invites us to embrace what he calls “imperfectionism.” Accept your limitations, your finitude, your lack of control — because “the more we try to render the world controllable,” he warns, “the more it e...

May 25, 2026•1 hr 19 min

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