"Experimental philosopher" and science writer Jonathon Keats, who famously created pornography for plants and sold real estate in the alternate dimensions proposed by string theory, believes that we "need to ascend to the meta level" to find creative ways of reopening closed conversations. His new book You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future, explores the myth and the relevance of a self-mythologizing sometime genius, sometime crackpot whose vast imagination holds some keys...
Jul 23, 2016•52 min
Sex toy book parties! Penis transplants! Decomposition labs! These are just a few of the places the intrepid, New York Times bestselling author Mary Roach takes us in hilarious, curiosity-driven books like Bonk:: The Curious Science of Sex and her latest, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. It's some of the best, most engaging science writing out there. On this week's episode of Think Again–a Big Think Podcast, Mary and host Jason Gots discuss some of the above, then enter more the more...
Jul 16, 2016•37 min
Sarah Jones is a Tony and Obie award-winning playwright and performer. She's unlike any other artist in her uncanny ability to create, become, and instantly switch between characters, convincingly inhabiting their physicality and their consciousness. Sarah's 2004 one woman show BRIDGE & TUNNEL channeled the symphony of voices that make up New York City's five boroughs. She returns this fall to the Manhattan Theatre Club with SELL/BUY/DATE, in which she plays all characters in a sex-ed class from...
Jul 09, 2016•42 min
The stakes are extraordinarily high in this election. We’re at a crossroads. I think the current politics are a continuation of the fight we’ve been having since the ‘60s.The expansion of an African-American middle class, the changes in family norms, in gender and sexual norms . . .Lots of people felt threatened by that. Lots of people resisted that. But the war is only going to be settled now. – Sean Wilentz Sean Wilentz is a Princeton professor and the Bancroft-Prize-Winning Author of The Rise...
Jul 02, 2016•38 min
“It’s funny or it’s not funny. In the end, people are not coming to my show because I’m not cursing” – Jim Gaffigan Jim Gaffigan is a Grammy nominated stand-up comedian and the New York Times best-selling author of “Dad is Fat” and other books, and he’s about to launch the second season of his semi-fictitious TV show, The Jim Gaffigan Show. On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Jim and host Jason Gots talk about the gift of loving what you do for a living, "othering" peopl...
Jun 25, 2016•41 min
"That is one of the most mysterious things about human existence: that we are made by what would break us, repeatedly. That life is hard, and the only guarantee we have is that even at our moments of greatest accomplishment, something will happen that we didn’t expect." – Krista Tippett Krista Tippett is the Peabody award-winning host of the radio program and podcast On Being, in which she and her guests discuss the deeper mysteries of the universe and human existence, which can be difficult thi...
Jun 18, 2016•46 min
“Whenever we start seeing people as other, we just get lost. There were so many decent cowboys trying to do the right thing. And so many decent First Nation people trying to do the right thing. And there were so many liars, and cheaters, and people trying to get ahead. So many people with short term goals screwing everything up.” After his breakout roles in Dead Poets Society and Reality Bites, actor, director, and author Ethan Hawke has followed his own path as an artist, starting a theater com...
Jun 11, 2016•51 min
Novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer is one of the English language's most mordant and poetic observers of art, travel, and human behavior. He's the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Windham Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. In his most recent book White Sands, weaving stories about places to which he has recently traveled with images and memories that have persisted since childhood, Dyer tries “to work out what a certain place—a certain way of marking the landscape...
Jun 04, 2016•40 min
Death, Bob Marley, parenthood, gratitude, and what to do in the face of incalculable suffering. These are just a few of the topics raised in this episode's vulnerable, searching discussion with Tony, Emmy, Obie, and two-time Golden Globe award-winning actress and author Mary-Louise Parker. She’s won many awards -- Tony, Obie, Golden Globe, Emmy -- for her roles in the Showtime series Weeds, the TV miniseries of Angels in America, and the play Proof, among other things. Unbeknownst to many people...
May 28, 2016•36 min
"When you’re writing a novel, it’s agony. It’s complete agony. It’s a horrible thing to put yourself through. All of the instinctive kind of rushes of creativity, the energized outpourings, anybody can do that. That’s not what makes you a writer. The bit of this job that makes you a writer is when you don’t feel like that. When you feel like you never deserved to even imagine that you could have been a writer. When you hate every word that you’ve made. When you doubt every single part of your br...
May 21, 2016•38 min
I’m starting to feel that what people in the future will actually want is something that feels small. That feels like not everyone has access to it. You’ll see more people making a modest living and less people making these massive superstar livings. – Chris Gethard, in this episode. Why was having his "big break" sitcom bomb a blessing in disguise for Chris Gethard, creator of the beloved Chris Gethard Show "the most bizarre and often saddest talk show in New York City"? What do comedians and c...
May 14, 2016•40 min
“Fear is just a monster motivator. It sells many a car and harnesses many a vote.” – James McBride, in this episode. Fear, says National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author James McBride, was the most powerful force in the life of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. It drove him to become "the hardest working man in show business", to hoard massive stashes of cash beneath hotel room carpets, and to seek temporary refuge in drugs. It also drove him to leave one of the most ast...
May 07, 2016•35 min
"The problem with our time is that we look at people for their utility value.", says Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. Since the late Middle Ages, Rushkoff argues, money and businesses have been programmed to extract more and more value from humans and the earth. The priority of endless growth has led to scorched-earth policies that put humans out of work and destroy the planet, But we programmed the system in the first place, says Rushkoff, and we can reprogram it. J...
Apr 30, 2016•36 min
Michael Puett teaches one of three most popular undergraduate courses at Harvard, on ancient Chinese philosophy and ethics: Daoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Moism, and more. What keeps students coming back year after year to this seemingly esoteric subject? Puett promises that if you take the ideas in his course seriously, they will change your life. He captures these ideas in his new book The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, co-authored with Christine Gross-Loh. ...
Apr 23, 2016•34 min
In this week's episode Joshua Cohen, author of the "great American internet novel" Book of Numbers, says that if a cliché sticks around long enough it can become a prayer. In conversation with host Jason Gots and prompted by video interview clips featuring Henry Rollins and Nikhil Goyal, Cohen delves into secret languages, the horrors of childhood, and the dangers of overexplaining. It's a punchy and penetrating dialogue with one of our most original living authors. “Just don’t unpack shit. Let’...
Apr 16, 2016•35 min
"Authenticity is something that cannot be fabricated." – Sarah Kay On this week's episode, poet Sarah Kay, whose 2011 TED talk "If I Should Have a Daughter" has been viewed over 9 million times, shares her thoughts on who gets (and who doesn't get) to have a voice, on the power of authenticity and vulnerability, and on what she'd do if the world were in imminent danger of destruction by an asteroid. And stay tuned for a shatteringly beautiful song/poem at the end. Surprise Big Think interview cl...
Apr 09, 2016•35 min
Put 8 year old Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders together in a progressive 2nd grade classroom. What would happen? Since the dawn of compulsory schooling America has been experimenting on young minds with pedagogies and systems of control that arguably do more to prepare kids for a life of servitude than of independent thought and civic engagement. 20 year old Nikhil Goyal, author of Schools on Trial, argues that mainstream US public schools do more harm to children than good, an...
Apr 02, 2016•35 min
"I’m always pulled toward anything that helps me figure out how to live a meaningful and substantive life." – Maria Popova What does real friendship look like? How can something written a thousand years ago help us to navigate our lives in the 21st century? On this week's Think Again, host Jason Gots speaks with Maria Popova, the creator, writer, and editor of Brain Pickings, a labor of love that has grown into a massive web media presence -- a blog, newsletter, twitter feed and more that shares...
Mar 26, 2016•39 min
"As human beings we all have this flaw, which is to think that there’s a right way of doing things. And it’s just bullshit." – Amanda Palmer on Think Again Artist Amanda Palmer is a practitioner of radical trust –– On tour, she couch surfs with fans from all over the world. She's allowed fans to sign her naked body after shows. Through the online crowdfunding platform Patreon, she empowers her fans to support her work one "thing" at a time. On this week's Think Again, Amanda and host Jason Gots ...
Mar 19, 2016•35 min
“We all have so much power that we don’t use. And I think it’s because of cynicism, which is a toxic spiritual state. Cynicism is a refuge for cowards.” –– Cory Booker Why do so many of us choose to remain in a state of "sedentary agitation" about America's problems when there are so many things we could do to help? This is the core question of UNITED, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker's powerful new political biography. And it surfaces again and again on this week's THINK AGAIN as Senator Booker a...
Mar 12, 2016•26 min
Yann Martel, author of the Man Booker award-winning novel Life of Pi and The High Mountains of Portugal, is not a big fan of outer space. Nor of science in general. “Science," he says on this week's episode, ". . . is a truth that exists whether I’m there or not. And that’s what I like about religion and art: To art and religion, I DO matter.” Sparked by surprise video clips on quantum entanglement, linguistic diversity, and whether or not the internet is turning us all into narcissists, Martel ...
Mar 05, 2016•34 min
A.O. Scott: The fantasy that I would use to comfort myself [as a child, about death] was…that I’d become other people. I would still be me, but I would inhabit different bodies…and eventually I would just get to see what it was like to be everybody. Jason Gots: That’s a critic’s fantasy. A.O. Scott: Yeah! And you discover shortcuts to do that...through works of art. A.O. Scott's new book Better Living Through Criticism playfully and artfully examines what critics do and why. On this week's episo...
Feb 27, 2016•29 min
Shockingly well-dressed comedian Paul F. Tompkins, host of Spontaneanation and the television show No, You Shut Up! joins host Jason Gots for improvised singing and conversation on subjects ranging from supervillains to presidential debates. Also! We debut our amazing new theme song from the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Feb 20, 2016•30 min
All technology is in effect “dual use.” You can use it for good, or you can use it for ill. – Marc Goodman At what point does government's incompetence at policing sex predators and other internet criminals constitute breach of contract with the general public? Has anyone on Earth actually read the "terms of service"? Marc Goodman, a cybersecurity expert and author of the New York Times bestseller FUTURE CRIMES talks with Big Think'sJason Gots about these questions and more, prompted by surprise...
Feb 13, 2016•38 min
“Justice without the opportunity for redemption is torture.” -- James Doty In this week's episode neurosurgeon James Doty, founder of the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and author of Into the Magic Shop , and Think Again host Jason Gots wrestle with questions spiritual, political, and neurobiological. It's a lively good time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Feb 06, 2016•31 min
“We skeptics need evidence. And then, we’ll believe!” -- Michael Shermer In this week's episode, Michael Shermer, author of Skeptic and The Moral Arc, and Think Again host Jason Gots discuss (among other things) compelling evidence that humanity's getting less evil overall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jan 23, 2016•27 min
At the risk of alienating your southern listeners, the American South is by far the most religious, and on every measure of turpitude it gets very good scores. -- Howard Gardner In this week's episode, Howard Gardner, creator of the theory of Multiple Intelligences and host Jason Gots discuss (among other things) whether or not pornography can be art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jan 16, 2016•25 min
I’ve written hit plays. I know what a hit feels like. It doesn’t significantly change your life. You still have to start again and try and write the next one. – David Hare In this week's episode, celebrated playwright Sir David Hare opines along with host Jason Gots, on art, nuclear weapons, and whether it makes sense to bring kids into this messed up world. Sir David's latest book is The Blue Touch Paper, a poignant, searching memoir about his childhood and his life's work on stage and screen. ...
Jan 09, 2016•31 min
"Now newness is coming at us continuously. And the brain hasn’t evolved to deal with that onslaught of newness. There has to be some sculpting of the input. Otherwise it just becomes random noise." – Daniel Levitin Do you see yourself as in control of your destiny, or do you see things the other way around? Join Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of The Organized Mind, and Think Again host Jason Gots for a fascinating, high-energy exploration of human agency in the age of digital overload. Le...
Dec 26, 2015•30 min
"Art, by letting us get bored, reveals something to us about what we’ve been doing to avoid boredom.” – Alva Noë Why are we so afraid to slow down and think? Is it possible, in any sense, to separate reason and emotion? Is there such a thing as "too far out" in physics? On this week's episode, philosopher Alva Noë, author of "Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature" and host Jason Gots hear surprise clips from a physicist, a Wall Street "quant", and magician Penn Jillette. The far-ranging conversati...
Dec 19, 2015•31 min
