What would the world look like if we lived forever? Or even just lived a little bit longer? As scientists, technologists, and anyone who’s experienced chronic lower back pain at the ripe old age of 25 will tell you…the world would look significantly different. It’s a conversation we started having back in October, when I released an episode of Thinking Is Cool all about the basics of extending human life well beyond what we’d consider long & healthy today. I juuuuust started toeing the line ...
Jan 10, 2022•40 min
Who’s DAO is it anyway? What’s so wrong with the internet we know and love/hate today? Will those NFTs be worth something in a decade? You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. In this edition of Thinking Is Cool’s Continuing the Conversation series, I speak with TCG investor and general innovation expert Gaby Goldberg in an effort to truly understand what Web3 means for everyone (not just the crypto-pilled on the blue birdie app). Covered in this episode: What is Web3 and how might it permane...
Dec 20, 2021•50 min
How to keep them. What does it mean to create and maintain close personal relationships in this world—this world that gives us connection, for better or worse, around every corner? Online friends. Friends whose relationship changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Peripheral friends. The closest of friends. Friends who disagree. We need them all, but today it’s sometimes difficult to ensure each and every one of those groups gets priority. But doing so is integral, and this episode will explain why...
Oct 25, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 10
For generations, young people have been expected—nay, counted on—to buy a home by a certain age. Owning a house meant joining the ranks of real adults and laying claim to something with as much financial value as it boasted emotional value. But then...reality kicked in. Today, buying a house is more complicated and, at times, more impossible, than it ever was for our parents or grandparents. Younger generations are stuck in a tricky spot—culturally, owning a house is really important but financi...
Oct 18, 2021•37 min•Season 2Ep. 9
A wise teenage girl in the Pacific Northwest who made the world fall in love with a family of vampires once said, “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die.” She’s the only one. In truth, we humans are deeply preoccupied with how we might die...and even more, preoccupied with the efforts we can take to put it off. Sanitation protocols, germ theory, vaccines, exercise—for centuries, we’ve taken small steps each day to prolong our healthy, functional lives. But what if we stopped taking sm...
Oct 11, 2021•39 min•Season 2Ep. 8
We know a few things to be certain about the freedom of speech here in the United States: It’s written in the Constitution, it’s fiercely defended by lawyers and laypeople alike, and we’ve got it better than a lot of other countries. From my vantage point (this laptop), free speech is a complicated, deeply nuanced ideal. It is that freedom, the freedom of speech, that allows us to disagree, to learn and share, to voice once unspoken thoughts, to engineer a more verbally and intellectually divers...
Oct 04, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Sometimes the most complicated problems require the simplest solutions. If we want to help the nearly 600,000 Americans who will go to sleep homeless tonight, all we need to do is give them homes, right? Honestly...yes. Homelessness is a massive, unfathomably tragic problem, but it’s one we designed ourselves (more on that in the episode). And if we designed the problem, we can design the solution (definitely more on that in the episode). Today on Thinking Is Cool, I’m taking 40 minutes to begin...
Sep 27, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Investing isn’t the old rich dudes’ game anymore. It’s yours, it’s mine, it’s everyone’s. But what are the ramifications of this rapid democratization of investing, this revolutionary tide change in the stock market? What happens in the post-meme stonk world, one in which the definition of “investor” looks nothing like it did a decade ago? What might our investing habits and goals mean for platforms and their responsibility? And most importantly...is it better to have meme-stocked and lost than ...
Sep 20, 2021•39 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Alternate episode titles: One Bad Apple Ruins the Whole of Humankind? Our iPhones, Our Selves? Hard to pick just one when the company in question has changed so much about the ways we interact with technology and with each other. Today, we’re raising the mythical curtain on Apple, a company that needs no introduction...but also lays claim to a history that most certainly might surprise you. In four storied decades, Apple has transformed the world and its inhabitants. But how? And has it all been...
Sep 13, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 4
People do drugs. They do drugs for tons of reasons. They also don’t do drugs for tons of reasons. Some people do drugs to feel better or to feel smarter or to feel more focused in a chaotic world. Some people do drugs to get outside their own mind. Some people do drugs to treat ailments traditional medicine ignores. We all have different reasons and different highs. But the truth of the matter is this: Today, you’re hard-pressed to find anyone wearing one of those DARE “just say no” t-shirts wit...
Sep 07, 2021•37 min•Season 2Ep. 3
There’s a wildly popular, deeply powerful institution in the United States that breeds racism, classism, and elitism among young people and desperately needs to be dismantled. Want to guess what it is? If you guessed it had to do with Natty Light, potential cult behavior, and 19-year-olds on power trips...you guessed right. Today, I’m exploring the impacts and implications of Greek life in the United States, both the good and the bad. You might be able to guess what conclusion I come to about Gr...
Aug 30, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Modern love is messy, complicated, heart-wrenching, beautiful, and above all else? Online. Today on Thinking Is Cool (which happens to be the Season 2 premiere just sayin’), we’re exploring the ways our modern interpretations of meeting people might force us to hold a mirror up to all of our relationships—with each other, and more importantly, with technology. Why do dating apps have such a stigma? Why do we think they suck so much? Why are our expectations so flawed? And what can we do differen...
Aug 23, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Thinking Is Cool is back. This show is all about making your next conversation better than your last, and this season there’s no shortage of thought-provoking topics for discourse on tap: dating apps, homelessness, Greek life, living forever, and so many more. If Season 1 of this show was about finding my footing, Season 2 of this show is about hitting my stride. You might agree with me. You might disagree with me. You might feel impassioned to change something. But no matter what, I’m making a ...
Aug 20, 2021•6 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Porn is back. Season 1 of Thinking Is Cool was all about considering generation-defining issues, big topics, and sources for thoughtful conversation. My first episode of this show was about making a better porn industry—but it was also about pleasure, social norms, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, and engineering ethical industries. Those are all ideas that we can’t cover completely in one 38 minute podcast episode. So today, we’re kicking off a new project from Thinking Is Cool called C...
Aug 10, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Even if you only use it as a means of remembering high school acquaintances' birthdays, Facebook changed your life and the world around you. That’s just a fact. This company—one that has in so many ways revolutionized technology and media and brought the world closer together—has also eroded democracy, engendered a dangerous new world of social mores, and not cared much for any of the negative externalities associated with becoming the fastest company ever to reach a $1 trillion valuation. Today...
Jul 19, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 10
The Great Reopening, the Roaring 20s, the Summer of Love. It’s here. We’re learning to cope with a new reality in the post-Covid era. But...how exactly are we supposed to do that? This week on Thinking Is Cool, we’re figuring it out together. It’s not easy to bounce back from a worldwide pandemic that claimed some 600,000 lives in the United States alone. It’s not simple to reintegrate into society after spending the better part of the last year distanced, both socially and mentally. But also… I...
Jul 12, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 9
It's not worth getting dressed this summer if you're not wearing Thinking Is Cool merch. Buy some here . There are 2,755 billionaires in the world, which means 0.00000035% of us have three commas in our net worth. Despite that, those with the power to accumulate wealth are often those with the power, period. Because of that, we need to hold the ultra wealthy accountable. How did they build their wealth? How have they held onto their wealth, often for generations? What responsibilities do they be...
Jul 06, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 8
All it takes is a positive attitude and a little elbow grease, right? Well, that...plus an enormous rethinking of the ways we incentivize political action and voting in the world’s most storied democracy. Nothing we can’t handle in a podcast episode. This week on Thinking Is Cool, I’m exploring the future of political parties as we work to evolve past where we are today—at a point of extreme and even dangerous fracturing along party lines. Because this—hyperpartisanship and the gridlock and vitr...
Jun 28, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Today on Thinking Is Cool, we’re together taking on the sisyphean task of finding out. Here’s a spoiler: The answer is a big fat maybe. Because like all good things in life, the answer is simple—it depends. Cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and decentralization have the potential to be a lot of things: the future of global currency systems, the future of the internet, the future of wealth building, and more. But it’ll take more than just adding laser eyes to your Twitter profile picture t...
Jun 21, 2021•43 min•Season 1Ep. 6
These days, which have been more populated with critiques of late-stage capitalism than most, the girlboss is facing a reckoning for one major reason: Instead of reinventing a system that put her down, she learned to play by the rules of her oppressors. What does that mean for the future of our social and economic frameworks? This week on Thinking Is Cool, we’re going to find out. What you can expect from this episode of Thinking Is Cool: An exploration of the archetypical girlboss character and...
Jun 14, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 5
There’s no such thing as a city with livability, hype, affordable apartments, proximity to talent and money, and good food and people watching. But that’s never stopped us from attempting to find it. The last year especially, we’ve been on the hunt for a new hub city here in the US as the post-Covid world opens up. In that search, long-held systems (both economic and social) have been uprooted—people who swore they’d never leave the Bay Area flocked to Miami like it was nothing. New Yorkers whos...
Jun 07, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Probably not :( :( but it doesn’t mean you don’t have a part to play in mitigating the likelihood of climate disaster! This week on Thinking Is Cool, I’m exploring the ways we as individuals can engineer a world that’s both livable and worth living in for future generations. Because at our current rate of environmental degradation, that’s looking harder and harder. So what can you—someone who’s neither Joe Biden nor Greta Thunberg—do to ensure the world doesn’t go up in flames by the time you re...
May 31, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3
What might Barstool Sports—a company thoroughly emblematic of the feverish nature of our modern, digital world—teach us about ethics? More than you might expect. Here’s what you can expect in this episode of Thinking Is Cool: A nuanced conversation about ethics, morals, and the ways late-stage capitalism has encouraged us to apply them to corporate entities Lots of dunking on Barstool’s idiot in chief Dave Portnoy...plus some shoutouts to the people working at Barstool who are actually not dumb ...
May 24, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2
My name is Kinsey Grant and I want better porn. Well, more specifically, I want a more ethical, more enjoyable, and safer adult entertainment industry, one that works for everyone. Because everyone likes to get off. How you get there, though, is up to you. You might be into seeking out adult content that’s made ethically, with both porn star and porn consumer in mind...or you might be into supporting mega-monopolies that systemically undercut creators and engender unsafe environments for all. Di...
May 17, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 1
What if we all stopped to think a little harder? To have conversations without getting combative? To be honest and give ourselves time and space for nuance? What might the world look like? I’m Kinsey Grant and together, we’re gonna find out. Welcome to Thinking Is Cool . My promise to you: Thinking Is Cool will make your next conversation better than your last. And that’s important—because conversations have the power to solve problems, connect people and generations, and root us in what really ...
May 12, 2021•5 min
