The Next Big Idea Daily

Have you ever named your car? Or caught yourself baby-talking to your cat like he’s a tiny human? You’re not alone, and there’s actually fascinating science behind why we do this. We anthropomorphize everything from our Roombas to our houseplants, but is this quirk helping or hurting us? Justin Gregg is an animal cognition researcher, a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Proj...

The CNBC legend reveals why index funds won’t make you rich — and how to build lasting wealth by picking your own winning stocks. His new book is called How to Make Money in Any Market. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day n...

Five key insights from The Social Biome by Andy Merolla and Jeffrey Hall. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

Cory Doctorow calls it “enshittification.” Here’s how we got here, and how we can make the internet not terrible again. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

We often live like our time is limitless. But what if those who are facing the limits of life are the ones who really grasp what it’s all about? Diane Button has worked as a death doula for two decades, sitting beside people at the end of life and learning from their profound insights. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insi...

Every leader knows that as tough as it can be to manage others, the real challenge is managing yourself — your insecurities, your bad habits, your distracted thoughts. That’s why corporate consultants Suzy Burke, Ryan Berman, and Rhett Power have written a new book called Headamentals: How Leaders Can Crack Negative Self-Talk that helps you learn how to lead, starting with that most important work...

Not every decision can be reduced to data. In Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making, Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei argue that wisdom begins where the algorithm ends. 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠,...

Amanda Montell shares five key insights from her 2021 book Cultish. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

The problem isn’t you: it’s the data. Gene Ludwig reveals how America’s economic scorecards mask widespread struggle. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

Technology was supposed to make life easier. Instead, it’s draining our attention and creativity. Paul Leonardi is here to help you recharge.

Does this sound familiar: You sit down to do some real focused work, and within minutes you’ve checked your phone, opened three browser tabs, and mentally planned your lunch — all without realizing it. Our attention doesn’t just wander anymore. It’s being quietly, relentlessly pulled apart by a world designed to fragment it, and most of us have forgotten what real focus even feels like. Zelana Mon...

How do you build a company that lasts? It’s certainly not easy. About half of all small businesses fail within five years, and even large companies struggle to make it to the decade mark. So how do some businesses last for generations, even centuries? According to Eric Becker (The Long Game), founder and chairman of the wealth management firm Cresset, those companies, which he calls Centurions, ha...

Check out these big ideas from the 2020 book The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life by Laura Martin. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

It’s easy enough to celebrate “disruptive” technologies, but all that disruption can have a real human cost. Job loss, anxiety, environmental fallout — every major shift creates winners and losers. But today’s author says the upsides may be worth the turmoil. Scott D. Anthony is a clinical professor of strategy at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and in his new book, Epic Disruptions, he looks...

Dr. Tom Frieden has spent his career on the front lines of public health, from leading the CDC during the Ebola crisis to running New York City’s Health Department. Now, as head of Resolve to Save Lives, he’s written The Formula for Better Health. Here’s the key idea: most of the health tragedies we fear — heart attacks, strokes, many cancers — are avoidable. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on A...

Finding alignment across work, relationships, and community starts with naming the values that steer you. Author, executive coach, and leadership educator Robert Glazer’s new book, The Compass Within, is a short fable about clarifying what matters and making choices that match. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights fro...

If you’ve ever caught your mind spiraling at 2 a.m., you know how it can feel to have your brain working against you. But what if you could train it to be your ally instead of your adversary? In How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend, author and neuroscientist Rachel Barr lays out a practical playbook for turning down the volume on unhelpful loops and turning up the habits that build clarity, cal...

The always-on culture is bad for business. Malissa Clark has a plan to fix it. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

In his new book, Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want, Marc Brackett shows you how to turn emotional confusion into clarity. 📱 Follow The Next Big Idea Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen 📩 Want more bite-sized insights from the best new nonfiction delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter

If you’ve ever had a few extra dollars lying around, you’ve probably been tempted—wisely, I’d say—to invest it. But where? How? David Gardner has spent three decades thinking about this. As the co-founder of The Motley Fool and the host of the Rule Breaker Investing podcast, David has built a track record of making shrewd market moves, along the way spotting companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Tes...

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but therapy-speak has gone mainstream. On social media, and in personal and professional communication, you might hear phrases like “I’m triggered,” “that’s my trauma,” “I’m being gaslit.” But as common as that kind of jargon is becoming, it’s not necessarily helpful, especially for those experiencing true mental illness. Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist, aut...

AI is writing poems. Cars are driving themselves. It’s easy to think the future is already here. But it’s not. There’s much more coming. The question is: What kind? Flying cars and robot lovers? Social and environmental collapse? Nick Foster, a designer who’s worked with Apple, Dyson, and Google X, says our problem isn’t what’s coming next; it’s how we think about it. His new book, Could Should Mi...

The idea of parallel dimensions has long intrigued scientists and screenwriters alike, but how seriously should we take the concept? Here with some guidance is Paul Halpern, author of the 2023 book The Allure of the Multiverse: Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds, and Parallel Universes. Paul is a professor of physics at Saint Joseph’s University and the author of eighteen popular science books. He’s t...

Manipulation is everywhere: in ads, algorithms, politics, even workplace incentives. In the new book Manipulation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and What to Do About It by Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein—one of the most cited legal scholars in the world—you’ll learn how subtle design choices and social pressures can hijack your autonomy, plus practical steps to spot and resist them in your feeds,...

We all know that money can be stressful, confusing, even a little embarrassing, and that applies to pretty much all of us, even the president of the United States. From Abraham Lincoln secretly stashing his paychecks to Gerald Ford’s side-hustle retirement, the financial lives of America’s leaders have been just as messy and fascinating as our own. In her new book, All the Presidents’ Money: How t...