The Next Big Idea

Have you ever been brought to tears by a TV commercial? Do you relish rainy days? Are your favorite songs sad ones? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you, dear listener, know the power of the bittersweet. It’s a feeling, an emotion, a way of being that Susan Cain explored in her #1 New York Times bestseller “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.” She spoke with Rufus...

Stuart Russell wrote the book on artificial intelligence. Literally. Today, he sits down with Rufus to discuss the promise — and potential peril — of the technology he's been studying for the past 40 years. --- Book: “Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control” Host: Rufus Griscom Guest: Stuart Russell

When he was 26, Will Guidara took the helm of a middling brasserie in New York City called Eleven Madison Park. A decade later, it was named the best restaurant in the world. How did he pull off this unprecedented transformation? By practicing unreasonable hospitality. Host: Caleb Bissinger Guest: Will Guidara Book: "Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Ex...

Two years ago, Walter Isaacson, the legendary biographer who has written books about Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, began shadowing Elon Musk. "I started off with a guy who was one of the most popular people on the planet," Isaacson says, "and ended up with a guy who's the most controversial." Today on the show, Isaacson unpacks those controversies.

We go through at least thirty-six major changes in the course of our adulthoods. And yet adapting to those changes is really, really hard. Why is that? Health and science writer Brad Stulberg says it's because our model for change is broken. Luckily, he's here to fix it. Guest: Brad Stulberg Book: "Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You" Host: Caleb Bissinger

In the 1950s, Shaker Heights, Ohio, became a national model for housing integration. In the 1970s, it was known as a crown jewel in the national move to racially integrate schools. So why is its school system now struggling to close a yawning racial achievement gap? Guest: Laura Meckler Book: “Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity” Host: Caleb Bissinger • Download the Next Big...

Increasing longevity and the explosion of technology are reshaping the world. What will it mean for your education, your career, and your life? • Mauro Guillén’s new book is “The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society” • Download The Next Big Idea app at nextbigideaclub.com/app

Ultra-processed food makes up 60 percent of the American diet. Though to call it food is a stretch. Because it is not, strictly speaking, food at all. It is an industrially produced edible substance. And it’s killing us. That is the nauseating conclusion Chris van Tulleken reaches in his new book, “Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food.” Today, he explains how big busines...

In “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” cognitive scientist turned professional poker player turned bestselling author Annie Duke says mastering the art of quitting is the key to making smart decisions. (This episode originally aired in October 2022.) Host: Rufus Griscom Guest: Annie Duke Executive Producer: Caleb Bissinger • Want to check out the video e-course Annie made for “Quit”? D...

In “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” Dr. Anna Lembke says today’s superabundance of pleasurable stimuli makes us all vulnerable to overindulgence. But don’t lose hope. Anna, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford, says that by understanding how modern stimulants — from Instagram to masturbation machines — prey on our primitive brains, we can find ways to...

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and pencil-maker. He was a great resigner and, above all, a superb writer whose masterpiece, "Walden," is considered by many to be America's first environmentalist manifesto. But John Kaag has a different view. "Thoreau's attempt to 'get back to nature,'" he and co-author Jonathan Van Belle write in their new book, "Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Li...

Research has shown that how you spend your morning can have a significant impact on the rest of your day. If you start off feeling anxious and frazzled, chances are you'll end the day feeling the same way. But if you use the first hour after waking up to boost your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, you can set yourself up for a productive and memorable day. Today, Rufus learns how to cra...

The two hottest topics in tech right now are the rise of generative AI and, with Apple’s recent push into spatial computing, the mainstreaming of augmented reality. Will silicon-based machines develop sentience? Will human experience extend into virtual worlds? These distinct technologies may eventually blend to spawn a surprising future, as our “real” world becomes digitally enhanced and our mach...

Are we all so busy doom-scrolling and binge-watching that we’ve forgotten how to have fun? Real fun. Tingly-all-over, natural-high, I-hope-this-never-ends fun. Catherine Price thinks so. But don’t despair. Her latest book, “The Power of Fun,” is jam-packed with research-backed hacks for finding meaning, forging connections, improving your health, and living life to the fullest. All while having a...

For decades, urban planners have blanketed our cities with the cheap and convenient car storage known as parking. They've swapped sidewalks for strip malls and bulldozed bright, inviting storefronts to make room for dark, urine-scented parking garages. In some downtowns, more land is now devoted to parking than buildings. Parking profligacy has left us with cities that are polluted and hostile to...

Dr. Peter Attia, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller "Outlive," is back to share cutting-edge tips for improving your sleep, nutrition, and emotional health. (If you missed the first part of our interview with Peter, you can listen to it here.) P.S. • Pickup a copy of "Immortality: A User's Guide" by Steven Johnson at nextbigideaclub.supportingcast.fm • Check out our interviews with Tim Spe...

Peter Attia had a problem. It was 2006. He'd recently graduated from Stanford's medical school and was completing a prestigious surgical residency at Johns Hopkins, but instead of celebrating his success, he was tormented by frustrations. The medical establishment, it seemed to him, was stubbornly resistant to change and innovation; doctors could easily diagnose the maladies that kill most of us —...

David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the acclaimed author of "The Lost City of Z" and "Killers of the Flower Moon." In his new book, the #1 New York Times bestseller "The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder," he tells the story of an 18th-century British warship that crashed on a godforsaken island off the coast of Patagonia. Stranded and starving, the men descended into...

A few years ago, Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for The New Yorker and three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, started thinking about all the things he wasn't good at. He couldn't dance the foxtrot or bake a brioche. Well into his 50s, he still had no idea how to drive a car. To make matters worse, when he looked around, he saw people who could do these things — often with great skill. H...

Pay a visit to your local gym, observe the grimacing patrons as they pound the treadmill or march in place on the StairMaster, and you might conclude that exercise is no fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way, according to Kelly McGonigal, who lectures at Stanford, teaches dance classes, and wrote “The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage.” Today, s...

"To be alive is to battle stuckness." So declares NYU professor Adam Alter in his new book, "Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most." Adam has spent years studying why we get stuck — in dead-end jobs and creative cul-de-sacs — and, crucially, how to go from inertia to success. --- What if Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink hand-picked the eight be...

Kevin Kelly has made a career out of looking to the future. He helped pioneer online social networking all the way back in the 1980s, and he co-founded Wired, the magazine devoted to digital technology, when the internet was still an infant. But in his new book, “Excellent Advice for Living,” he looks backward. It’s a collection of 450 bits of wisdom he wishes he’d known when he was young. Things...

You are not autonomous. You are not an island unto yourself. You, my friend, are a social construct. The “self” you haul around — that yammering voice in your head — was entirely shaped by your relationships and social interactions. That may be upsetting for "you" to hear. But our guest today, Brian Lowery, prefers to see it as pleasantly humbling because if you can learn to let go of the idea tha...

What if you could live forever? Okay, maybe not forever, but for a long, long time — like to 150. First of all, is that even possible? And second, what would that mean for your family, your career, the planet? These are the vexing questions acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson answers in his new audiobook, "Immortality: A User's Guide." Here's the elevator pitch: we may be on the cusp of a revo...

Last month, longtime New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter released a brand new audiobook with our friends at Pushkin. It’s called “Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology, and the Future of Life,” and it’s an inspiring account of the emerging field of synthetic biology — a field where scientists combine chemistry, engineering, and computer science to develop new drugs and therapies for trea...