The Next Big Idea Daily
What if engaging with great ideas could become one of your daily habits? What if some of the best tips for living better and working smarter were served up with your morning coffee, a hit of motivation guaranteed to start your day right? That’s the idea behind The Next Big Idea Daily. We work with hundreds of non-fiction authors — experts in productivity, creativity, leadership, communication, and other fields. They distill their big ideas into bite-sized chunks, and we offer you one each morning.
Episodes
November 26, 2025 • 31 mins
First up, the Atlantic's CEO Nicholas Thompson on hidden potential, aging well, and pushing past the limits we imagine. Then we hear from Washington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins, whose 2023 book The Right Call examines what the greatest coaches and athletes can teach us about work, leadership, and life.
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November 25, 2025 • 32 mins
Act One: Team Intelligence by Jon Levy
Act Two: Come Up For Air by Nick Sonnenberg
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November 24, 2025 • 26 mins
Isolation stresses the body, shrinks empathy, and shortens life — and friends are biological medicine.
Act One: Why Brains Need Friends by Ben Rein
Act Two: How To Break Up With Your Friends by Erin Falconer
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November 21, 2025 • 25 mins
First up, Sandeep Jauhar shares insights from his 2023 book, My Father's Brain, exploring his father's descent into Alzheimer's and revealing what neuroscience tells us about why our brains degenerate with age. Then, in the second half of the show, we'll hear a lighter take on aging from Steven Petrow, author of Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old.
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November 20, 2025 • 31 mins
Morgan Housel explains why real wealth isn’t about what you buy but about what you appreciate. Then BU's Lawrence Kotlikoff offers practical financial tips.
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November 19, 2025 • 30 mins
As the nation approaches its 250th birthday, Oliver B. Libby lays out a centrist blueprint to restore opportunity and rebuild trust. His new book is Strong Floor, No Ceiling. Then, in act two, we hear from Alissa Quart, author of the 2013 book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.
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November 18, 2025 • 26 mins
Big news: The Next Big Idea Club just announced its nonfiction book pick of the season, and that book is The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, by Walter Isaacson.
If you’re not already a member of the Next Big Idea Club, you can join to get a signed copy of the book, an invitation to a member-only chat with Walter, and other great perks. To join for yourself, or to give a gift membership, go to NextBigIdeaClub.com.
And over at the ...
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November 17, 2025 • 25 mins
This new generation of workers is different, and you can use that to your advantage.
1️⃣ The Future Begins with Z: Nine Strategies to Lead Generation Z as They Disrupt the Workplace by Tim Elmore
2️⃣ The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce by Heather E. McGowan and Chris Shipley
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November 14, 2025 • 17 mins
What does it mean to be human in a world that is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence?
Act One: Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
Act Two: AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own by Verity Harding
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November 13, 2025 • 25 mins
Journalist Michael Grunwald explains how our food system is destroying the planet—and what it will take to fix it. Later, Amanda Little tells us what we'll eat in a bigger, hotter, smarter world.
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November 12, 2025 • 32 mins
Why do we fear the wrong things? We worry about plane crashes but not car rides, strangers but not algorithms, sharks but not sugar. In The Fear Knot: How Science, History, and Culture Shape Our Fears – and How to Get Unstuck, journalism professor Ruth DeFoster and neuroscientist Natashia Swalve explore why our brains evolved to fear what once kept us alive — but now often misleads us. The result is a timely, eye-opening look at ho...
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November 11, 2025 • 26 mins
What if the battlefield isn’t just out there, but also inside our heads? In the new book Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain, neuroscientist Nicholas Wright draws on his experience advising the Pentagon and the British government to reveal how our brains are built for survival and strategy, in the office and on the battlefield. He shows that the same neural machinery that helps us cooperate, compete, and make...
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November 10, 2025 • 35 mins
First up, we hear from Ranjay Gulati, a Harvard Business School professor whose new book, How to Be Bold, reveals the surprising research on what makes ordinary people capable of brave acts. In the second half of the show, career coach Kathy Caprino shares five key insights from The Most Powerful You.
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November 7, 2025 • 14 mins
In her 2020 book Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World, Olga Khazan draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and sociology to explore what it means to be different, and why our quirks and peculiarities can be powerful assets rather than liabilities.
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November 6, 2025 • 13 mins
Bruce Schneier is a security technologist at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Nathan Sanders is a data scientist at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center. They've been studying AI's impact on democratic institutions. Their new book is Rewiring Democracy.
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November 5, 2025 • 15 mins
In Food Intelligence, health journalist Julia Belluz and nutrition scientist Kevin Hall deliver a comprehensive guide to food, diet, metabolism, and healthy eating.
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November 4, 2025 • 10 mins
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 Project and an Adjunct Professor at St....
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November 3, 2025 • 17 mins
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.
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October 31, 2025 • 18 mins
Five key insights from The Social Biome by Andy Merolla and Jeffrey Hall.
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October 30, 2025 • 14 mins
Cory Doctorow calls it “enshittification.” Here’s how we got here, and how we can make the internet not terrible again.
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