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The Big Think Interview

109 episodes

Intimate interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.

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All Episodes (109)

The history of work: 3 experts debunk common myths

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25 min

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The lost art of accomplishment without burnout

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6 min

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The mind-blowing chaos that underpins the world

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11 min

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She studied extreme psychopaths. Here’s what it taught her about human nature

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11 min

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Text 'Period Myths' in bold white letters on a black background, surrounded by various-sized red spheres.

Period myths that “just need to die”

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11 min

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A mosaic of 36 square tiles, each showing a different fragment of various human faces, combined to create a composite image of diverse facial features.

Yascha Mounk: The rise of the identity ideology—and why I think it spells trouble

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13 min

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A gradient bar titled "The Future" shows a range from "Apathy" in red on the left to "Fear" in red on the right, with green in the middle. An arrow points to the green area.

Why apathy and fear are the two most useless positions on AI

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8 min

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A person sitting on a bench silhouetted against a colorful sunset sky.

Loneliness: The silent killer, and how to beat it

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24 min

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Michael Slepian

A man with short gray hair and a serious expression is looking directly at the camera, wearing a blue shirt against a plain background.

How to make unreasonable hospitality your cutting edge advantage

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6 min

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A classical stone bust of a man with a broken top, isolated against a black background.

The masculinity crisis, explained

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11 min

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A detailed image contrasting a fiery asteroid on the left with a cool, intricate snowflake on the right against a dark background.

What are the chances of YOU existing? A biologist explains

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11 min

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Sean B. Carroll

Sex in 3 places: Your brain, your bedroom, and in society

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25 min

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A melting yellow smiley face on a black background.

Happiness poison—and the antidote

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15 min

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Robert Waldinger

A woman holding up a picture of a smiling mouth.

Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder.

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6 min

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Mcdonald's mcdonald's mcdonald's mcdonald.

Gary Vee: Rules of billion-dollar brands

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7 min

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Gary Vaynerchuk

A blurry image of a man's head.

3 ways to defend your mind against social media distortions

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16 min

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A close up of a man with curly hair.

Master your anxiety to unleash your genius, with Jesse Eisenberg

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9 min

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Jesse Eisenberg

The cover of colorblind philosophy.

Is race politics poisoning young minds? Coleman Hughes offers his argument.

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37 min

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Barbed wire with the word free speech on it.

Building a free speech culture with Greg Lukianoff

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32 min

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The ceo playbook on a blue background.

The CEO playbook: 3 critical tips from 1,000 interviews

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5 min

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The u s vs itself.

10 biggest world threats of 2024, ranked

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34 min

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The future with rays of light in the background.

Debunking doomerism: 4 futurists on why we’re actually not f*cked

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30 min

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A man is walking towards a crate with the number 60 on it.

You probably won’t retire when your parents did—here’s why that’s not all bad news

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7 min

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Employees over customers.

Work culture in the U.S. is broken. It’s on employers to fix it.

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6 min

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Two men in suits standing next to each other, discussing fraud.

Fraud abounds — meet the three kinds of people stealing your money

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8 min

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Kelly Richmond Pope

President Barack Obama delivers a persuasive speech from a podium.

The psychology of persuasion, as told by an Ivy League professor

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6 min

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A man and woman standing at a podium in front of an american flag.

How productive arguments can bring us closer together

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11 min

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A window that says fail better on a yellow background.

It doesn’t matter if you fail. It matters how you fail.

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7 min

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A yellow and black snake with a black background.

Why the wrong people end up in power

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11 min

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Einstein, Hawking, and the conceptual problem of black holes

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13 min

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Related

Close-up view of a dividing cell with prominent pink and purple colors, showing a process of mitosis under a microscope.

How matter becomes life, in 7 minutes

“The physics of the universe doesn’t predict the emergence of biology.” Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin explains how inanimate matter becomes evolutionary:

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7 min

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A man in a black leather outfit sits on an ornate, gold-trimmed chair, with one hand touching his temple and the other resting on the armrest.

Unmask the comedian. Meet the real Kel Mitchell.

90’s kids know him from All That, Kenan & Kel, and Good Burger. This is Kel Mitchell, who sat down with us to share how he persevered through some of the hardest moments of his life.

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8 min

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The history of work: 3 experts debunk common myths

“It’s remarkable how weak the correlation between success and intelligence is.” Here’s what skills do matter, from 3 business experts.

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25 min

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A sharpened pencil marks the first option on a multiple-choice answer sheet with a yellow background.

The big problem with how we measure “intelligence”

Testing is an attempt to measure intelligence. But is intelligence really what’s getting measured? A neuroscientist weighs in:

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2 min

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Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Five people of diverse backgrounds are lined up against a white background with the text "Question Your Perception Box" displayed below them.

Question Your Perception Box: Series Trailer

In the series, guests read aloud questions that pop out from a gumball machine [literally!]. The questions, like “who would you be if you stripped away all of your identities?”, […]

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1 min

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