Podcasts · Education

The Big Think Interview

Big Think

46 episodes

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos helping you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life.

Episodes

  1. Screens made belonging easy and selfhood nearly impossible | Luke Burgis

    · 1 h 17 min

    In 1936, a shipyard worker in Hamburg kept his arms folded while hundreds of men around him raised theirs for Hitler. Luke Burgis, author of Wanting and The One in the 99, wants to know what it takes to become that…

  2. Pantheism: A third way between religion and atheism | Jack Symes

    · 1 h 05 min

    For decades, atheists have used one move to dismantle the case for God: swap in an evil one and show that the arguments work just as well. Philosopher Jack Symes was convinced by it, and was 50,000 words into a book…

  3. The theory that connects the origin of life to the rise of intelligence | Blaise Aguera

    · 1 h 24 min

    From von Neumann's blueprint, which predated the discovery of DNA, to viral genes that now help form our memories and placentas, Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that function defines life more than material does, and that…

  4. The political philosophy under attack from both the left and the right | Jonathan Rauch

    · 1 h 30 min

    Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, dives into the philosophy of liberalism, how it has created and transformed our institutions, and the state of truth in a world rife with…

  5. The minimum viable intervention for a happier life | Tal Ben-Shahar

    · 1 h 22 min

    Most of us can recite the benefits of exercise, gratitude, and patience while doing none of it. Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the Knowing-Doing gap, and our typical interventions, like retreats and month-long overhauls…

  6. The lost art of rhetoric, from a 2x debate world champion | Bo Seo

    · 1 h 11 min

    Two-time debate champion Bo Seo breaks down why arguments fail: the 4 bad-faith personas that hijack conversations, a four-question framework for picking fights worth having, and the surprising Cold War standoff…

  7. The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation and menopause | Jen Gunter

    · 1 h 14 min

    OBGYN Jen Gunter unpacks the science, history, and mythology of menstruation and menopause, and offers a guidebook to navigate the modern healthcare landscape.

  8. The invisible forces that create talent and elite performance | Daniel Coyle

    · 1 h 25 min

    Talent isn’t a gift we're born with – it’s a signal we’ve been reading completely wrong. Author Daniel Coyle breaks down the common traits shared by successful people, and why environment, not innate ability, is the…

  9. The world's greatest mathematician explains 6 essential concepts of math | Terence Tao

    · 1 h 24 min

    Terence Tao has spent decades solving problems most people can't even state, and he says he's never had a single eureka moment. In this conversation, the UCLA mathematician and Fields Medalist breaks math down to six…

  10. The #1 predictor of relationships that are doomed to fail | Julie & John Gottman

    · 1 h 01 min

    Every marriage’s disintegration is marked by the same four warning signs that researchers John and Julie Gottman can spot before a couple even finishes their first sentence. The founders of the Gottman Institute break…

  11. Psychologist: The blueprint for developing a healthy relationship with your emotions | Lisa Damour

    · 1 h 06 min

    Stress has a branding problem. Clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues that most of us have the wrong relationship with discomfort entirely, treating stress like a malfunction instead of what it actually is: a…

  12. Young people say their lives feel fake. Here’s why | Arthur Brooks

    · 1 h 53 min

    Arthur Brooks studies happiness for a living, and he says the epidemic of depression and anxiety among young adults comes down to one culprit: a meaning crisis. Brooks walks through the biology of falling in love, the…

  13. Giulia Enders: The old-fashioned mindset that gets in the way of our healing

    · 1 h 08 min

    Physician Giulia Enders spent years studying the gut before realizing no organ works alone. Here, she walks through 5 body parts — the lung, the immune system, the skin, the muscles, and the brain — and what each one…

  14. A philosopher's guide to escaping your own echo chamber

    · 45 min

    Philosopher Jonny Thomson walks through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 3 conditions for the kind of stupidity that destroys societies: outsourcing your thinking to an authority, willful ignorance, and conformity. He shows how…

  15. Paul Bloom: The psychology of morality, perversion, and revenge

    · 1 h 07 min

    Psychologist Paul Bloom has spent his career studying the parts of human nature we often feel uncomfortable examining: why loneliness feels like starvation, why people are drawn to behaving poorly, why revenge feels…

  16. The myth of the cult of genius, in 48 minutes

    · 49 min

    A philosopher who walked away from an elite academic career to spend 3 years washing dishes in a monastery says that intellectual life has nothing to do with degrees. Zena Hitz argues that the real philosophers are…

  17. 250 million years of dinosaur history, in 104 minutes

    · 1 h 44 min

    Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist behind Jurassic World's science and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds, walks through what fossils actually prove versus what Hollywood invented.…

  18. A neuroscientist’s guide to protecting your brain, in 58 minutes

    · 59 min

    A retired Japanese engineer once memorized pi to over 111,000 digits using nothing but storytelling and visualization. He also forgot his wife's birthday that same year. Neuroscientist Lisa Genova uses this…

  19. Tim Spector: The science of the gut microbiome and chronic inflammation

    · 1 h 13 min

    Could depression, dementia, and poor oral health all have one uniting link? The gut microbiome contains 200 more genes than human cells, and research shows its strong impact on mental illness, brain health, and chronic…

  20. The 3-part habit loop your brain is running 40% of the time | Charles Duhigg

    · 1 h 27 min

    About 40% of everything you do today is a habit your brain automated, and the neural loop driving it doesn't distinguish between good and bad habits. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and…

  21. Vanessa Van Edwards: 7 cues that make you instantly more likable

    · 57 min

    You only have a few seconds to make a first impression, and the non-verbal cues you’re sending may be silently working against any kindness your words communicate. Charisma is learned, not innate, and even if you…

  22. The difference between creative people and you: Tolerance for useful restriction | David Epstein

    · 1 h 01 min

    David Epstein, author of Range and Inside the Box, walks through decades of research exploring why constraints, not freedom, are the engine behind creativity, focus, and breakthrough.

  23. The quantum realm, the cosmological realm, and the multiverse, in 69 minutes

    · 1 h 09 min

    Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi takes us from the quantum realm to the cosmological and out to the multiverse, answering physics’ underexplored questions. He digs through the actual nature of electrons, why your speed…

  24. Bessel van der Kolk: The body’s silent record of trauma

    · 59 min

    Trauma doesn’t vanish when danger does. According to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the body acts as an archive, holding fear, pain, and survival instincts long after the moment passes. Van der Kolk explains why…

  25. Michael Spitzer: How music rewires the brain

    · 1 h 00 min

    Music is at least a million years older than language, yet we still see it solely through the lens of entertainment. Professor Michael Spitzer argues it's something closer to a biological system, one that was shaping…

  26. Nicole LePera: The child who learned to disappear is still running your adult relationships

    · 54 min

    Dr. Nicole LePera, the holistic psychologist and NYT bestselling author behind Reparenting the Inner Child, breaks down the 6 archetypes of childhood trauma. LePera explains why insight alone never produces lasting…

  27. Mark Manson: How to pull yourself out of a cheap dopamine spiral

    · 1 h 08 min

    Most people are trying to solve the wrong problem, optimizing for happiness when happiness isn't actually a goal, it's a byproduct. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, argues that the entire…

  28. Brad Stulberg: Getting 1% better every day is mathematically impossible. Do this instead

    · 52 min

    Most people chasing excellence are chasing the wrong thing entirely. Brad Stulberg argues that the 4am routines, optimization stacks, and recovery scores are just elaborate performance passed off as “excellence.”…

  29. Rachel Yehuda: Your brain changes after trauma. Science can reverse it

    · 50 min

    Trauma doesn't end when the danger does, and for decades, science couldn’t explain why. Rachel Yehuda, a leading PTSD researcher, has spent her career inside that question, uncovering how trauma leaves impressions on…

  30. David Linden: The bizarre phenomena that medicine struggles to explain

    · 1 h 08 min

    Neuroscientist David Linden sheds light on the biology behind phenomena that medicine has long struggled to explain, from voodoo death and broken heart syndrome to the placebo effect, and why grief shows up in autopsy…

  31. Michelle Thaller: Modern physics is forcing us to rethink existence

    · 1 h 17 min

    What if space and time aren't the backdrop of the universe, but a byproduct of it? NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller makes the case that quantum entanglement may be the underlying fabric from which spacetime itself…

  32. Jim Al-Khalili: Quantum entanglement and the illusion of time, in 79 minutes

    · 1 h 19 min

    Time feels obvious, but physics tells a stranger story about its existence: Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explores why our sense of time may be incredibly misleading, including the idea that past, present, and…

  33. How experimental archaeologists are resurrecting our forgotten past

    · 53 min

    We tend to imagine ancient life in broad strokes. But daily existence was built out of small, sensory details. The taste of staple foods, the smell of living spaces, the feel of handmade tools in your hands -- those…

  34. Alain de Botton: The uncomfortable question you should ask on every first date

    · 58 min

    We want to believe that love is guided by instinct, and that following our heart will lead us to our ideal soulmate. Alain de Botton argues that our romantic lives are shaped more by the emotional patterns we learned…

  35. Jill Tarter: Why SETI might be our most humbling science

    · 1 h 04 min

    Jill Tarter has spent a lifetime working on a question that resists answers: not whether we believe there is life beyond Earth, but the quest for undeniable proof. Tarter explains why SETI is really about technology,…

  36. The most important piece of technology in your lifetime is this tiny chip

    · 55 min

    The story of the chip is a story about geopolitics and scarcity. From $20 billion fabrication plants to machines built by a single Dutch firm, the supply chain behind your devices is both miraculous and astonishingly…

  37. The real reasons young men are checking out of society | Richard Reeves: Full Interview

    · 1 h 37 min

    Richard Reeves argues that this quiet male crisis has been decades in the making, and it’s not the simplistic story most people assume. From collapsing educational outcomes to shrinking roles in the labor market, men…

  38. Hollywood lied to you about Ancient Rome. Here’s the truth | Mary Beard: Full Interview

    · 1 h 18 min

    We've inherited the history of Ancient Rome through movies, ruins, and shallow stories. The truth is far messier, says classicist Mary Beard. The hidden side of Roman life that screens rarely capture is chaotic;…

  39. The Universe in 90 minutes: Time, free will, God, & more | Sean Carroll

    · 1 h 34 min

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  40. Sean B. Carroll - Full Interview on Our Planet, Humans, and Chance

    · 1 h 15 min

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  41. 6 ways to heal trauma without medication | Bessel van der Kolk | Big Think

    · 8:53

    6 ways to heal trauma without medication, from the author of “The Body Keeps the Score,” Bessel van der Kolk. Conventional psychiatric practices tell us that if we feel bad, take this drug and it will go away. But…

  42. What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains | Bessel van der Kolk | Big Think

    · 7:54

    What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains, with Bessel van der Kolk. Contrary to popular belief, trauma is extremely common. We all have jobs, life events, and unpleasant situations causing us…

  43. Train for any argument with Harvard’s former debate coach | Bo Seo

    · 12 min

    Train for any argument with Harvard’s former debate coach, Bo Seo. Bo Seo, an author and two-time world debate champion, believes our public conversations are in crisis. To Seo, our arguing skills have collectively…

  44. The “heroic dose” of psychedelics, according to Johns Hopkins | Dr. Matthew Johnson

    · 11 min

    How a ‘heroic dose’ of psychedelics can be therapeutic, explained by a Johns Hopkins professor. Psychedelic research is enjoying a renaissance. Recent studies have shown that psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin…

  45. Male inequality, explained by an expert | Richard Reeves

    · 15 min

    Modern males are struggling. Author Richard Reeves outlines the three major issues boys and men face and shares possible solutions. Boys and men are falling behind. This might seem surprising to some people, and maybe…

  46. Why the world is going crazy—and how to win back our minds | Jamie Wheal | Big Think

    · 7:21

    The speed at which civilization is progressing has become overwhelming for modern humans and has caused what Jamie Wheal (author of Recapture the Rapture, founder of the Flow Genome Project, and host of the Collective…

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