The Next Big Idea

You have to play with the hand you’re dealt. At least that’s what we’re always told. But is it really true? How much of what we achieve in life is the product of our pluck and guile, and how much is j...

1 Sep 202049min

You may have heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which sees human development as a sort of a pyramid, with survival needs at the bottom, social and emotional needs in the middle, and “self-actual...

25 Aug 202052min

Our society is built on the assumption that we’re all a broken stoplight away from reverting to our animal selves. It’s what we’ve come to call “realism.” Historian Rutger Bregman thinks that kind of ...

18 Aug 202047min

Birds do it, bees do it, even fishes in the seas do it. So why do we have such a hard time when people migrate from one place to another? Science writer Sonia Shah presents the evidence that migration...

11 Aug 202047min

We do it 25,000 times a day, but most of us rarely give breathing a thought. Author James Nestor says we’re missing out on one of the most powerful pathways to health and happiness. He leads Rufus thr...

4 Aug 202047min

Businesses want people to buy their products. Parents want their kids to eat their vegetables. We all want to convince someone to do something. So we push and we prod – but often to no avail. Wharton ...

28 Juli 202049min

Since humans sharpened the first stick and lit the first fire, we have been on an innovation spree, constantly developing new tools and materials to solve our problems. But material scientist Ainissa ...

21 Juli 202048min

We knew a pandemic was coming. We knew our police were treating some of us differently than others. So why were we so unprepared for what happened? In this eye-opening conversation, Rufus and author D...

14 Juli 202046min