Show Notes
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.” Show notes:
adamgrant.net
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin • 2014)
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin • 2017)
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (Viking • 2023)
Work Life with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
Re: Thinking with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
Grant's New York Times archive
17:00 "The Necessity of Others is The Mother of Invention: Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivations, Perspective Taking, and Creativity" (Adam Grant and James Berry • Academy of Management • Nov 2017)
22:00 "It's Not the Ideas You Create, It's Which Ones You Choose" (Leigh Buchanan • Inc. • Feb 2016)
40:00 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Viking • 2021)
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John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History. “I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.” Show notes:
The hosts answer a few listener questions. Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message. “I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.” Show notes:
Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye. “At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.” Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908. Show notes: