
Show Notes
June Cohen has spent her career shaping the future, from bringing TED Talks online to launching Masters of Scale. But she has come to believe that some of the best solutions to what ails us today lie in our distant past. Our ancestors developed extraordinarily sophisticated social technologies — what June calls “wisdom systems” — designed to meet our deepest human needs. To help us grieve, build trust, find meaning, experience rapturous joy. In her new book, The Great Remembering, she looks at six of those ancient traditions and unpacks the cutting-edge science of why they work.
🎥 The Next Big Idea is on YouTube! You can find our episodes here.
📱 Follow Rufus on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Substack, or send us an email at [email protected]
Today's episode is sponsored by:
Granola — The AI notepad with notes, actions, and memory, and no annoying meeting bots. Try it totally free for three months at granola.ai/idea
Hostinger — Describe the website you want and Hostinger’s AI agent builds it in minutes, with plans starting at $3/month. Go to hostinger.com/nbi and use code NBI for 10% off
Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two
Sequencing — Go to sequencing.com and use promo code IDEA for 10% off
Storyblocks — The 100% human-made stock media library built for creators. Get 15% off any annual plan, available only at storyblocks.com/nbi
More from The Next Big Idea
For the last few years, the global space race has been dominated by two billionaires: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They’ve launched thousands of satellites, designed lunar landing modules, and drawn up ambitious plans to build AI data centers in space. We wanted to understand why these two are so obsessed with galaxies far, far away. And, more importantly, what their efforts to conquer the cosmos mean for the rest of us down here on Earth. So we called up Josh Tyrangiel. He wrote the cover story for the latest issue of The Atlantic. It’s called “Choose Your Overlord: Musk vs. Bezos.”
We all carry around invisible lists, private ledgers of disappointment — the talents we wish we had, the hobbies we’d like to take up, the passion projects we keep meaning to kickstart. Ravi Gupta has one of those lists, and nine years ago, the ex-Obama staffer decided to do something about it. Cut to the present. He’s a published novelist, dawn-patrol surfer, solid tennis player, and budding Italian chef. How did one man accomplish all that? Today on the show: the method he swears anyone can use. Even Caleb.
What’s really fueling the race to build superintelligence? Science? Idealism? Money? Try spite. “These guys hate each other,” says Kevin Roose. “It’s grudges all the way down.” Those rivalries, it turns out, have pushed AI forward faster than any of them thinks is wise.
Our curator Daniel Pink recently sat down with Angela Duckworth to chat about her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best. Although we just had Angela on the show, we couldn’t resist sharing this conversation too. It’s live. It’s loose. And it covers a lot of ground we didn’t get to last time — like what Michael Phelps's childhood ZIP code had to do with his 28 Olympic medals (8:15), why Angela's house is full of avocados and physical therapy equipment (26:55), how a late-night cold call changed millions of lives (32:27), and how Daniel has made it in his career without a single mentor (41:52).
Martin Seligman founded the positive psychology movement. Now, at 84, he’s shaking up the field all over again. He’s got a new book out. It’s called Agency. And in it, he says, he’s trying to “found a new field.” It’s called psychohistory. “I'm after the rigorous possibility that we can use the tools of psychology to go back in history to ask the questions: What produces innovation? What produces progress? And what produces stagnation?”