The Next Big Idea Daily

Stop Waiting for Permission 22.07.2026 22мин

What if the thing holding you back isn’t the world saying no—it’s the voice in your head asking, Are you sure you’re allowed to do this? Today, we’re exploring two books about moving through hesitation and into action: Cate Hall and Sasha Chapin’s You Can Just Do Things, a sharp, funny guide to becoming more high-agency in your own life, and Guryan Tighe’s Unmasking Fear, which argues that fear isn’t the enemy—it’s data, pointing you toward the places where growth is waiting. Together, they offer a bracing reminder: courage often begins with getting curious about what scares you. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

The Hidden Price of Getting Better 21.07.2026 28мин

What does it actually take to get better—and keep getting better—once talent has taken you as far as it can? Today, we’re exploring two books about the disciplined, sometimes uncomfortable work of growth: Ryan Hawk’s The Price of Becoming, which argues that lasting excellence is built through commitment, consistency, and choosing hard things on purpose; and Ric Bucher’s Coachable, which looks at elite athletes to show why the best performers never stop adapting. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Life at the Speed of Play 20.07.2026 27мин

What does it take to launch something people actually love—and then keep it lovable as it grows? Today, Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga, shares lessons from Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love!, a practical, playful guide to turning ideas into products that work. Then Wharton’s Annie Wilson and Emory’s Ryan Hamilton explain The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things, and why success can create its own strange set of problems. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Flip Thinking: New Approaches to Solving Problems 17.07.2026 32мин

What if some problems aren’t meant to be solved head-on—and others should’ve been prevented long before they became emergencies? Berthold Gunster, author of Flip Thinking: The Life-Changing Art of Turning Problems into Opportunities, and Dan Heath, author of Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, offer two smart ways to rethink the messes we usually meet too late. Together, they make a pretty compelling case for changing not just how we solve problems, but how we see them. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/daily for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

How Courage Becomes Contagious 16.07.2026 29мин

What happens when ordinary people decide not to look away? In this episode, Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer’s On Courage and Elie Honig’s Untouchable explore two sides of the same question: how power holds, and how it’s challenged. Angwin and Fields-Meyer show how dissent begins with a gut check and grows through community, while Honig reveals how wealth, fame, and political clout can bend the justice system out of shape. Put together, these books make a sharp, timely case that courage isn’t just personal virtue—it’s a public necessity. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/dailyfor 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

How to Keep Trying 15.07.2026 26мин

What do you do after things fall apart—and what do you do in the split second before you make the same choice again? In this episode, Steve Kamb’s How to Try Again and Jonathan Rhodes and Joanna Grover’s The Choice Point offer a practical guide to getting unstuck. Kamb shows why failure doesn’t send us back to square one, while Rhodes and Grover explain how the small decision points in everyday life can move us closer to the future we actually want. Together, these books make a reassuring case for self-compassion, clearer choices, and beginning again—on purpose. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/daily for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Raising Kids in the Age of AI 14.07.2026 25мин

As AI tutors our children and algorithms reshape classrooms, two urgent questions are emerging: What does human connection have to do with raising a child—and how do we harness these new tools without letting them take over? Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and social scientist at the University of Chicago, makes a powerful case in Human Raised that no technology can replace the relationships that wire a developing brain. And Salman Khan—founder of Khan Academy and one of Time's 100 Most Influential People—offers an optimistic road map in Brave New Words (2024) for how AI, used wisely, can personalize and democratize learning like never before. Two essential perspectives on the biggest shift in childhood and education of our time. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

What is Sex For? 13.07.2026 30мин

Sex is one of the most fundamental forces in nature — and one of the most misunderstood. Today on The Next Big Idea Daily, biologist Lixing Sun upends everything we thought we knew about why sex exists in On the Origin of Sex: The Weird and Wonderful Science of Reproduction. Then historian Rebecca Davis takes us on a sweeping tour of America's surprisingly varied erotic past in Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America, revealing that the country has always been far more complex — and far less sexually repressed — than the myths suggest. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you use code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

No One Is Self-Made 10.07.2026 27мин

The lone-genius myth is overdue for retirement. In No One Is Self-Made, entrepreneur and community builder Lakeysha Hallmon argues that true success is never a solo act — it's built on relationships, reciprocity, and the village you cultivate around you. And in Professional Troublemaker, bestselling author and speaker Luvvie Ajayi Jones makes the case that the most powerful thing you can do — for yourself and for others — is to stop playing it safe and start saying the hard things out loud. Two bold voices on what it really takes to build a life and career that matters. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Why Old People Are Winning 09.07.2026 26мин

In Gerontocracy in America, Yale legal historian Samuel Moyn makes the case that older generations have systematically hoarded wealth and power, leaving younger Americans with fewer opportunities and a shrinking share of the future. On the second half of the episode, historian James Chappel shares ideas from his book Golden Years, tracing how Americans have invented and reinvented what it even means to grow old. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Therapy Nation: When the Cure Becomes the Culture 08.07.2026 35мин

Therapy is everywhere — in our language, our social media feeds, and increasingly, our daily routines. But is all that self-examination actually making us better? In Therapy Nation, therapist and author Jonathan Alpert argues that America's therapy obsession has left us more anxious and divided than ever. And in And How Does That Make You Feel?, therapist Joshua Fletcher pulls back the curtain on what really happens in the therapy room — the good, the awkward, and everything in between. Two honest, provocative takes on the talking cure. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

The Vaccine Paradox 07.07.2026 26мин

What happens when a society forgets what public health is for? In today's episode, MIT professor Thomas Levenson shares ideas from A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines, a timely history of vaccine skepticism and the fears, myths, and opportunism that helped turn medical caution into a dangerous ideology. Then Anya Kamenetz shares ideas from her 2021 book The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now, asking what the pandemic revealed about children, schools, and the social compact we too often take for granted. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠icaneatagain.com/daily ⁠for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

The Career Advice Nobody Gave You 06.07.2026 25мин

What does it actually mean to get ahead — and stay sane doing it? On Monday's episode, career coach Emily Durham (a.k.a. Emily the Recruiter, with 3 million+ followers across social media) cuts through the noise with her new book Clock In: No-BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career (Without Losing Your Mind): forget the dream job mythology, make your value visible, and remember your job is what you do — not who you are. Then, Harvard professor and serial entrepreneur Christina Wallace shows us why the old career playbook is broken — and how building a Portfolio Life full of optionality, rest, and identity beyond your title is the smarter path forward. Two straight-shooting takes on work, burnout, and what a fulfilling career actually looks like. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Shopify — Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at SHOPIFY.COM/daily FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily for 30% off your first order. Quince — Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

America's Unfinished Revolution 03.07.2026 34мин

The Fourth of July is tomorrow — which makes today the perfect moment to ask what, exactly, the Founding Fathers actually built, and whether it's holding up. Law professor Jonathan Turley argues the revolution they launched is still very much unfinished — and under pressure — in Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. Then, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson drills into the single most consequential sentence in American history in ⁠The Greatest Sentence Ever Written⁠, unpacking how a committee of brilliant, fractious men forged the words that still define us. Two authors, one birthday, and a question we're still answering. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to ⁠homeserve.com/nbid⁠ to find the plan that's right for you FODZYME. — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily

Who Are We, America? 02.07.2026 28мин

With America's 250th birthday just days away, two books ask the same urgent question from very different angles: what does it mean to be American—and are we living up to our own ideals? In All We Say, former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes traces the battle for American identity through fifteen defining speeches, from Benjamin Franklin to Donald Trump. And in The Flag Was Still There, M. Todd Bennett and David McKean revisit the state of the union every fifty years, finding a through line of resilience even in our most fractured moments. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you use code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to homeserve.com/nbid to find the plan that's right for you FODZYME. — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/daily

In Defense of Sunlight 01.07.2026 24мин

We've been told for decades to slather on sunscreen and stay in the shade. But what if the real health risk is avoiding the sun? Rowan Jacobsen, award-winning science writer, spent nine years diving into the research — and what he found will surprise you. In In Defense of Sunlight, he reveals that people who get regular sun exposure have lower rates of heart disease, many cancers, diabetes, and dementia — conditions that kill hundreds of times more people than skin cancer. Plus, endocrinologist Dr. Saira Hameed joins us to share big ideas from her new book Signals, exploring the body's hidden chemical messaging system ⁠The takeaway from both books: your body knows what it needs — are you listening? 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to ⁠homeserve.com/nbid⁠ to find the plan that's right for you FODZYME. — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily

A New Vision for Midlife 30.06.2026 27мин

Margie Lachman is a psychology professor at Brandeis University where she conducts research on adult development and aging. She is an investigator on the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, in which they have followed thousands of adults for over 30 years to understand the variety of pathways to health and well-being in midlife and beyond. In the new book, Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife⁠, she agues that midlife is not a period of inevitable decline but a crucial opportunity to shape healthier, more fulfilling aging through positive attitudes, strong relationships, and investments in physical and mental well-being. In the second half of the show, entrepreneur Jane Marie Chen shares her own experience of midlife transformation. In the memoir Like a Wave We Break, she tells the story of achievement, burnout, trauma, and the hard-won discovery that we are more than what we produce. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to ⁠homeserve.com/nbid⁠ to find the plan that’s right for you FODZYME. — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily

Dad Brain: How Men Are Transformed by Fatherhood 29.06.2026 30мин

It turns out fatherhood isn't just a role — it's a biological transformation. Darby Saxbe, an award-winning psychologist at USC, draws on decades of research in Dad Brain to show how the fathering brain literally rewires itself through time and practice. Then, in the second half of the show, Emory University professor of Anthropology James Rilling traces the evolutionary story in Father Nature — how human males uniquely developed the capacity for deep parental involvement. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to homeserve.com/nbid to find the plan that's right for you FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/daily

Main Character Energy: How Screens Turn Us Into Spectators 26.06.2026 33мин

What happens when screens stop being something we watch…and become a place we live? Today, The Atlantic writer Megan Garber unpacks the strange new social reality she explores in Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency—where everyone’s performing, politics feels like plot, and “main character energy” starts to warp how we treat real human beings. Then we connect it to the next generation, with Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up by Katie Davis, a guide to how kids experience tech differently at each developmental stage—and what “good enough” digital parenting actually looks like. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you used code PODCAST at⁠ ⁠nextbigideaclub.com ⁠⁠✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at⁠ ⁠bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com⁠⁠ Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to ⁠homeserve.com/nbid⁠ to find the plan that’s right for you FODZYME. — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to ⁠icaneatagain.com/daily

When in Doubt, Reach Out: The Science of Social Connection 25.06.2026 28мин

Most of us know we should reach out more — call the friend, chat with the stranger, strike up the conversation. And yet we hold back. Why? Behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley has spent decades studying this gap between what we know and what we do, and his findings are both surprising and encouraging: connecting with others almost always goes better than we expect — and the payoff for our happiness and health is enormous. His book is A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection. And in the second half of the show, physical therapist Dr. Milica McDowell and chiropractor Dr. Courtney Conley join us with big ideas from Walk: Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity―One Step at a Time. 🎁 Save 20% on a Next Big Idea Club membership when you use code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com ✉️ Get big ideas in your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com Sponsored By: Homeserve — Go to homeserve.com/nbid to find the plan that's right for you FODZYME — Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain. Go to icaneatagain.com/daily