The Next Big Idea

Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling Canadian journalist and author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, examines America’s gun-violence crisis. He challenges common assumptions about assault rifles, crime, and the Second Amendment, tracing its origins to slave patrols. He explores expressive violence, underpolicing, trauma care, community intervention, and suicide prevention, while asking how a polarized debate might become more evidence-based.

Danny Meyer, the restaurateur behind Shake Shack, Union Square Cafe, and Gramercy Tavern, explores the ideas behind enlightened hospitality. He discusses creating belonging through restaurants, hiring for character, and turning a hot dog cart into a global brand. Meyer also reflects on optimism, purposeful growth, leadership, and why taking care of employees can transform an entire business.

Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author of Humankind, challenges the career ladder and asks whether talented people are wasting their potential. He explores moral ambition, scalable climate action, neglected global problems, unlikely coalitions, and the strategic truth behind Rosa Parks’s story. He also discusses AI and existential risk, burnout, and making meaningful work genuinely high-status.

Josh Tyrangiel, an American journalist and editor covering technology, business, and politics, explores Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s race to control space. They discuss reusable rockets, satellite networks, orbital AI data centers, lunar ambitions, and the radically different strategies behind SpaceX and Blue Origin. The conversation also examines political influence, infrastructure monopolies, and the stakes of billionaire power beyond Earth.

June Cohen, the media executive behind TED Talks online and co-creator of Masters of Scale, explores ancient wisdom systems through a modern scientific lens. She discusses sauna and cold exposure, endurance rituals, festivals, communal grieving, psychedelics, and sexuality. Together, these traditions reveal powerful ways humans have long pursued resilience, connection, healing, and meaning.

Ravi Gupta, an entrepreneur, education leader, writer, and former Obama staffer, transformed his own “invisible list” of deferred ambitions into a life of novels, surfing, tennis, and Italian cooking. He discusses pursuing one passion each year, turning vague goals into structured projects, embracing beginner awkwardness, designing immersive practice, and making meaningful progress without waiting for perfection.

Kevin Roose, technology journalist and author of The AGI Chronicles, takes us inside the secretive race toward superintelligence. He explores the grudges powering AI’s biggest labs, mystical beliefs about machine awakening, unsettling encounters with raw models, and the breakthroughs accelerating the stakes. They also examine whether public pressure and international cooperation can break the race logic.

Angela Duckworth, psychologist, author of Grit, and co-founder of Character Lab, joins Daniel Pink for a lively conversation about how surroundings shape achievement. They explore Michael Phelps’s situational advantages, designing environments that make good habits easier, the dangers of solo striving, peer accountability, and how to become a “mentor magnet.”

Martin Seligman, an 84-year-old psychologist and pioneer of positive psychology, introduces psychohistory, a field exploring how agency shapes human progress. He examines agency in ancient texts, agriculture, religion, literacy, the Renaissance, and scientific breakthroughs. Seligman also explores genius, AI’s creative potential, humanity’s progress, and the risks of increasingly powerful technology.

Angela Duckworth, psychologist, author of Grit, and professor, revisits her famous ideas on perseverance through her new book, Situated. She explores why environments, relationships, neighborhoods, and even phone placement shape behavior and identity. They discuss burnout, parenting, AI, mentors, leadership, and knowing when to persist, change course, or quit.