Making art is hard work, as Adam Moss, the revered former editor of New York magazine, reveals in his illuminating new book, "The Work of Art." The book is a collection of interviews with painters, poets, filmmakers, and even sandcastle builders about the demanding, mystical, peculiar process of creating something out of nothing. Adam spoke with our curator Daniel Pink in front of a live audience in New York City earlier this month.
šĀ The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing
šļø Check out Dan's Washington Post column, "Why Not?"
Earlier this week, Jonathan Haidt joined us to discuss the crisis in youth mental health caused by smartphones and social media. Now heās back to talk solutions.
āļøĀ We launched a Substack! Check it out now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
šļø Enjoy this episode? Check out Rufus's related conversations with Will Storr and Anna Lembke
Itās rare these days for a book to go viral, but thatās exactly what happened with āThe Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illnessā by Jonathan Haidt. Now in its seventh month on the New York Times bestseller list, the book shows how the mass adoption of smartphones and social media has led to record rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among teens.
2ļøā£Ā The second part of Rufusās interview with Jonathan will be out on Thursday. If you canāt wait to hear it, you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to our Substack: bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
āLife is a game. Thereās no way to understand the human world without first understanding this. Everyone alive is playing a game whose hidden rules are built into us and that silently directs our thoughts, beliefs and actions. This game is inside us. It is us. We canāt help but play.ā
So begins The Status Game by acclaimed science writer Will Storr.
He continues: āWe play for status, if only subtly, with every social interaction, every contribution we make to work, love or family life and every internet post. We play with how we dress, how we speak and what we believe. ā¦ Life is not a journey towards a perfect destination. Itās a game that never ends. And itās the very worst of us.ā
Does it have to be?
We may not be able to quit the status game, but Will says we can learn to play it better. In this episode, he explains how.
(This conversation first aired in October 2022.)
Twenty-five years ago, Malcolm Gladwell was not Malcolm Gladwell. Well, sure, ontologically speaking he was, but he would not have registered on the Celeb-O-Meter the way he does today. So what happened? What changed? What did he do to become a household name? He wrote āThe Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.ā
A quarter century later, Malcolm sat down to update the book that made his name ā only he realized that he had a lot of new things to say about social contagion. Cut to this week. On Tuesday, he published āRevenge of the Tipping Point,ā a sequel in which he explores the ādark side of contagious phenomena.ā
He got together with Rufus for a wide-ranging conversation about the new book, because wide-ranging conversations are Malcolm Gladwell's specialty. They discussed social media, Medicare fraud, white flight, the Holocaust, and the ways Malcolm has changed over the past few decades.
šļøĀ Weāre hosting a live taping of this show with Daniel Pink and Adam Moss in New York City on Oct. 10. To learn more and grab tickets, visit nextbigideaclub.com/events
Next week, Malcolm Gladwell will be on the show to discuss his new book "Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering." In anticipation of that conversation, we're revisiting our 2021 interview with Malcolm about "The Bomber Mafia" ā the story of a group of pilots who met on a muggy airbase in central Alabama and hatched a plan to revolutionize warfare.
šļø We're hosting a live taping on Oct. 10. Daniel Pink will chat with Adam Moss, former editor of New York magazine, about his recent book "The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing." Learn more and grab tickets at nextbigideaclub.com/events
Is AI all bad, or could it be so good that we might one day want to merge with it? This is just one of the questions Rufus poses in part two of his conversation with historian and mega-bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari.
1ļøā£Ā If you missed part one of this conversation, listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
šĀ Yuvalās new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, is out now
š©Ā Want the latest insights from the worldās top thinkers delivered to your inbox every morning? Sign up for our new Substack at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
š We're hosting another live taping on Oct. 10, featuring Daniel Pink in conversation with Adam Moss, former editor of New York magazine and author of "The Work of Art." Learn more at nextbigideaclub.com/events
Yuval Noah Harari published an essay in the New York Times the other day. āLarge-scale democracies,ā he wrote, ābecame feasible only after the rise of modern information technologies like the newspaper, the telegraph and the radio. The fact that modern democracy has been built on top of modern information technologies means that any major change in the underlying technology is likely to result in a political upheaval.ā Well, weāre witnessing a major change in the underlying technology right now. Artificial intelligence is here, and if its proponents are to be believed, it will fundamentally transform how we consume information and communicate with each other. What this means for the future of democracy ā and society as we know it ā is the subject of Harariās new book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Yuval Noah Harari
š¤Ā This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience in New York City last week. To learn more about our upcoming events, visit nextbigideaclub.com/events
2ļøā£Ā Part two of this interview will be available on Thursday. If you canāt wait until then, you can listen now by downloading the The Next Big Idea app
š„Ā We launched a Substack! Subscribe now at bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub.com
Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.15 a day, has long been seen as an intractable problem. But what if the solution is simple? What if you could eradicate extreme poverty by just giving people cash? Thatās what Rory Stewart believes. Heās the former UK Secretary of State for International Development and now a senior advisor to GiveDirectly, a non-profit that has distributed $800 million ā in cash ā to 1.6 million people around the world, including right here in the US. Today on the show, Rory charts his evolution from cash transfer skeptic to evangelist, shares what he wishes philanthropists like Bill Gates would do with their billions, and explains why he thinks itās possible to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes.
šļø Check out Rory's previous appearance on this show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
šøĀ Learn more about GiveDirectly at www.givedirectly.org
š¬Ā Watch Roryās new TED Talk, āTo End Extreme Poverty, Give Cash ā Not Adviceā
šĀ Get 20% off a Next Big Idea Club membership when you use code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com
In March, when Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for stealing $8 billion from customers, many people saw it as just punishment for a two-faced poser who had spouted a lot of rot about altruism just to mask the rank odor of his relentless greed.
Michael Lewis, the famed author of Moneyball and The Big Short, was not one of those people.
Through his eyes, Sam didnāt look like a con man. He looked like an awkward but well-meaning kid who meant what he said about wanting to save the world and was undone not by avarice but by his āpathological ability to foist risk upon other people without asking their permission.ā Michael is in a unique position to draw these conclusions. He spent the months leading up to and immediately following Samās downfall hovering over his shoulder, watching him operate, learning how he thought.
Michael wrote a book about it, Going Infinite, published last fall, right as the crypto wunderkind-turned-pariah began his trial. Now that itās out in paperback and the dust has settled, we invited Michael onto the show to talk about why he was drawn to Sam in the first place, what he thinks of the critics who say he was too soft on him, and how we should reconcile our primal desire for simple narratives with the complexity of real life.
šļøĀ Join us for a live taping of this show on Sept. 11 with Yuval Noah Harari. More details at https://nextbigideaclub.com/events
šļøĀ Check out āThe Canary,ā Michaelās installment in the Washington Postās new series āWho is government?ā
šĀ Get 25% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use the code PODCAST at https://nextbigideaclub.com/
Sturgeon caviar harvested in a lab. Skyscrapers made out of living materials that grow from the ground up. Computers that run on DNA. These might sound like science fiction fantasies, but our guest today, Jamie Metzl, says they are real ā theyāre in development right now. How these and other biotechnologies will transform our lives, work, and the world is the subject of Jamieās new book āSuperconvergence.ā
šļøĀ Weāre hosting a live taping of this show in New York City on Sept. 11, featuring Yuval Noah Harari. Learn more at https://nextbigideaclub.com/events/
šæĀ Did you enjoy this episode? Check out Rufusās conversations with Azeem Azhar and Amanda Little
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