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The Big Think Interview

117 episodes

Intimate interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.

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All Episodes (117)

A man with short, grayish hair, wearing a dark blazer and black shirt, stares directly at the camera against a black background.

Sam Harris: Your mind is all you have. Is yours working?

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10 min

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with

A person with glasses and a black blazer is looking directly at the camera against a black background.

Yuval Noah Harari’s guidebook for navigating the age of AI

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75 min

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with

Yuval Noah Harari

The image shows the words "Organizational Friction" in bold white text on a black background with red arrows crossing over them.

Why ‘friction thinkers’ see hidden opportunities first

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7 min

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with

Illustration of two human silhouettes facing each other with neural connections and nodes, featuring the text "BORN AND MADE" on a green background.

6 key abilities of strategic thinkers (you can learn them)

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7 min

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with

Michael D. Watkins

London Business School professor explains how to improve your critical inquiry skills

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6 min

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with

Illustration depicting human evolution from a primate to an early human holding a spear, advancing from left to right.

Everything about civilization is changing. Why aren’t our bodies evolving?

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8 min

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with

Sean B. Carroll

Doomerism won’t fix the planet, but we can

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13 min

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with

Digital illustration of a human brain, displaying vibrant colors transitioning from green to blue and pink, set against a gradient and black background.

Reboot your mind for flow, unanxiousness, and resilience

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26 min

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with

The history of work: 3 experts debunk common myths

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25 min

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with

The lost art of accomplishment without burnout

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6 min

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The mind-blowing chaos that underpins the world

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11 min

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with

She studied extreme psychopaths. Here’s what it taught her about human nature

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11 min

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with

Text 'Period Myths' in bold white letters on a black background, surrounded by various-sized red spheres.

Period myths that “just need to die”

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11 min

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A mosaic of 36 square tiles, each showing a different fragment of various human faces, combined to create a composite image of diverse facial features.

Yascha Mounk: The rise of the identity ideology—and why I think it spells trouble

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13 min

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A gradient bar titled "The Future" shows a range from "Apathy" in red on the left to "Fear" in red on the right, with green in the middle. An arrow points to the green area.

Why apathy and fear are the two most useless positions on AI

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8 min

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with

A person sitting on a bench silhouetted against a colorful sunset sky.

Loneliness: The silent killer, and how to beat it

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24 min

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with

Michael Slepian

A man with short gray hair and a serious expression is looking directly at the camera, wearing a blue shirt against a plain background.

How to make unreasonable hospitality your cutting edge advantage

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6 min

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with

A classical stone bust of a man with a broken top, isolated against a black background.

The masculinity crisis, explained

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11 min

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with

A detailed image contrasting a fiery asteroid on the left with a cool, intricate snowflake on the right against a dark background.

What are the chances of YOU existing? A biologist explains

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11 min

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with

Sean B. Carroll

Sex in 3 places: Your brain, your bedroom, and in society

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25 min

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with

A melting yellow smiley face on a black background.

Happiness poison—and the antidote

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15 min

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with

Robert Waldinger

A woman holding up a picture of a smiling mouth.

Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder.

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6 min

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with

Mcdonald's mcdonald's mcdonald's mcdonald.

Gary Vee: Rules of billion-dollar brands

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7 min

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with

Gary Vaynerchuk

A blurry image of a man's head.

3 ways to defend your mind against social media distortions

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16 min

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with

A close up of a man with curly hair.

Master your anxiety to unleash your genius, with Jesse Eisenberg

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9 min

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with

Jesse Eisenberg

The cover of colorblind philosophy.

Is race politics poisoning young minds? Coleman Hughes offers his argument.

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37 min

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Barbed wire with the word free speech on it.

Building a free speech culture with Greg Lukianoff

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32 min

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The ceo playbook on a blue background.

The CEO playbook: 3 critical tips from 1,000 interviews

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5 min

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The u s vs itself.

10 biggest world threats of 2024, ranked

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34 min

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The future with rays of light in the background.

Debunking doomerism: 4 futurists on why we’re actually not f*cked

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30 min

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with

Related

A man with short, grayish hair, wearing a dark blazer and black shirt, stares directly at the camera against a black background.

Sam Harris: Your mind is all you have. Is yours working?

“I think we need a truly open-ended conversation with 8 billion strangers, and what makes that hard to do increasingly is a level of political fragmentation and extremism and partisanship born of our engagement with these new technologies.”

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10 min

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Red ink disperses in water with the words "Menopause Chaos" overlaid in bold white font.

The science of menopause in 13 minutes

What can you do to support your health during menopause? “If exercise were a drug, that would be the one thing that we would be giving to everybody.”

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13 min

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Close-up of a multicolored, reflective surface depicting two human-like eyes with iridescent hues surrounding them.

Yuval Noah Harari: An AI scenario you should not ignore

“What happens if you incorporate an AI? It’s now a legal person, and it can make decisions by itself. So you start having legal persons in the U.S., which are not human, and in many ways are more intelligent than us.”

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11 min

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Yuval Noah Harari

Fragmented image of the U.S. flag with white stars on a blue background and red and beige stripes, resembling weathered paint on a wall.

The one temptation to resist post-election: Good vs. evil

“Most of us aren’t sure what to think about everything, but we don’t really see that modeled anywhere, right? You’re supposed to know for sure, and there’s very little intellectual humility on social media or on TV.”

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4 min

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A person sits pensively with name tags around them reading "Hello, I'm a... writer? bookstore owner? father?.

Ryan Holiday on the art of perception and self-reflection

How the successful marketer used ancient philosophy to overcome modern obstacles and change his mindset.

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5 min

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