The Next Big Idea

What if everything we've been told about having a successful career is wrong? ⁠Rutger Bregman⁠ thinks most of us are wasting our working lives and argues we should stop trying to get rich and start trying to solve the world's problems instead.

This episode first aired in May 2025.

🎥 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 ⁠podcast@nextbigideaclub.com⁠

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

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.”

🎥 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 podcast@nextbigideaclub.com

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

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 podcast@nextbigideaclub.com

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

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.

Ravi’s new book is The Invisible List: One Passion a Year, Every Year.

🎥 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 podcast@nextbigideaclub.com

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

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.

Kevin would know. Until recently, he was a tech columnist at the New York Times and co-host of the massively popular Hard Fork podcast. (If you miss his dulcet tones, he and Casey Newton will be back with a new show, Machine Gods, later this month.) He has also spent the last few years interviewing more than 150 of the people racing to build artificial general intelligence.

The result is his gripping new book, The AGI Chronicles, just out this week. It’s corporate thriller material: secret Slack channels, philosophical feuds, mystical beliefs, billion-dollar bets. But the stakes are extremely high. Can a small group of people with outsized influence over humanity’s future get along? Can they work together to make sure we build AI safely? And now that the rest of us are paying attention, what should we do about it?

🎧 Check out our conversations about AI with Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Sebastian Mallaby, Stuart Russell, and a younger Kevin Roose.

🎥 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 podcast@nextbigideaclub.com

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

Life at the Speed of Play — Purchase one copy at getmarksbook.com/next and author Mark Pincus will send you two

Northwest Registered Agent — Helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/nbifree

Sequencing —  Go to sequencing.com and use promo code IDEA for 10% off