Think Again – a Big Think Podcast
We surprise some of the world's brightest minds with ideas they're not at all prepared to discuss. With host Jason Gots and special guests Neil Gaiman, Alan Alda, Salman Rushdie, Mary-Louise Parker, Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Saul Williams, Henry Rollins, Bill Nye, George Takei, Maria Popova, and many more . . . You've got 10 minutes with Einstein. What do you talk about? Black holes? Time travel? Why not gambling? The Art of War? Contemporary parenting? Some of the best conversations happen when we're pushed outside of our comfort zones. So each week on Think Again, we surprise smart people you've probably heard of with hand-picked gems from Big Think's interview archives on every imaginable subject. The conversation could go anywhere. SINCE 2008, BIG THINK has captured on video the best ideas of the world’s leading thinkers and doers in every field, renowned experts including neurologist Oliver Sacks, physicist Stephen Hawking, behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman, authors Margaret Atwood and Marylinne Robinson, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, painter Chuck Close, and philosopher Daniel Dennett.
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161. Congo: This Seemingly Impossible Knot – Da...
Congo is one of the most culturally diverse, mineral rich, and beautiful places on Earth. But the “heart of darkness” colonizers dreamed into being still bleeds. Daniel McCabe’s documentary This is Congo lets this wounded nation speak for itself.
52 min
77
160. Bassem Youssef (political satirist) – Now ...
In Egypt, comedy can be a matter of life and death. But life in America's no cakewalk either. Political satirist Bassem Youssef on reinventing yourself, crossing cultural lines, and the future of space exploration.
43 min
78
159. Change is Made by the Ones Who Stay – Paul...
When you’re a Hasidic woman in Borough Park, Brooklyn, starting an ambulance corps is a radical act. Documentary filmmaker Paula Eiselt on the push-pull of identity and cultural change in her film 93Queen.
51 min
79
158. Parker Posey (actor) – I See a Dachshund I...
On hallucinating a teensy Virgin Mary in a water fountain, our weird relationship to fame, her stint as an elf-hunting camp counselor, and more in what feels like a 4 am college conversation with the inimitable Parker Posey.
66 min
80
157. The Spiders From Mars – Jason Heller (Hugo...
Do not succumb to “funklessness”. Join us as we nerd out to a staggering degree on utopian afrofuturism, David Bowie, and the sci-fi-inflected music of the ‘70s. With Jason Heller, Hugo-award winning author of Strange Stars.
55 min
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156. While You Live, Shine – Christopher C. Kin...
Think Again like you've never heard it before. A trip deep into the oldest living folk music in the Western world — that of Epirus, Greece — and what it reveals about why we make music at all.
60 min
82
155. Lauren Groff (writer) – We Should Die of T...
In her vivid, dreamlike new book of short stories, Florida is a humid, seething organism that wants to eat you. Snake-infested. Full of sinkholes. A thing to resist, get lost in, surrender to, and sometimes, temporarily escape.
40 min
83
154. Jonathan Safran Foer (writer) – One Thing ...
Maybe everything we do is bad. But it’s not all bad to the same extent. Writer Jonathan Safran Foer on factory farming and free-range parenting in 2018.
46 min
84
153. Guns: The Genie and the Bottle – Priya Sat...
Guns as currency. Guns as status. Guns as the power of the unpredictable. Stanford Historian Priya Satia on how we got where we are today.
47 min
85
152. Where You Gonna Run To? Lorena Luciano and...
Humanity is on the move. Fleeing war, oppression, poverty…millions leave their home countries daily in search of asylum. IT WILL BE CHAOS filmmakers Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo on what this means for Europe and the world.
53 min
86
151. Jessica Abel (cartoonist, creative coach) ...
While figuring out how to steer her own creative ship, Jessica Abel has learned powerful, practical lessons about how to help others do the same.
61 min
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150. David Sedaris (humorist) – Sir David of th...
Walking all over the English countryside picking up trash, the genitalia of the spotted hyena, and many other subjects comical and deadly serious.
58 min
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149. Yanis Varoufakis (former finance minister ...
The moral bankruptcy of the European Union, the backlash against Steven Pinker’s defense of progress, and where we go from here.
54 min
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148. Jonathan Lethem (writer) – Batman's Greate...
Hanging out with a bat vs. being a bat. Why 'titanic' artists are too big to float. Bob Dylan's very worst song, and more.
55 min
90
147. Ronan Farrow (investigative journalist) — ...
By putting its relationships in military hands, the US is losing its power abroad.
39 min
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146. Think Again LIVE with Kristen Radtke (grap...
Ruinophilia. The science of loneliness. Live at UntitledTown Book and Author Festival, Green Bay, Wisconsin
55 min
92
145. Michael Gazzaniga (neuroscientist) – The I...
If you've ever heard that there are differences between the "left and right brain", you can blame Michael Gazzaniga. His new work aims at closing the gap between the meat of the brain and the magic of consciousness.
44 min
93
144. Antonio Damasio (neuroscientist & philosop...
Where do cultures come from? The answer is as old as life itself.
61 min
94
143. The Way Brothers (documentary filmmakers) ...
God, guns, sex, and mutually exclusive concepts of liberty. The Way Brothers' Netflix docuseries Wild, Wild Country tells a story that's about as American as it gets.
64 min
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142. Meg Wolitzer (writer) – Messages From Anot...
Love is like umami. Adulthood is accepting the schmo you are. Wordplay and worldbuilding with novelist Meg Wolitzer.
57 min
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141. Tara Westover (writer, historian) – Nothin...
There's got to be a thousand ways to reclaim the past, but for Tara Westover, story was the only one that could contain all of it.
60 min
97
140. Martin Amis (writer) – The Spooky Art
We are all of us held together by words.
47 min
98
139. Neil Gaiman (writer) – And Then it Gets Da...
The myths of an inhospitable land. Imposter Syndrome. That feeling when one of your characters unexpectedly murders another. Literary mage Neil Gaiman on the dark arts of fiction and everyday life.
56 min
99
138. Steven Pinker (Cognitive Scientist) – The ...
Dammit, Spock, can your cold, calculating reason fathom the mysteries of the human heart?
35 min
100
137. Amy Chua (author, attorney) – U.S. & Them
Think you're "post-tribal"? Think again. Attorney and "tiger mom" Amy Chua on groupthink in America and Abroad.
44 min