The Big Think Interview

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Intimate interviews with the world's biggest thinkers.
Latest episode
The real reason you’re always thinking about what other people think
What you actually care about shows up in your calendar and your bank statement, not your intentions.

by Mark Manson

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All Episodes (215)
A man with wavy brown hair wearing a brown suede jacket over a black shirt sits in front of a plain white background.
17mins
The Big Think Interview
The most important question to ask yourself about your life’s purpose
Modern life has confused comfort and stimulation for genuine fulfillment. Could the Ancient Greek distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia help pull us out of this trap?
Mark Manson
A detailed orange image of the Sun shows its surface texture and sunspots, against a black background.
10mins
The Big Think Interview
The solar revolution turning sunlight into synthetic fuel
“10 years ago, my colleagues and I looked at the prognosis for climate change, and it looked pretty hopeless. There really was no way out. But something happened – something good.”
Casey Handmer
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20mins
The Big Think Interview
Rome’s triumph was the ancient world’s most effective piece of propaganda
Mary Beard uncovers the spectacle of the Ancient Roman parade, the Roman Triumph.
Mary Beard
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25mins
The Big Think Interview
Reboot your mind for flow, unanxiousness, and resilience
“We can use neuroscience and tools from psychology to learn how to take advantage of anxiety.” From Zen Buddhism to flow state, these 3 experts explain how to hack your brain.
Steven Kotler, Wendy Suzuki & Robert Waldinger
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7mins
The Big Think Interview
The hidden reason smart people stop growing
Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec breaks down why the traditional idea of mentorship is not only outdated, but actively getting in the way of your growth.
Robert Herjavec
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32mins
The Big Think Interview
The neuroscience behind synesthesia
Neurologist Richard Cytowic has spent decades studying synesthesia, the phenomenon where one sense involuntarily triggers another. 
Richard E. Cytowic
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21mins
The Big Think Interview
The real lesson from the first time globalization died
Archaeologist Eric Cline has spent his career forensically reconstructing why the Bronze Age collapsed, and the answer is far stranger and more unsettling than a single catastrophic event.
Eric Cline
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22mins
The Big Think Interview
The collapse that accidentally built the modern world
Historian Eric Cline illuminates the 400-year period following ancient collapse that shaped the modern world.
Eric Cline
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7mins
The Big Think Interview
The present is a story your brain assembles after the fact
Jim Al-Khalili explains how the past and future are more fluid than we may think.
Jim Al-Khalili
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13mins
The Big Think Interview
The idea so strange Einstein thought it broke quantum physics
Jim Al-Khalili introduces the technologies emerging from the second quantum revolution.
Jim Al-Khalili
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1hr 19mins
The Big Think Interview
The block universe: a theory where every moment already exists
Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explores why our sense of time may be incredibly misleading, including the idea that past, present, and future might all exist at once.
Jim Al-Khalili
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23mins
The Big Think Interview
Why alien civilizations may bloom and die unseen
Brian Cox examines why, despite billions of stars and trillions of planets, we have found no evidence of other intelligent life.
Brian Cox
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18mins
The Big Think Interview
A look into the mind of someone without empathy
Abigail Marsh unpacks what defines psychopathy, how it differs from antisocial behavior, and why terms like “sociopath” only add confusion.
Abigail Marsh
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19mins
The Big Think Interview
The biological necessity of boredom in the age of screens
"I call it a tyranny of attention because there's so many demands on our attention coming from so many different directions that we are simply overwhelmed and we don't have the mental bandwidth to cope with it."
Richard E. Cytowic
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16mins
The Big Think Interview
The tiny transistors remaking our global order
"The production of the silicon wafers that are used in the chip manufacturing process requires extraordinary levels of purity."
Chris Miller
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11mins
The Big Think Interview
Why relationships in 2026 carry impossible expectations
Now that love has been liberated, it seems to have become more complicated and more illusive than ever. Alain de Botton explains.
Alain de Botton
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22mins
The Big Think Interview
Thinking too logically can actually hold you back
"Rationalism is the idea that, in order to truly know something, you have to be able to describe it explicitly."
Dan Shipper
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8mins
The Big Think Interview
What nihilism acknowledges that other philosophies don’t
"The thing that the nihilist recognizes is that the values he or she holds are not grounded in anything other than their own preferences."
Alex O'Connor
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25mins
The Big Think Interview
The computing revolution that secretly began in 1776
"In the process of mapping the heavens, it doesn't take long to realize the data problem they generated."
David Alan Grier
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18mins
The Big Think Interview
Why modern fitness culture misunderstands human bodies
"It's this modern idea of doing voluntary discretionary, physical activity for the sake of health and fitness."
Daniel Lieberman
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