Search
Full Interview
Intimate, distraction-free, long-form interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
Latest episode
This isn’t a trip, it’s the most challenging therapy session of your life
👁 A woman in a dark suit sits on a chair in a bright, modern room with large windows, plants, bookshelves, and white furniture.
Rachel Yehuda, a leading PTSD researcher, has spent her career uncovering the way that trauma can leave impressions on our genes, sometimes passing biological echoes of those events to the next generation.
👁 An older man with a beard sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, with yellow neuron-like patterns on a black background surrounding the scene.
1hr 7mins
Members
Neuroscientist David Linden sheds light on the biology behind phenomena that medicine has long struggled to explain, from voodoo death and broken heart syndrome to the placebo effect, and why grief shows up in autopsy results
👁 A person sits on a chair against a white backdrop with abstract black dotted patterns, set against a yellow background.
1hr 16mins
NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller makes the case that quantum entanglement may be the underlying fabric from which spacetime itself emerges.
👁 An older man in a suit sits on a chair in front of a backdrop showing a dramatic classical painting of chaos and destruction.
1hr 43mins
Historian Eric Cline argues the Bronze Age collapse wasn't the work of one invading force or one bad harvest, but something far harder to stop: An overly interdependent system that had no way to absorb multiple shocks at once.
👁 A man sits on a chair against a white backdrop, placed in front of the Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, under a clear blue sky.
53mins
Sam Kean examines how rogue archaeologists are recreating the sounds, tastes, smells, and practices of the ancient past.
👁 A bald man wearing a black sweater sits against a plain light background, gesturing with his right hand while looking at the camera.
58mins
Alain de Botton argues that our romantic lives are shaped more by the emotional patterns we learned in childhood than by destiny.
👁 A man in a suit and glasses sits indoors, gesturing with both hands while speaking. The setting includes a brick wall, a lamp, a plant, and a window.
54mins
Members
Chris Miller explains the hidden reason that global superpowers are obsessed with Taiwan.
👁 An older person sits on a chair against a white backdrop, with a colorful outer space scene digitally added around the background.
1hr 3mins
Astronomer Jill Tarter explains why SETI is really about technology, patience, and learning how to tell alien signals from our own.
👁 A woman sits on a chair against a white backdrop, gesturing with her hands, with a dynamic black background and white abstract swirl surrounding her.
53mins
Members
“Our conscious awareness is everything. And the fact that it's still so mysterious to scientists and to all of humanity, the fact that it's still one of the great unsolved mysteries makes it something that everyone can be excited about and that inspires awe in everyone.”
👁 A woman in a blue outfit and red heels sits on a chair in a studio with a white backdrop, flanked by stylized images of a person's face looking at a phone.
1hr 23mins
Why social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones.
👁 A man in a black suit sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a modern brick-walled room with large windows and minimal furnishings.
1hr 23mins
"The process of systematizing, correcting errors, finding approximations, and making them work as civil systems that was what really drove me to start looking at human calculation and what was the foundation that it laid for the modern computer age."
👁 A woman sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a brick-walled room, with potted plants on tables on either side.
54mins
Members
"This will help people take meaningful steps to slow the rate of aging and increase what we call their health span or their kind of time of life expectancy free from disease."
👁 A man sitting in a chair.
1hr 51mins
Stoicism has been flattened into slogans about toughness, detachment, and emotional silence, a version that’s easy to sell, but mostly wrong. Massimo Pigliucci returns Stoicism to its original purpose: a […]
👁 An older man with a white beard sits on a chair against a white backdrop, with a large, colorful DNA double helix illustration in the background.
54mins
“How can all the diversity and, sort of, seeming order that's out there in the world emerge from a process dependent upon chance?”
👁 A classical-style stone bust with curly hair is shown with a cloth blindfold covering its eyes, set against a solid black background. The image has a yellow tint.
47mins
“The problem is in our information. Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.”
👁 A middle-aged man with glasses and long hair, wearing a floral shirt, stands indoors in a warmly lit room with blurred background furniture.
55mins
“Old systems of the past are collapsing, and new systems of the future are still to be born. I call this moment the great progression.”
👁 A black-and-white photo of a child’s profile with a torn section revealing a technical blueprint illustration over the head area.
1hr 42mins
“Why would adding shame and blame help me improve my behavior?”
👁 A man in a suit sits on a chair in front of a white door, surrounded by a vibrant, abstract swirl of red, pink, blue, yellow, and green colors.
2hr 9mins
“Psychedelics crosscut so many interesting domains. They've been used for time immemorial by indigenous cultures. In our own Western cultural history, they really exploded on the scene in the 1960s, and were associated with radical changes to society.”
👁 A man sits on a chair in front of a wall featuring abstract black silhouettes of two opposing heads and interconnected lines between them.
57mins
“What's really interesting about neural networks is the way that they think or the way that they operate is a lot like human intuition”
👁 A man sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a library with brick walls, wooden floor, shelves of books, and large windows.
1hr 26mins
Instead of treating belief as a private preference, philosopher Alex O’Connor examines how our moral positions shape institutions, obligations, and the ways we justify our choices.
👁 A finger draws an upward-pointing arrow on a foggy window, with buildings and greenery visible through the glass.
41mins
“Progress happens when we choose to make it happen. It happens through choice and effort. And ultimately, to make progress happen, we have to believe in it.”
Learn from the world's biggest thinkers.
© Copyright 2007-2026 & BIG THINK, BIG THINK PLUS, SMARTER FASTER trademarks owned by Freethink Media, Inc. All rights reserved.