Think Again - a Big Think Podcast
by Big Think / Panoply
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 psychol
Episodes
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[SPECIAL] Clever Creature with Jason Gots - Episode 1: DESERT
NOTE: This is a special guest episode of Jason's new podcast Clever Creature. Please subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts! The Moleskine is open, the page is staring back accusingly/ Like 'come on, Punk, what makes you think you possibly could fill the likes…
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235. Neil Gaiman (Jason Plays Favorites #7) – and then it gets darker
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] Adult life, with all its schedules and responsibilities, can turn into a kind of library of locked...
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234. Robert MacFarlane (Jason Plays Favorites #7) – deep time rising
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] I’m underground as I write this, one day before taping the conversation you’re about to hear…
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233. Terry Gilliam (Jason Plays Favorites #5) – the impossible dream
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] -- Faith in anything is its own special form of madness. It’s a challenge to entropy, and entropy…
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232. Anaïs Mitchell (Jason Plays Favorites #4) – sometimes the god speaks through you
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] -- Among other things, music can be medicine. Like a vaccine, it sometimes works by giving your body…
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231. Marlon James (Jason Plays Favorites #3) – don't get too comfortable
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] -- At this point, it’s very rare to read something and find myself thinking: This is something new....
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230. Eve Ensler (Jason Plays Favorites #2) – no way out but through
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] -- Note: I feel I should let listeners know that this episode of Think Again is about surviving and...
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229. David Sedaris (Jason Plays Favorites #1) – Sir David of the Spotless Roadways
[From February through March 22, 2020 (his last day hosting Think Again) Jason will be revisiting favorite past episodes. Jason's new show, starting May 12th, is Clever Creature with Jason Gots.] Life is full of horrible things. I dare you to deny it. Things like death, sickness, and alcoholism....
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228. Sharon Salzberg (meditation and mindfulness teacher) – on balance
Since 1976, Sharon Salzberg has been sharing ancient meditation and mindfulness practices in a voice the contemporary West can understand. Her warm, funny, down-to-earth books, dharma talks, and guided meditations have helped struggling meditators worldwide establish a strong practice and reduce...
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227. Roz Chast and Patricia Marx (cartoons, words, ukuleles) – The Beatles stole everything from us
Thelma and Louise, Ponch and John, Pancho and Lefty, Quixote and Sancho Panza, Marx and Engels, Marx and Chast…history and literature are full of magical buddy stories. Every now and then, for reasons no one can explain, Two people come together and produce something greater, or at least very...
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226. Joseph Goldstein (dharma teacher) – doubt comes masquerading as wisdom
Freedom. Everyone wants it, but knowing where to look for it is another matter. And to make matters worse, the world is full of things that feel like freedom but might just get us more tangled up in everything we’re trying to escape. How much freedom can money buy? How much money? How free are…
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225. Jad Abumrad (Radiolab, Dolly Parton's America) – American Multiverse
If you’d told me a couple months ago that a podcast about Dolly Parton could move me deeply and raise all kinds of questions that go straight to the wounded heart of America today, I guess I would have been skeptical to say the least. But that skepticism might be exactly the point. America is an...
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224. Norman Fischer (zen priest, poet) – the only way out of the catastrophe we’re in
The other day on social media a friend asked what the heck is up with this Mr. Rogers revival. Why does everyone suddenly love this guy so much? Moments before, I had been listening to a new podcast about Dolly Parton, and her weird, almost saintlike ability to bring people together across…
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223. Karen Armstrong (theologian) – the art of getting outside of yourself
I’ve spent more of my life than most people I know immersed by choice in what my guest today would call “scripture”. I was never much of a Roman Catholic, in spite of being dragged weekly to church until I was about 13 and could no longer be dragged, and, in my boredom, sometimes believing I saw...
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222. Deborah Levy (writer) – it's those thoughts that are slightly awkward that need an airing
While reading Deborah Levy’s novel THE MAN WHO SAW EVERYTHING and her recent “working autobiography” THE COST OF LIVING I often found myself pausing and kind of sinking into a passage I’d just read. Going back and rereading it not because my attention had wandered nor exactly to unpack an idea…
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221. Yancey Strickler (Kickstarter co-founder) – you, me, us: now and in the future
The phrase “common sense” can be misleading. The way we use it in casual conversation, it means something like “that which is obvious to any sensible person, of course”. It’s like what philosopher Daniel Dennett says about the word “surely”. Surely we can all agree that it’s just an innocent…
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220. Elif Shafak (writer) – the cemetery of the companionless
“Maybe the opposite of goodness is not evil. Maybe the opposite of goodness is, in fact, numbness.” There are so many questions we never ask. So many assumptions we make every second of every day because our minds and our lives are sealed off from one another, accessible only through time,...
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219. Reginald Dwayne Betts (poet) – nothing to resurrect after prison
Some experiences change you so completely that you’re left with a choice: either spend your life running from them or spend your life turning them over in memory, trying to find new ways in, through, and out the other side. The power of the impulse to explain or somehow articulate these…
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218. Bill Bryson (writer) – the most extraordinary machine
Do you have a body? I do, but I was mostly unaware of this fact until somewhere in my mid-30s, when my life strategy of living like a bourbon-loving brain-in-a-vat became increasingly untenable. Since then, I’ve come to understand something that might have been obvious to you all along. The…
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217. Ibram X. Kendi (author, activist) – Antiracism 101
I grew up in the almost entirely white suburbs of 1980’s Bethesda, Maryland thinking of myself and my world as 100% not racist. It’s hard to notice what’s missing: for example pretty much any black or brown people anywhere I went except on vacation, in spite of the fact that we were right next to...
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216. Gail Collins (NY Times columnist) – The brief social media life of Glam-ma
In 1972, the year I was born, there was apparently a famous TV ad for Geritol. My guest today describes it thus: “…a husband spoke to the camera while his wife draped herself over his shoulder, smiling like something between a model and the brainwashed resident of a creepy commune…”My wife’s...
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215. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie: the cognitive segregation of America
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. You’ve probably heard of Cambridge Analytica. Maybe you know they’re a company that did some nefarious things involving facebook and the 2016 US presidential elections. If you’re anything like me, you don’t know the half of it. If you get through…
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214. Liz Plank (journalist) – men, masculinity, and the unfinished conversation
In the past half century or so feminism has had its hands plenty full dealing with the abuse and inequality women suffer at the hands of horribly behaved men and the systems they build. Too full to worry much about what the hell is going on inside those men and why. And there are powerful…
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213. Catherine Wilson (philosopher) – the Epicurean cure for what ails ya
If the word ‘epicurean’ brings to mind a porcine man in a toga reclining on a velvet couch and dropping fat juicy grapes into his open mouth, one by one, you are not alone. But this caricature, probably the descendent of some ancient propaganda by rival philosophers, tells us very little in fact...
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212. Downton Abbey film director Michael Engler – the best idea in the room
Like too many of us, I hated history classes throughout my school career, and only realized as an adult that there are few things more interesting to ponder than the ways people lived and thought in different times and places than my own. After all, we’re all stuck in our own time, limited by our...
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211. Etgar Keret (writer) – a tunnel dug under the prison floor
“A conversation is like a tunnel dug under the prison floor that you—patiently and painstakingly—scoop out with a spoon. It has one purpose: to get you away from where you are right now.” That is from the very, very weird tale Car Concentrate from Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s wonderful new...
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210. one night in Istanbul, with chef Musa Dağdeviren
There’s a pattern that happens with any new thing. First it’s scary, then you settle in to a rhythm, then you hit your stride, then you get too attached to things being the way they are. For a while there I thought I could only record an episode of this show sitting in a particular chair facing a...
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209. a mixtape for 2019
When I was a teenager and music was still on cassettes, a mixtape was an act of love. The selection and sequence of songs were a kind of message to the listener that left plenty of space for their own thoughts and feelings. Back in June Think Again hit its fourth year and its 200th show and it...
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208. Antonio Damasio (biologist) – this incredibly rich machinery
Quick question. Answer without thinking too hard. Ready? Where is your mind? What is your mind? Ok, Raise your hand if you thought of your brain. If you did, you’re in good company. For centuries, Western science, culture, and language has been obsessed with the head as the center of thought and...
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207. Lisa Brennan-Jobs (writer) – on growing up without, with, and in spite of her dad
The first computer I ever had was the first Apple Macintosh, back in the mid 80’s. I can still remember the sense of friendly reassurance from that smiling little icon that popped up on the screen when you turned it on—a cute, tiny computer smiling back at you. This device, it suggested, knew…
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206. Jenny Odell (artist) – attention as an act of resistance
When I think of my childhood home in Bethesda, Maryland, depending on what kind of mood I’m in, I think either of the mall or of the woods. Although there were some fun moments looking at the inappropriate novelty items like at Spencer Gifts, such as edible underwear, the mall in my memory is a...
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205. Jeffrey Israel (religious studies scholar, old friend) – Private hate, public love, and everything in between
A Rabbi, a Priest, and an Imam walk into a bar. No, wait. Imams don’t drink. Most rabbis don’t drink much either, come to think of it. Priests drink—at least in the movies—but mostly not in bars . . . So maybe nobody walks into a bar? How, when, and where are we all supposed to figure out how to...
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204. The Butler Sisters (filmmakers) – identity, intolerance, and change in the American heartland
In spite of all the weird ways the word has been abused since the 2016 elections, I think of myself as a liberal. As a basic value, I try to be open-minded. And like many liberals, I live in a big, liberal city where I rarely meet anyone who doesn’t share my values, religious outlook, and…
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203. Elif Shafak (novelist) – The story no one hears
After four years and just over 200 conversations for this podcast, I’m feeling the need for a new kind of politics. One that would champion uncertainty, fragility, emotional vulnerability against the tyranny of opinions that push us one way or another. I used to think that art was sufficient for...
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202. Tracy Edwards, MBE (British sailor) – If you don't like the way the world looks, change it
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? The thing everyone said was impossible, that you knew you had to do anyway, and that you doubted a thousand times while it was underway that you’d be able to see through to the end? There’s a good chance you can think of at least one example. And an even...
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201. Chris Moukarbel (WIG and GAGA FIVE FOOT TWO filmmaker) – The closest thing to actual magic
When I was in middle school in the suburbs of Maryland, a man—let’s call him Robert—started doing some occasional gardening and housecleaning for my parents. By high school, Robert was our full-time housekeeper and a nanny for me and my sister, a family member, really. And he had become a…
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200. Robert MacFarlane (writer) – deep time rising
I’m underground as I write this, one day before taping the conversation you’re about to hear, speeding through New York City subway tunnels that aren’t all that ancient but whose darkness, and rats, and crumbling, esoteric infrastructure holds fear and fascination enough for anyone who…
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199. Lama Rod Owens (RADICAL DHARMA co-author, Buddhist teacher) – the price of the ticket to freedom
Like Mick Jagger, the Indian prince we know as The Buddha taught that we can’t get no satisfaction from this world, though we try and we try, and we try, and we try . . . Buddha means “awakened one”. Awake to the fact that the world is impermanent and we suffer and cause suffering to one another...
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198. Barbara Tversky (cognitive psychologist) – World makes mind
You’re a body in the world. From the moment you’re born, from that very first gasp of air, you’re taking in sensations, trying to get a handle on things and the relationships between them. There’s a lot of things to get a handle on. Too many. So your brain needs to simplify. It makes boxes for...
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197. Eve Ensler (author, activist) – No way out but through
Note: I feel I should let listeners know that this episode of Think Again is about surviving and thriving in the face of unspeakable trauma and sexual violence. And in order to get to the thriving, we have talk about the trauma, which may be painful for some listeners and inappropriate for kids....
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196. Susan Hockfield (MIT president emerita, neuroscientist) – Extraordinary machines
“Are we in the best of times? Or the end of times? One of the oddities of the current era is that extreme pessimism about the world coexists with extreme optimism — and both have a plausible case to make.” I’m quoting Gideon Rachman from a recent Financial Times piece about Bill Gates and David...
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195. Adam Gopnik (essayist) – the rhinoceros of liberalism vs. the unicorns of everything else
If I had to choose one word to capture this moment in American (and maybe world) history, “patience” wouldn’t be it. From every direction, everything demands our urgent attention. Everything is a ticking time bomb, or one that’s just exploded, and we’re all the poorly-trained volunteer ambulance...
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194. Jared Diamond (Historian) – Look inward, Nation
Imagine yourself a German citizen the day after the end of World War II. Much of your city is bombed to ruins. A good part of the population is dead. The Nazi ideology that has dominated your nation for the past decade has been repudiated as definitively as Bambi in “Bambi Meets Godzilla”....
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193. Anaïs Mitchell (HADESTOWN creator, songwriter/singer) – sometimes the god speaks through you
Among other things, music can be medicine. Like a vaccine, it sometimes works by giving your body a little taste of the disease. Other times, of course, you just wanna dance, and James Brown might be just what you need. But the medicine songs I’m talking about are the ones that break your heart...
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192. Delphine Minoui (journalist) – Land of paradoxes: the inner and outer Iran
I remember visiting New York when I was 18 and thinking about coming here for college. How badly I wanted to be “from” New York. How cool, how real, how substantial that would be. What does it mean to be “from” any place? At what point do you own the culture like you own your native language?…
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191. Simon Critchley (philosopher) – the philosophy of tragedy & the tragedy of philosophy
Well into her 90’s, my grandma Selma and I had this running conversation about the state of the world. She’d escaped Polish pogroms as a 5 year old, lived through the loss of half her relatives in World War II, and saw the founding of the UN in 1945 and NATO in 1949 as signs of a world sick of...
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190. Terry Gilliam (filmmaker) - The impossible dream
Faith in anything is its own special form of madness. It’s a challenge to entropy, and entropy takes no challenge lightly. If there’s any better metaphor for this struggle than trying to make a big budget movie with even a shred of integrity, I haven’t found it. On the one hand, you’ve got this...
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189. Ross Kauffman (Oscar-winning filmmaker) – Tigers and the humans who love them
I was thinking this morning that It’s funny how “humane” is the only word we have for that idea, since so much that’s inhumane has been created by us humans. When we talk about the humane treatment of animals, considering the ways we’ve treated animals for most of our history, what can we…
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188. Frans de Waal (primatologist) – You're such a social animal
When I was a kid, there used to be a TV commercial for this series of animal videos you could order that were basically nothing but killing and sex. The tagline was “Find out why we call them . . . ANIMALS”! “Wait a minute . . .“ I used to think: “That’s not why we call them animals. Also, we’re...
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187. Aml Ameen (actor) - how the world teaches you who you are
They say Confucius said “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” I did the research. Confucius probably didn’t say that. But whoever said it was right—revenge bites back. Victor Headley’s 1992 book YARDIE launched a genre of Jamaican pulp fiction. It’s the story of a life…
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About this show
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 psychol
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Big Think / Panoply