The Next Big Idea

As the war with Iran enters its second week, two big questions loom: How did we get here? And how will it end? We put those questions to Scott Anderson. Scott is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Sudan, and El Salvador. He’s also the author of King of Kings, a riveting account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. He helps us unpack the long, complicated history between the US and Iran — countries that were once close allies — and looks ahead at what may come next. "In the Middle East," he says, "things can always get worse."

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Emad Mostaque co-founded Stability AI, the company behind the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, and he now runs Intelligent Internet, which builds open-source AI models. In his new book, ⁠The Last Economy⁠, he argues that AI is about to make human intellect so cheap and abundant that the entire economic order — work, money, meaning — will crack apart. And he thinks this will take place within a thousand days. In this episode, he and Rufus talk about what happens if we sleepwalk into this, and what's possible if we don't.

Watch The Next Big Idea on YouTube! You can find our episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Follow Rufus on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, subscribe to our ⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠, or send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠. We love getting fan mail.

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Here are just a few of the dizzying predictions Emad Mostaque makes in today's episode:

"I think it's a good idea to borrow as much as you can right now because the entire economy is going to shift — you probably won't have to repay it."

"Within a thousand days, the nature of your job will become economically irrelevant if you work in anything on the other side of a screen."

"I don't think the big AI companies are going to survive the next few years."

Emad co-founded Stability AI, the company behind the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, and he now runs Intelligent Internet, which builds open-source AI models. In his new book, The Last Economy, he argues that AI is about to make human intellect so cheap and abundant that the entire economic order — work, money, meaning — will crack apart. And he thinks this will take place within a thousand days. In this episode, he and Rufus talk about what happens if we sleepwalk into this, and what's possible if we don't.

Watch The Next Big Idea on YouTube! You can find our episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Follow Rufus on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, subscribe to our ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠, or send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠. We love getting fan mail.

Sponsored By:

Bitdefender — Get 30% off your plan at bitdefender.com/idea

Fabric — Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family at meetfabric.com/nbi

Factor — Head to ⁠factormeals.com/idea50off⁠ and use code idea50off to get 50% off your first box

Granola — Get three months free at granola.ai/idea

Shopify — Start your $1/month trial at ⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/nbi⁠⁠⁠

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” sneers a rebel henchman in Shakespeare’s “Henry VI.” Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has another idea: let’s fire all the politicians. She has a point, doesn’t she? Most of ’em are beholden to donors, allergic to accountability, and more interested in stuffing their reelection coffers than serving the public good. But what’s the alternative? Well, Hélène believes we could break the partisan gridlock and restore public trust by letting ordinary citizens, chosen at random, set the agenda and craft legislation. That may sound preposterous, but in her new book, Politics Without Politicians, she blends examples from ancient Athens to modern-day France to show citizen rule in action and argue that it might just save democracy.

This episode was guest-hosted by one of our favorite citizens, Michael Kovnat. If you’d like more of his dulcet tones and shrewd insights, check out his daily podcast (The Next Big Idea Daily) and newsletter (Book of the Day).

Watch The Next Big Idea on YouTube! You can find our episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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On the surface, Ian Leslie's book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs is a dual biography of the greatest songwriting duo the world has ever seen. So not exactly standard Next Big Idea territory. But what’s remarkable about Ian's book, which I've been pressing on everyone I know, whether they're Beatlemaniacs or the opposite (i.e., Rolling Stones fans), is that through the narrative of this tender, tempestuous, radically inventive partnership — romance, really — genuinely big ideas emerge about creativity, vulnerability, and how to get by with a little help from your friends.

Watch The Next Big Idea on YouTube! You can find our episodes ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠.

Follow Rufus on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, subscribe to our ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠, or send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠. We love getting fan mail.

Sponsored By:

Bitdefender — Get 30% off your plan at bitdefender.com/idea

Factor — Head to ⁠factormeals.com/idea50off⁠ and use code idea50off to get 50% off your first box

Granola — Get three months free at granola.ai/idea

Shopify — Start your $1/month trial at ⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/nbi⁠⁠⁠