The Next Big Idea

Will Storr is the author of the dazzling books The Science of Storytelling and A Story Is a Deal, and in this episode, he tells us everything he knows about humanity’s greatest invention: story. More than just ente...

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and pencil-maker. He was a great resigner and, above all, a superb writer whose masterpiece, "Walden," is considered by many to be America's first environmentalist manifesto.

But John Kaag has a different view.

"Thoreau's attempt to 'get back to nature,'" he and co-author Jonathan Van Belle wrote in their book,

How did a group of notoriously difficult French philosophers become intellectual rock stars on American college campuses — and how much do their ideas matter today?

In The Frenchmen, writer and editor Emily Eakin traces the unlikely rise of Fre...

Democracy is in the dumps. OK, that's a bit dramatic. But it's definitely not working as well as it used to. Good thing Daron Acemoglu — Nobel laureate, MIT Institute Professor, and one of the world's most-cited economists — has a plan to fix it.

Today on the show, he explains why liberal democracy has faltered in the post-industrial age and makes the case for upgradin...

What if creativity isn’t a talent you’re born with, but a muscle you’ve simply stopped using?

In Daily Creative, Blythe Harris and Mallory May make the case that everyone is creative — even the people convinced they can’t draw, paint, writ...