The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join our host, Rufus Griscom — along with our curators, Malcolm G...
The Former Head of USAID on Why Foreign Aid Benefits Everyone
When Rajiv Shah was in his late 20s and didn’t know what to do with his life, he got a job at a fledgling nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before he knew it, he was a driving force behind a global vaccination program that immunized 900 million children and saved 16 million lives.
At 36, he became the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), managing a $20 billion budget, overseeing a staff of 10,000, and leading the U.S. response to global humanitarian crises.
Today, as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, he’s finding innovative solutions to mitigate climate change and end energy poverty.
What connects these experiences? At every step, Raj maintained a big bet mentality. What is a big bet? “A concerted effort to fundamentally solve a single, pressing problem in your community or our world. Big bets require setting profound, seemingly unachievable goals and believing they are achievable.” In this episode, he shares his methodology for creating large-scale change and making the world a better place.
(This episode was first broadcast in 2024.)
💿 For more episodes about aid, philanthropy, and how best to solve the world’s problems, check out this playlist
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Does AI Have Rights? | The Next Big Idea Daily
Philosopher Jeff Sebo calls for a revolution in ethics, suggesting we expand our “moral circle” to everything from insects to AI.
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📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
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Three Things We Learned Last Year
In this special audio essay, Rufus reflects on the big ideas from 2024 that altered his worldview.
🎙️ You can find all of the interviews mentioned in this episode in this Spotify playlist
📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Subscribe to our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!
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Technology Is Tearing Us Apart | The Next Big Idea Daily
Faster, easier communication was supposed to make the world better. Instead, it made us miserable. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? For answers, we turn to Nicholas Carr, author of the new book “Superbloom.”
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SUPERAGENCY: What Could Go Right With AI?
A recent Pew Research survey found that most Americans are more worried than excited about AI. Reid Hoffman, however, isn't one of them.
He knows the risks — arms races, runaway superintelligence, the whole humans-being-turned-into paperclips scenario — but he's still convinced that AI is poised to usher in an era of extraordinary human progress. And as you'll hear in this episode, he makes a pretty good case.
Reid is the co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI, and Manas AI, a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock, and host of the podcasts "Masters of Scale" and "Possible." Just this week, he published a thrilling new book called "Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future." Today, he tells Rufus why he's "unequivocally very optimistic" about AI (and why you should be, too), how he's using AI in his daily life, and why he doesn't think DeepSeek is as much of a game-changer as some people say.
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The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join our host, Rufus Griscom — along with our curators, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — for conversations that might just change the way you see the world. New episodes every Thursday.
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