The Next Big Idea Daily

After analyzing thousands of regrets from people in more than 100 countries, Daniel Pink (”The Power of Regret”) has identified the four core regrets that haunt us most. Today, he explains what they are and how understanding these categories can help you make better decisions in the future.

Regret makes us feel worse, but it can make us do better. Indeed, the way it makes us do better is by making us feel worse.

It’s popular to claim you have no regrets. Popular, but perilous. Because regrets aren’t anything to be ashamed of — on the contrary, they’re an integral part of being human. When you deny their existence, you deny yourself the opportunity to look back on your missteps so you can chart a better path forward. This week on the show: Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink shares five key insights from his latest bestseller, “The Power of Regret.” In these episodes, you’ll learn how to use your regrets to make better decisions, improve your performance at work, and bring more meaning into your life.

Today, meditation expert Sharon Salzberg shares one final insight from her new book "Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom."

Today, Sharon Salzberg tells us how practicing loving-kindness meditation can change how we treat others and understand ourselves.

What if instead of demanding that a painful emotion disappear or becoming all consumed by it, you began to relate to your experience with spaciousness infused with kindness?

Society’s prescriptions for freedom, happiness, and abundance may not be your own.

Sharon Salzberg has been meditating since 1971 — “since before it was cool,” she likes to say. That practice has inspired a series of books, most recently “Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom,” which is all about using the power of mindfulness to confront, and ultimately overcome, whatever obstacles stand in your way. Today, she tells Michael how to transcend “contraction.” What’s contraction? You’ll have to listen to this episode… (Want the best books of the year — as chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink — delivered to your doorstep? Sign up for a Next Big Idea Club hardback subscription, and use the code DAILY for 10% off.)

All week, Wharton professor Katy Milkman has been giving us research-backed tips for making changes that stick. Now, in the final installment of her mini masterclass, she explains why the most durable habit is a flexible one. --- • Katy Milkman’s book is “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.” Grab a copy today. • A few years back, she spoke with Daniel Pink on our sister podcast, The Next Big Idea. You can listen to that conversation here. • Speaking of Daniel Pink, did you know that every season he teams up with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Susan Cain to pick the two best new books and mail them to your front door? Sign up for a hardcover Next Big Idea Club membership today and get 10% off when you use the code IMMORTALITY at checkout!

Struggling to achieve a goal? Form a club with people who have your back.

How do you make change fun? By bundling an arduous task (exercising) with an enjoyable one (binge-watching lowbrow TV). --- Have you heard about our book boxes? Every quarter, we’ll send you the season’s two best books of the season as chosen by our curators, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink. You’ll also get access to our app, VIP invitations to live events, and other member benefits. To subscribe, go to nextbigideaclub.com and use code IMMORTALITY for 10% off.

New Year’s. Your birthday. The start of a new season. These are days when the slate is wiped clean. Which makes them perfect for establishing new habits, like going to the gym or writing in your diary. Today, Wharton professor Katy Milkman explains how you can use the “fresh start effect” to make changes big and small. --- Have you heard about our book boxes? Every quarter, we’ll send you the season’s two best books of the season, as chosen by our curators: Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink. You’ll also get access to our app, VIP invitations to live events, and other member benefits. To subscribe, go to nextbigideaclub.com and use code IMMORTALITY for 10% off.

How do you get from where you are to where you want to be — from procrastinator to optimizer, couch potato to gym rat, night owl to worm-getting early bird? That's the question Wharton professor Katy Milkman set out to answer in her recent book "How to Change." Actually, she didn't just "set out" to answer it. She did answer it, and she's on the show this week to share science-based strategies you can use to make lasting changes in your life.

Have you figured out how to live the good life? Don't worry if you're still working on it. It's only been a week. And you haven't even heard the final piece of advice from Matt Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, professors at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and authors of the new book "Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most." --- • It's Friday, which means it's pub day for our newsletter! Sign up today so you can go behind the scenes of the show, share your feedback with Michael, and get a sneak peek at upcoming episodes.

You can’t take bits and pieces of different philosophical traditions and put them together into a roadmap to the good life. --- • Have you downloaded our app? It’s loaded up with hundreds of book summaries written and read by the world’s leading authors. Check it out by going to nextbigideaclub.com/app

"What matters most in life?" There's a reason Matt and Ryan, theology professors at Yale and our guests this week, call it the Big Question. It's too big to answer all at once. You have to break it down. Today they're going to teach you how.

Today, we learn why the deepest question — the one that can truly change our lives, ground us, and give us direction — is not “What do I really want?” It’s “What is really worth wanting?” (Have you checked out our newsletter? Every Friday, Michael looks back on the week's episodes and shares his key takeaways. Sign up now!)

This week: Matt Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, professors at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, share key insights from their New York Times bestselling book "Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most."

Even your suboptimal behaviors have a function. Understanding what they are can help you make a change.

You say self-sabotage, your brain says self-protection. In today's master class, Britt Frank explains how your brain tries to keep you safe by shooting you in the foot. --- • Have you checked out our newsletter? Every Friday, Michael looks back on the week's episodes and shares his key takeaways. Sign up now!

This week we’re getting unstuck. We’re passing Go. We’re collecting $200. We’re finding a way forward. How? By utilizing the neuroscience-based tools psychotherapist Britt Frank shares in her new book, “The Science of Stuck.” Today, she explains why it’s so empowering to realize that mental health is a physical process.

In our brains, there is no such thing as a true “lack of motivation.” But how can we harness this biological fact to get off the couch and get more done?

This week on The Next Big Idea Daily: psychotherapist Britt Frank shares five key insights from her book "The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward." Today, Britt explains why you should treat anxiety like a check engine light. • Download the Next Big Idea app to hear hundreds of audio summaries of the best new books

In the final installment of the master class based on her book “Tranquility by Tuesday,” productivity expert Laura Vanderkam says nailing your work-life balance comes down to how you use your Fridays.

Do effortful fun before effortless fun. But what's the difference? Laura explains in today's mini master class.

To renew your spirits, Laura says you need to take some time for yourself. --- Download the Next Big Idea app and listen to hundreds of the world's bestselling authors summarize their books in just 12 minutes.

You know what you need? An adventure. That's right. You don't have to wait until your next vacation. You can — and should — make it a habit to do surprising, novel things on the reg. And, yes, we know you're thinking: "How can I fit that in with everything else I have going on?" Don't worry. Laura Vanderkam has a simple solution for making adventures of all sizes part of your routine.

In "Tranquility by Tuesday," time management guru Laura Vanderkam shares tools you can use to finally make time for the activities you love. But before you can do that, you need to get a good night's sleep. Today, Laura explains how.

All good things must come to an end. It's our last day with Mónica Guzmán, journalist, political de-polarizer, and author of "I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times." This week, she's been our anti-debate coach, teaching us how to have tough talks about thorny topics that don't end in fisticuffs. In her final chat with Michael, she says that once you've built a bridge that connects you to someone on the other side of the ideological divide, you should do everything you can not to burn it. • Have you heard about The Next Big Idea app? It has hundreds of non-fiction book summaries (written and read by the authors themselves), dozens of e-courses (with folks like Dan Pink and Susan Cain), ad-free episodes of this show, and invitations to live author Q&As. Download it today!

What's the most powerful question you can ask in a politically charged conversation? "How did you come to believe that?"

“The paths we walk to our views are rich and long,” Mónica Guzmán says in today’s episode, “and it is not very likely that one meme or mic drop point is going to change someone else’s mind.” So what will?

“I don’t understand this person!” You know you’ve thought it. About the uncle or neighbor or co-worker whose worldview is diametrically opposed to your own. But what would happen if you checked your bewildered outrage and tried curiosity instead?

This week, award-winning journalist Mónica Guzmán stops by to teach us how to cross the political divide, find common ground, and learn from people whose worldviews radically differ from our own. Mónica's new book is "I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times." (Have you checked out our app? It's loaded up with hundreds of book summaries read by the authors themselves. Download it here!)

Alright, it's time to wrap up Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's five-part master class based on his book "Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life." Today, Seth explains what the data says about finding happiness. • Our newsletter comes out today. Sign up now! • Download The Next Big Idea app

Success depends less on getting lucky and more on using your luck well. In this episode, the fourth in Seth’s mini master class, he explains how to do it.

You might assume that the wealthiest 1% of Americans are neurosurgeons, corporate attorneys, and hedge fund managers. In reality, they're more likely to own car dealerships or run beverage distribution companies. Today, Seth explains why that is.

Good news for all you parents out there: the data says you can relax. But there’s still one parenting decision that matters. A lot. Want to know what it is? Tune in to today’s episode!

Big data. Baseball managers use it to win pennants. Stockbrokers use it to beat the market. And now you can use it to get what you really want in life. That's according to a new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz called Don't Trust Your Gut. When faced with difficult life decisions-like "Who should I marry?" and "How can I avoid screwing up my kids?"-we typically follow our intuition. The problem is that our intuition is often wrong. The smarter move, Seth says, is to comb through millions of data points to find statistically significant answers. But who has time for that, not to mention the technical know-how? Well, Seth does. And this week on the show, he'll share the answers he found, starting with the surprising traits you should look for when searching for your soulmate.

Today, we wrap up our week-long master class with David Myers with a discussion of hindsight bias and how it can help you be less hard on yourself. Our newsletter comes out today! Sign up now.

"Others notice us less than we imagine. This is liberating: A bad hair day hardly matters. Few will notice. Fewer will care. Of those, fewer still will remember."

David says we worry about improbable horrors (like plane crashes) while ignoring greater risks (car smash-ups). Today, he explains how performing statistically sound risk assessments can calm our worried minds.

We all know it's good for us to nurture our relationships with close friends and loved ones. Today, David explains why chatting up strangers is also important.

All week long on The Next Big Idea Daily, Michael will be chatting with social psychologist David Myers about the wonder of human thought and action, and how you can use insights from the latest research in David's field to boost your mood, improve your decision-making, and more. Today, David shares his first big idea, and it's a counterintuitive one. It turns out that “much as when we observe others and infer their sentiments, so hearing ourselves talk clues us in to our own attitudes.” Our newsletter comes out every Friday. It features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, previews of upcoming seasons, and ways to engage with the show. Sign up now!

In our final episode with Adam Gopnik, the award-winning New Yorker writer and author of "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery" learns how to box, how to dance, and why there’s “no mastery in the absence of another.” Our newsletter comes out today! Sign up now!

Today: Why mastery requires idiosyncrasy. Our newsletter comes out every Friday. It features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, previews of upcoming seasons, and ways to engage with us. Sign up now!

Adam Gopnik's first memory of mastery was watching his mother roll out strudel dough, so in midlife, he asked his mother — a linguistics professor by day, pastry maestro by night — to teach him how to bake.

It's the second day of our week-long master class with Adam Gopnik, New Yorker staff writer and author of "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery." Today, he explains how learning to drive at the tender age of 55 brought him closer to his father. Have you subscribed to our newsletter yet? It comes out every Friday and features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, previews of upcoming seasons, and ways to engage with us. Sign up now!

A few years ago, Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for The New Yorker and three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, started thinking about all the things he wasn't good at. He couldn't dance the foxtrot or bake a brioche. Well into his 50s, he still had no idea how to drive a car. To make matters worse, when he looked around, he saw people who could do these things — often with great skill. How, he wondered, did they do it? How do any of us get good at the things we're good at? And how do some of us become next-level masters? To answer those questions, Adam set out to master the skills he lacked, and he has written up the results in a profound little book called "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery." All this week, he'll be sitting down with Michael to talk about how he did it and what he learned. First up: drawing. Our newsletter comes out every Friday. It features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, previews of upcoming seasons, and ways to engage with us. Sign up now!

In the final installment of his mini master class, Jonah shares his formula for telling great stories. The latest edition of our weekly newsletter comes out today. It features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, details on our next guest, and ways to engage with us. Sign up now!

Does asking questions make you look smart? (Yes!) Our newsletter comes out every Friday. It features commentary from Michael, links to relevant Book Bites, previews of upcoming seasons, and ways to engage with us. Sign up now!