Full Interview

Full Interview

Intimate, distraction-free, long-form interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
Latest episode
How to set better goals and actually follow-through, in 65 minutes
Author Chris Bailey breaks down the "intention stack" and the underrated role of values alignment in follow-through.

Chris Bailey

A person sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, gesturing with both hands. The background fades from dark blue to purple. The BT logo appears in the top right corner.
A man sits on a wooden chair with one leg crossed, gesturing with his hand, against a background of vintage sheet music.
59mins
Professor Michael Spitzer argues that music is something closer to a biological system, one that was shaping the human body long before we had words for what we were feeling.
A woman sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop; the blurred profile of a child with a tear rolling down their cheek is visible in the foreground.
54mins
Dr. Nicole LePera breaks down the 6 archetypes of childhood trauma.
A man sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a brick-walled room with arched windows; "B T" logo is visible in the top right corner.
1hr 8mins
Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, argues that the entire self-help industry has been selling ephemeral highs: affirmations, visualizations, the relentless pursuit of feeling good. The research doesn't support it, and more importantly, neither does lived experience.
A man in casual business attire sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, with a mountain landscape and a climber scaling a rocky cliff in the background.
52mins
Brad Stulberg breaks down the biology, philosophy, and psychology behind genuine excellence and how to reach it.
A woman in a black suit sits on a stool in a white room, gesturing with one hand. The background features abstract teal and pink patterns.
50mins
Rachel Yehuda, a leading PTSD researcher, has spent her career uncovering the way that trauma can leave impressions on our genes, sometimes passing biological echoes of those events to the next generation.
An older man with a beard sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, with yellow neuron-like patterns on a black background surrounding the scene.
1hr 7mins
Members
Neuroscientist David Linden sheds light on the biology behind phenomena that medicine has long struggled to explain, from voodoo death and broken heart syndrome to the placebo effect, and why grief shows up in autopsy results
A person sits on a chair against a white backdrop with abstract black dotted patterns, set against a yellow background.
1hr 16mins
NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller makes the case that quantum entanglement may be the underlying fabric from which spacetime itself emerges. 
An older man in a suit sits on a chair in front of a backdrop showing a dramatic classical painting of chaos and destruction.
1hr 43mins
Historian Eric Cline argues the Bronze Age collapse wasn't the work of one invading force or one bad harvest, but something far harder to stop: An overly interdependent system that had no way to absorb multiple shocks at once.
A man sits on a chair against a white backdrop, placed in front of the Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, under a clear blue sky.
53mins
Sam Kean examines how rogue archaeologists are recreating the sounds, tastes, smells, and practices of the ancient past.
A bald man wearing a black sweater sits against a plain light background, gesturing with his right hand while looking at the camera.
58mins
Alain de Botton argues that our romantic lives are shaped more by the emotional patterns we learned in childhood than by destiny.
A man in a suit and glasses sits indoors, gesturing with both hands while speaking. The setting includes a brick wall, a lamp, a plant, and a window.
54mins
Members
Chris Miller explains the hidden reason that global superpowers are obsessed with Taiwan.
An older person sits on a chair against a white backdrop, with a colorful outer space scene digitally added around the background.
1hr 3mins
Astronomer Jill Tarter explains why SETI is really about technology, patience, and learning how to tell alien signals from our own.
A woman sits on a chair against a white backdrop, gesturing with her hands, with a dynamic black background and white abstract swirl surrounding her.
53mins
Members
“Our conscious awareness is everything. And the fact that it's still so mysterious to scientists and to all of humanity, the fact that it's still one of the great unsolved mysteries makes it something that everyone can be excited about and that inspires awe in everyone.”
A woman in a blue outfit and red heels sits on a chair in a studio with a white backdrop, flanked by stylized images of a person's face looking at a phone.
1hr 23mins
Why social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones.
A man in a black suit sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a modern brick-walled room with large windows and minimal furnishings.
1hr 23mins
"The process of systematizing, correcting errors, finding approximations, and making them work as civil systems that was what really drove me to start looking at human calculation and what was the foundation that it laid for the modern computer age."
A woman sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a brick-walled room, with potted plants on tables on either side.
54mins
Members
"This will help people take meaningful steps to slow the rate of aging and increase what we call their health span or their kind of time of life expectancy free from disease."
A man sitting in a chair.
1hr 51mins
Stoicism has been flattened into slogans about toughness, detachment, and emotional silence, a version that’s easy to sell, but mostly wrong.  Massimo Pigliucci returns Stoicism to its original purpose: a […]
An older man with a white beard sits on a chair against a white backdrop, with a large, colorful DNA double helix illustration in the background.
54mins
“How can all the diversity and, sort of, seeming order that's out there in the world emerge from a process dependent upon chance?”
A classical-style stone bust with curly hair is shown with a cloth blindfold covering its eyes, set against a solid black background. The image has a yellow tint.
47mins
“The problem is in our information. Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.”
A middle-aged man with glasses and long hair, wearing a floral shirt, stands indoors in a warmly lit room with blurred background furniture.
55mins
“Old systems of the past are collapsing, and new systems of the future are still to be born. I call this moment the great progression.”