64. Mixtape #4 – The Writers' Room

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2016

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode: Big Think launched in 2008 as a "YouTube for intellectuals." Since then, it has produced over 10,000 short-form video interviews with many of the most influential and creative thinkers of our time. Big Think's videos are bits of "expert wisdom", presented confidently and definitively against a white screen background. With THINK AGAIN, we wanted to revisit these ideas the way the audience encounters them––spontaneously, messily, and often out of context. We wanted to bring the experts to that state some thinkers call "beginner's mind" and see what would happen. The format: Jason sits down with artists, scientists, historians––all accomplished experts in their fields. They chat a bit about the guest's work. Then, they watch three surprise Big Think interview clips (chosen by the video producers), emailed to Jason just before the interview, and discuss them. And the conversation goes where it goes. Some amazing moments have happened this past year––fun, profound, profoundly painful. This, the fourth of our first year "mixtapes", focuses on the most memorable bits of writerly wit and wisdom from the first year of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast. With playwright and screenwriter Sir David Hare on (not) resting on your laurels, National Book Award Winner James McBride on writing with a roomful of giant talents, rapper and first-time novelist Kate Tempest on writers' block as "fear of writing", and Nobel Laureate Turkish author Orhan Pamuk on why writing programs should teach writers to manage their own psychology. Surprise clips in this episode: Sheila Heen, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Charles Duhigg, and Augusten Burroughs About Think Again - A Big Think Podcast: You've got 10 minutes with Einstein. What do you talk about? Black holes? Time travel? Why not gambling? The Art of War? Contemporary parenting? Some of the best conversations happen when we're pushed outside of our comfort zones. Each week on Think Again, we surprise smart people you may have heard of with short clips from Big Think's interview archives on every imaginable subject. These conversations could, and do, go anywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, this is Jason Gautz, and you're listening to Think Again a Big Think podcast.
0:09.0	Since 2008, Big Think has been bringing you big ideas in little doses from some of the most creative thinkers around.
0:16.0	On the Think Again podcast, we step outside of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and me,
0:22.3	your host, with unexpected clips from Big Things Interview archives, ideas that we didn't
0:27.4	necessarily come here prepared to discuss.
0:30.3	This is the fourth mixtape that I'm doing of some of the highlights of the first year
0:35.5	of the show, which is time to reflect back and think about where we've been.
0:39.3	As you may have noticed, if you're following the show,
0:42.3	I have a lot of creative writers on.
0:45.3	I'm a writer myself, and I think a lot about the craft of writing.
0:49.3	And some of the guests have given our listeners advice
0:54.3	that I find incredibly powerful
0:56.9	and that stays with me all the time.
1:00.0	This episode is an attempt to round up
1:02.0	some of those best moments, some of those most powerful moments,
1:05.1	advice about writers' block,
1:07.2	how to work with a creative team,
1:09.6	how to deal with success and failure, and how to deal with the psychology of being a writer.
1:14.6	I hope that you'll find these moments as meaningful as I do.
1:18.6	This first segment is from a conversation with the acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Sir David Hare. He really surprised me.
1:29.3	There was a really interesting and unexpected turn
1:31.3	in the middle of this conversation that I found delightful.
	...

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