THE FUTURE OF WRITING: A Conversation with Ethan Mollick and Steven Johnson

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if, thanks to AI, you can now research and write a book two, three, or even four times faster? For authors and AI pioneers Steven Johnson (Editorial Director, NotebookLM and Google Labs) and Ethan Mollick (Wharton professor and creator of One Useful Thing), that's the new reality. In this episode, they crack open their personal toolkits to reveal the prompts and workflows they use to supercharge their creativity. What you’ll learn: How Steven used AI to write 40,000 words in 72 hours. The specific AI tools Steven and Ethan rely on for researching and writing. Whether AI will ever write better than humans. How the very concept of a "book" may morph into an interactive, personalized experience that readers can query, customize, and even turn into a game. Further listening: BILL GATES: Superhuman AI May Be Closer Than You Think SAL KHAN: How AI Will Revolutionize the Way We Learn MARYANNE WOLF: Are We Forgetting How To Read? STEVEN JOHNSON & DAVID CHALMERS: Artificial Intelligence Meets Virtual Worlds ADAM BROTMAN & ANDY SACK: The AI Tsunami Is Already Here ——— This episode is brought to you by AUTHOR INSIDER, our exclusive community and learning platform for ambitious creators. What's Inside: ✅ Innovative strategies from bestselling authors and industry experts ✅ Audience growth tactics to expand your readership and revenue ✅ Vibrant creator community for networking and collaboration ✅ Exclusive content not available anywhere else 🎯 Exclusive 25% discount for podcast listeners — join AUTHOR INSIDER today ——— Ready to reach 300,000 curious listeners and readers? Promote your brand, book, or product to an audience passionate about big ideas. Request our sponsor kit: https://tally.so/r/wLgkN1

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.
0:04.8	Today, will we still read books in 20 years?
0:08.4	We ask Ethan Mollock and Stephen Johnson. I love books. I love the smell of them, the feel of them, the ridiculous jackets that fall off and crumple by the spine and tatter at the edges, the whole
0:39.3	experience. And I truly believe that to read a book, especially in this moment in history,
0:46.2	is a radical act of listening, of focus, of meditation for six, eight, ten, twelve hours
0:52.8	at a time. I spent my 20s as a book editor,
0:57.0	and I've come back to it. I've spent the last six years building a business at the next big
1:01.8	idea club that's all about celebrating the ideas in books. I feel about books the way foodies
1:09.4	feel about truffles, the way toddlers feel about bubble wrap.
1:13.7	But two of my three boys, they have no use for books.
1:18.3	They really don't see the point.
1:20.1	They think video, YouTube, is a better format for communicating ideas.
1:25.7	And these kids are really curious and engaged with the world.
1:29.1	And let's keep this between us, but they're probably better informed than I am on a lot of topics.
1:34.6	So I find myself wondering, in the great stretch of human history, will the book, as we know it
1:40.9	today, prove to be historically specific? There was a time, of course, before the book, a time that Socrates is considered to be a better time. This invention, said Socrates, will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. We know this, of course, because the student
2:01.8	Plato wrote it down. The AI revolution is beginning to change how many people are writing
2:08.9	books today. AIs are becoming extensions of our minds, as books were before them. If the computer
2:15.4	is a bicycle for the mind, as Steve Jobs put it, AI is a motorcycle.
2:21.1	Where is our mind meld with AI headed? How will we write in future years? And how will we read?
2:28.6	I can't think of any two individuals I would rather discuss this with than Stephen Johnson, the celebrated writer
2:35.7	and editorial director at Google Labs and Notebook L.M, and Ethan Mollock, the Wharton Professor,
	...

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