The Week in Big Ideas - April 18, 2025
An AMA with Gretchen Rubin, a Q&A with Jamil Zaki, and other ways to connect with great authors.
Another week, another stack of big ideas piling up on our desks. We here at Next Big Idea Club sort through them so you don’t have to, surfacing the insights that could have an immediate and lasting impact on your career, your relationships, and just about every other aspect of this balancing act we call a life. Here’s the best stuff we came across this week:
AMA with Gretchen Rubin
On Thursday, April 24, at 3:30 p.m. ET, Author Insider will host an exclusive, members-only conversation with
the bestselling author and acclaimed podcaster, about how she built her nonfiction empire.Gretchen’s success is nothing short of remarkable: seven New York Times bestsellers, a podcast with over 200 million downloads, millions of social media followers, a wildly popular newsletter, and a thriving company, Gretchen Rubin Media Inc.
This is your chance to go behind the scenes.
In this live, interactive session, you can ask Gretchen directly about the strategies and decisions that have propelled her to prominence and learn firsthand how she connects with her audience and consistently creates such popular work.
Exclusive AMAs like this one are reserved for Author Insider Founding Members, our highest subscription level. Founding Membership also includes VIP invites to in-person events, complimentary advanced copies of upcoming books, direct access to our team, and more.
To attend this conversation with Gretchen — and others like it — click here and become a Founding Member by Wednesday, April 23, and you’ll receive an invitation to join the call.
This Week on the Next Big Idea Podcast
You know those families where the kids all grow up to be remarkably successful? New York Times journalist Susan Dominus has spent the last few years getting to know some of them, looking for parenting techniques and life lessons. She's written a book about her findings called The Family Dynamic: A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success. "I thought I wrote a book about high-achieving families," she tells us, "but when I look back, it's really a book about families who did believe that the sky's the limit."
This Week on the Next Big Idea Daily Podcast
Two former Harvard faculty members—a neurologist and a negotiation expert— team up to introduce conflict resilience—the transformative skill of staying engaged in disagreement instead of shutting down or walking away. In their new book, Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, they reveal how learning to sit with discomfort can unlock better conversations, healthier relationships, and a more connected society.
Book Bite of the Week
Whether you're buying a house, going after a job, or choosing a life partner, you’re playing a high-stakes game. So why not apply the best available tools to win that game—tools from economics, negotiation strategy, and game theory? Daryl Fairweather—chief economist at Redfin, member of the academic advisory council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a regular contributor to Forbes—shows you the cheat codes you can use to work the system to your advantage in her new book Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work.
Member Event
Mark your calendar and submit your questions for a live Q&A with Stanford psychology professor
about his latest book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. The Q&A will be available for NBIC members to join live on April 29th at 1:30pm ET. Not yet a member of Next Big Idea Club? Go here to sign up and secure your spot.Happy Pub Week!
This week was not too shabby in the publishing world, with some exciting new books coming out—books like The Next Day by Melinda French Gates, How to Fall in Love with Questions by
, No New Things by The Gut-Grain Paradox by Steven R. Gundry, MD, Taming the Molecule of More by Michael E. Long, The Psychology of Leadership by , and What’s Left by Malcolm Harris.
Whether you join us for one of our live events or dip into one of our audio summaries of these fascinating books, we’re glad to have you with us. Have a great weekend.