It should be every scientist’s greatest fear: that 2025, in the United States, will mirror very closely what happened in Nazi Germany in 1933. In the 1920s and 1930s, physics and mathematics in Germany was second-to-none. Einstein achieved his great successes in Germany, and was … | Continue reading
Let’s travel back in time for a moment, to 1903. Rainer Maria Rilke, an Austrian poet, was broke. Even worse, he worried that he had run out of ideas. At twenty-seven, he had already written more than a dozen books, though he had little traditional “success” to show for them. Pen … | Continue reading
Are the goals set forth in The Paris Agreement still achievable? Data Scientist Hannah Ritchie sits down with us to offer a dose of reality — and optimism about our planet’s future. This video Is it too late for us to slow climate warming? is featured on Big Think. | Continue reading
I’ve been reading Barry Ritholtz for well over a decade, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from following his work, it’s this: investing isn’t just about money — it’s about psychology, humility, and learning to think clearly in a noisy world. Ritholtz, the longtime market com … | Continue reading
We’ve all had a moment, at some point in our lives, where we began to wonder about things greater than ourselves. What were things like before we came into existence? What were they like before our parents, grandparents, or even any human came into existence? Was there a time bef … | Continue reading
Although few of us have ever seen an aura with our own eyes, we all seem to know more or less what it is supposed to look like: a faintly luminescent cloud or haze, a ring of flames, a solar disk, a crown of lightning. These are some of the many ways that artists, healers, clairv … | Continue reading
To those who contend that the publishing business is no less fractured than our broadly polarized media allegiances — post-literate digital natives in one tribe, regressive champions of the analog in the other — Morissa Schwartz offers a layer of connective and restorative tissue … | Continue reading
35 years ago, NASA launched its first great observatory: the Hubble Space Telescope. This photo shows the Hubble Space telescope being deployed, on April 25, 1990, one day after its launch. It was taken by the IMAX Cargo Bay Camera (ICBC) mounted aboard the space shuttle Discover … | Continue reading
What if you don’t matter? What if all of your thoughts, precious feelings, great dreams, and terrible fears are completely, utterly, spectacularly irrelevant? Might it be that all of your mental life is just some pointless spectator, looking on as your body does the important stu … | Continue reading
Like millions of Americans, I am dyslexic. You would probably never know, unless you happen to be sitting in the passenger seat of my car and find yourself yelling “I said left!” as I oddly turn right. Then, if you ask me why I turned the wrong way, you will be unable to comprehe … | Continue reading
This video Where did our universe come from? is featured on Big Think. | Continue reading
For a long time, after speaking with an enormous number of virologists and experts in related, adjacent fields — from the pandemic’s early days up through to the present — I’ve asserted that we can be certain that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, definitively spilled o … | Continue reading
In Dիulɥi 1768, Bendիɥmɥn Frɑŋklin sent ɥ most ɥniuzիuɥl letɥr. Nɋu, Frɑŋklin uɋz ɑn ɑvid trikstɥr ɥnd no streendիɥr tu pɥkiuliɥr missives. Az ɥ tiim, hii sɥbmitɥd ɥ dɥzɥn letɥrz tu hiz brɥђɥr’es nuzpeepɥr ɥndɥr ђɥ gɥiz ɥv ɥ midɥl-eedիd uido, ɥnd hii iivin sent ɥ letɥr tu ђɥ Rɋɥi … | Continue reading
This video Sam Harris: Is AI aligned with our human interests? is featured on Big Think. | Continue reading
This week’s TIME cover story is a wild one: Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, three grey wolves genetically engineered to resemble dire wolves, could pass for the first of their kind to walk the Earth in more than 10,000 years. Created by Colossal Biosciences — a $10B startup aiming t … | Continue reading
If you were hunting for alien intelligence, looking for a surefire signature from across the Universe of their activity, you’d have a few options. You could look for an intelligent radio broadcast, like the type humans began emitting in the 20th century. You could look for exampl … | Continue reading
Every time I have started a new project over the last 30 years, pretty much the first person I go to for advice is tech guru Kevin Kelly. He is one of the most original thinkers I have ever met in a long career of talking to a lot of remarkable thinkers. I can honestly say that e … | Continue reading
I’m an irreverent person. There are few things in life that I don’t like to mock, and there are few people I won’t eventually start to wind up. I enjoy laughing at serious things and being serious about ridiculous things. I’m irreverent and occasionally cynical, but not pessimist … | Continue reading
Although we’ve now firmly entered the JWST era in astronomy, our deepest views of the faintest objects of all still come courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope. Now working in its 35th year since launch, Hubble has spent more time viewing certain specific, dedicated regions of sk … | Continue reading
You’re in Paris on the evening of December 28, 1895. It’s cold and windy, and this lull in the year, between Christmas and New Year’s, feels restless and full of possibilities. You are in the Boulevard des Capucines, a few blocks from the shore of the Seine and the Jardin des Tui … | Continue reading
The current wave of AI hype was kicked off by the rollout and subsequent development of ChatGPT. And in the public mind, it is with this kind of application that AI is most strongly associated — the LLM-powered chatbots that we can talk and listen to in natural language. But it i … | Continue reading
Everywhere you look these days, you’re likely to hear declarations that cosmology — the science of what the Universe is made of, where it came from, how it got to be the way it is today, and what its ultimate fate will be — is in crisis. The Hubble tension, or the controversial f … | Continue reading
The news is broken. In the United States, it may feel like our news cycle is designed to make people anxious and depressed. It may feel like journalism exploits our divisions and amplifies our fears more than ever. But how can we fix it? Amanda Ripley has been a journalist for ov … | Continue reading
Gustav Söderström joined Spotify at a seminal moment in the company’s history, coordinating the 2009 launch of its mobile app, which currently has over 675 million active users. Now, he’s venturing into uncharted territory once again, overseeing a series of redesigns intended to … | Continue reading
Whenever a star is born, it expectantly follows a specific life cycle. This Hubble Space Telescope image of open star cluster NGC 290, showcases a region where thousands of newborn stars were created 30-60 million years ago. They come in a wide variety of masses, where a combinat … | Continue reading
The great thing about philosophy is that we can all do it. Anyone can ask philosophical questions about reality, truth, right and wrong, and the point of it all, and we often do, at least for brief moments throughout the day. The best books, TV shows, and movies all come dyed in … | Continue reading
Out there in the Universe, each star represents an opportunity: a chance for a stellar system to develop that just might possess something remarkable. While we normally think about life, and intelligent life at that, as the grand prize the Universe has to offer, there are a wide … | Continue reading
This video Love, sex, and happiness, explained by philosophy | Jonny Thomson: Full Interview is featured on Big Think. | Continue reading
The Universe is a vast and expansive place. From any location, you have total freedom to look in any direction you like: up or down, left or right, and near or far, to any distance in any direction that you choose. (Well, so long as there isn’t anything nearby in the way of a mor … | Continue reading
Psychedelics can produce awe, insight, healing, and sometimes terror. What they rarely offer is predictability. A U.S. biotech company wants to change that. Mindstate Design Labs, a Y Combinator startup, is combining machine learning with human expertise to map how psychedelic co … | Continue reading
Ominous strings of Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s “Oxford” Symphony (No. 92) announce the beginning and end of each episode of Revolutions. The podcast, hosted by author Mike Duncan, walks listeners through history’s most significant turning points, from the French Revolution t … | Continue reading
With a topic as seemingly complicated as quantum physics, where can you start if you want to build your understanding? In just 22 minutes, physicist and professor Brian Cox unpacks the subatomic world, beginning with the theories as we understand them today. This video Physicist … | Continue reading
I recently had the joy of interviewing one of my favorite modern business minds (and creative philosophers): Seth Godin. In our Q&A for The Long Game on Big Think, Seth took a lightsaber to short-term thinking and made the case for a more resilient, long-term approach to work, li … | Continue reading
We know that everything in the Universe, as it exists today, arose from some pre-existing state that was different from how it is at present. Billions of years ago, there were no humans and no planet Earth, as our Solar System, along with the ingredients necessary for life, first … | Continue reading
“I very recently had the most fantastic opportunity,” Susan Blackmore tells me. “I was invited to give a lecture in Mexico on my latest ideas about consciousness at a cognition conference. And the guy who invited me said, ‘Well, we’re also going to have a shamanic surprise.’ Now, … | Continue reading
The last time America went through anything comparable to what we are going through today, it was coming off the Great Depression and World War II and about to head into the post-war economic boom, as represented in the graphic above. America in the year 1945 and America in 2025 … | Continue reading
With over 70 million cross-platform followers and 60 billion views, Dhar Mann has built a massive audience creating scripted videos that focus on life lessons. But it’s his own personal experiences that have taught him the most. At one point, after facing a series of failures, a … | Continue reading
During the 2023 writers strikes, stand-up comedian, AI storyteller, and the creator of the hit song “BBL Drizzy” Willonius Hatcher realized AI wasn’t going away. So he decided to put in 10,000 hours to master AI tools and use them to up-level his career. What he learned along the … | Continue reading
It’s as simple and straightforward a question about our cosmic home as you can imagine: how many stars are in our Milky Way? While there’s an enormous amount that we know about our Universe with a significant amount of confidence — what types of matter and energy are present with … | Continue reading
The size of your standard PDF matches the paper in your printer: A4 in most of the world, “letter-sized” in the U.S. and Canada. But standards are not limits. The biggest possible size for a PDF, it has long been said, is a square with sides 237.7 miles (381 km) long, for a total … | Continue reading
Are you starting an initiative or reevaluating an older project with fresh eyes? Are you starting a new job and looking to impress your team? Or maybe, though hopefully not, you’re in the middle of a crisis you must resolve? Whether you need to make the most of an opportunity or … | Continue reading
For the last decade, Seth Godin has shaped how millions — myself included — think about work, creativity, business, and life itself. He’s written 24 bestselling books, including Linchpin and Purple Cow. His blog has over 10,000 posts and counting. Godin believes most people fool … | Continue reading
“A colleague of mine advised me to apply to ten jobs a day, but I’ve been focused on doing more and getting to twenty,” my client Todd said. He then scrolled through his spreadsheet of all the jobs he had applied for — hundreds of applications, with no interviews. What at first w … | Continue reading
Bring up the concept of the Multiverse, and you’re likely to get a variety of responses. Some will look to it as an idea full of hope: the hope that there’s a version of you out there that made a bolder choice, had a better outcome, or avoided a critical blunder at some point alo … | Continue reading
Maddie hated the moment when she came home from school and woke her computer. There was a time when she had loved the bulky old laptop whose keys had been worn down over the years until what was left of the lettering appeared like glyphs, a hand-me-down from her father that she h … | Continue reading
“Criminally underrated.” “One of the best animated series I ever watched.” “Legitimately one of the best sci-fi shows of the past decade.” These are some of the comments you’ll run into when you search reviews for Pantheon, an animated series about a world in which shadowy tech f … | Continue reading
The living room. I sat down on the couch, hands waving as I explained my PhD funding dilemma to my parents. “So that’s where I’m at,” I concluded, gesturing with my glass. “I’m trying to decide whether to transfer programs or walk away entirely.” My mother tilted her head slightl … | Continue reading
Earlier in his career, when John Donovan [the former CEO of AT&T Communications] was a partner at a big consulting firm, his CEO at the time introduced a new incentive system for how people would divide commissions based on their specific contributions to landing new business. Th … | Continue reading