Starts With A Bang podcast #106 – the troublesome hunt for Planet Nine

One of the most swiftly forgotten revolutions in all of science is our understanding of the Solar System out beyond Neptune. Although Pluto was discovered nearly a full century ago, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that we even discovered the next object beyond Neptune that wasn’t … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

T-Minus: How will solar storms affect Mars astronauts?

This is T-Minus, where Freethink’s Kristin Houser breaks down the biggest developments in space, from new rocket launches to discoveries that advance our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Humanity is reaching new heights in space exploration. Make sure you’re par … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

A philosopher’s case against death

The idea is intuitive: It is good to be alive; it is bad to die. Yet many, even most, resist this idea, and not just because they believe in an afterlife. Some of the resistance comes from the worries about what would happen to the world if we lived much longer: Overpopulation! S … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Rewiring pain: How psychedelics may help silence chronic pain

What if symptoms of chronic pain were sometimes just echoes of a past injury, and your brain could “snap out of it” with the help of psychedelics? It’s a surprising theory that several labs around the world are beginning to investigate. While there have been few double-blind, pla … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Everyday Philosophy: Is praying fundamentally egotistical?

Is it egotistical to think your prayers will be answered or that what you wish for will come true? – Anusha, US It’s 1590, and two armies stand in the fields just outside Ivry in France. Both armies are a rag-tag shamble of children, old men, cripples, and foreign mercenaries. Af … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Yascha Mounk: The rise of the identity ideology—and why I think it spells trouble

Yascha Mounk, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and host of “The Good Fight” podcast, explains how identity synthesis – an ideology based on treating people differently depending on their race, gender, or sexual orientation – can be quite harmful to society. He uses the exa … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Ask Ethan: Why do matter and antimatter annihilate?

The matter that we’re made out of here on planet Earth is composed of atoms: protons and neutrons in the nucleus, orbited by electrons, that bind together in countless possible ways to produce what we experience as the world around us. For every fundamental and composite particle … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Women tend to be better physicians than men. Here’s why.

In a study recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers reported that female Medicare patients seen by female physicians had a lower risk of readmission and death than those seen by male physicians. The roughly quarter-percentage-point difference in mortality ra … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

The upside of feeling dissatisfied with the world: How to work your “weltschmerz”

It doesn’t seem like the world is a great place lately, does it? The last few years have witnessed major political strife, devastating wars, economic struggles, and protests teetering on the edge of civil disorder. And before that there was the COVID-19 pandemic. And before that … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

No, gain of function research did not cause COVID-19

In late 2019, unbeknownst to all, a new virus first infected humans in Wuhan, China: SARS-CoV-2. This infectious virus — which turned out to be airborne, highly infectious, lethal to a few but capable of causing long-term damage to many — is the cause of the COVID-19 illness that … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Here’s why China’s economy is stumbling — but not about to fall

On January 29, 2024, a court in Hong Kong ordered Chinese real-estate giant Evergrande Group to begin liquidating its assets. The company, founded in 1996, had taken advantage of China’s decades-long real estate boom, quickly becoming the biggest developer in the world. But by 20 … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Skill-building to the max: Why fluid “scaffolding” is essential

While we can go it alone when it comes to challenge, the research clearly shows that we often shouldn’t. As you get into a bit of hot water while trying to get better, you have to focus. Intently. And it’s often harder than we expect to maintain that focus and self-control in the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

2024’s summer solstice is Earth’s earliest since 1796

On average, the summer solstice occurs on June 21 of most years, as the Earth’s north pole is tilted maximally toward the Sun at a particular moment on that day. As the Earth revolves around the Sun over the course of a year, its axis remains pointed in the same direction, so tha … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

The brain’s “switch” that puts fear into overdrive

Fear is essential for survival, serving the important evolutionary purpose of increasing an organism’s vigilance and alerting it to dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations. An inappropriate fear response can, however, be harmful. Such responses are triggered in the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Has psychiatry lost touch with individuals?

People who suffer from mania are often characterized as inhabiting a world in which time seems to have sprinted ahead. They are said to have a flight of ideas, racing thoughts, rapid speech. In contrast, those with depression seem to suffer from the opposite: They languish in bed … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

The 3 phases of AI evolution that could play out this century

It’s clear there’s a lot of fear and misinformation about the risks and role of AI and the metaverse in our society going forward. It may be helpful to take a three-phase view of how to approach the problem. In the next 1-10 years, we should look at AI as tools to support our liv … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Lead with love and follow 5 principles of “energetic success”

Energy plays an integral role in our daily lives. Whether constructive or destructive, the personal energy of organizational leaders and team members plays a pivotal role in the dynamics of the workplace. Constructive energy fosters productivity, creativity, and a sense of fulfil … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

No, new measurements can’t relax the Hubble tension

There’s a big puzzle when it comes to the expanding Universe: a puzzle so large that many have declared there’s a crisis in cosmology. That puzzle is known as the Hubble tension, as two different classes of approaches to measure how fast the Universe is expanding lead to differen … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

A cosmic glitch in gravity

Einstein’s theory of gravity is a cornerstone of modern cosmology. It has been tested and proven correct over and over again and is supported by the discovery of countless cosmic phenomena: from the gravitational lensing detected by Arthur Eddington in 1919 and the anomalies obse … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

5 brilliant novels told from a side character’s perspective

We often see ourselves as life’s main character and sometimes we are. Other times, however, we’re a side character in someone else’s story. We’re not the driving force of important events but an observer of another person’s actions. In such cases, we may not get top billing with … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Got “technostress”? How to process AI before it processes you

As companies around the world are being pushed to quickly implement AI solutions that bring convenience and speed to stay relevant, they often overlook the most important element of successful AI implementation — their employees. Emerging research shows that AI completely changes … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

The power of perception, with musician Jewel

From heartbreak to grief, musicians have always used personal pain to influence their art. Singer-songwriter and poet Jewel Kilcher is no different, but her story is far from ordinary. The stories of how she got her name and how she got to where she is today are connected by one … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

5 big lessons from JWST’s new record-setting galaxy

Everywhere we look, our Universe is full of luminous matter. The ‘red-and-dead’ galaxy NGC 1277 is found inside the Perseus cluster. While the other galaxies contain a mix of red-and-blue stars, this galaxy hasn’t formed new stars in approximately 10 billion years. Foreground, cl … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Revolutionary weight-loss drugs like Wegovy come with a catch

Anti-obesity drugs cause people to lose more than just fat. More than 73% of American adults are overweight, according to the CDC. This puts them at increased risk of death and many serious health issues, but losing weight and keeping it off through diet changes and exercise — th … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Will generative AI change everything for filmmaking?

From coding and art design to customer service and education, seemingly countless professions are adopting AI systems. With the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its text-to-video system, Sora, and rumors of partnerships with big studios, will Hollywood be the next frontier for AI … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

We’re not doomed. Here’s how to revive Planet Earth

“If given a chance, nature can rebound, and nature can rebound dramatically.” Biologist Sean B. Carroll discusses the resilience of nature and how humans can help it thrive. Humans litter, start wars, hunt, and poach, but history has also shown we are capable of undoing our damag … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Everyday Philosophy: Should you always call out bad opinions?

I was wondering: is age really an indication of who deserves respect? I’ve been taught growing up that you should always respect your elders, no matter what. But if your elders are incorrect in a belief, isn’t it your ethical responsibility to call them out on it? Or would that b … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Odd one out: How “schema theory” can help us make better decisions at work

Let’s play a game. From the following lists, identify the odd one out. In each case, which one is different? I suspect that for each, you’ll have your own answers and rationale: Dog. Parrot. Fish. Dragon. France. Germany. Japan. Belgium. Physics. Biology. Chemistry. Mathematics. … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Ask Ethan: Why didn’t the Big Bang become a black hole?

Here in our Universe, despite how vast it is and how intricately we can probe it, there are still limits to what we can observe, test, and measure. We can obtain signals from very far away and infer the existence of an early, hot, dense, uniform, and rapidly expanding state: the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

To understand cognition — and its dysfunction — neuroscientists must learn its rhythms

It could be very informative to observe the pixels on your phone under a microscope, but not if your goal is to understand what a whole video on the screen shows. Cognition is much the same kind of emergent property in the brain. It can only be understood by observing how million … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Even the smartest AI likely won’t be “alive.” Here’s why.

There is a lot of discussion these days about mimicking consciousness in a computer. From the simulation hypothesis to concern about an impending AI apocalypse, many people talking about one of the core functions of human life (i.e., experience) becoming instantiated in silicon. … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Why the 5 core elements of “psychological safety” are essential for career and company

Technology and social change mean that careers are now built in a fast-changing landscape that is digital, dispersed, diverse and dynamic. This is not necessarily negative. Steven Bartlett, in his book The Diary of a CEO, states that “businesses that experiment faster, fail faste … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Is the “Methuselah star” really older than the Universe?

For as long as humans have contemplated the Universe, we’ve marveled at the vastness of it all. Was our Universe infinite? Was it eternal? Or did it spring into existence a finite amount of time ago? Over the 20th and 21st centuries, these existential questions for all-time have, … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Do our oceans feel the tug of Mars?

Well into the space age, our thinking about the heavens is still entangled with ideas from ancient Greece. Like the classical Greek cosmologists, we tend to envision the heavenly realm as a place of order and harmony, with planets and moons in elegant, unchanging orbits. As Johan … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

How to pivot like a ballerina in the turbulent age of AI

Everyone has their own favorite pivot story. Twitter was a podcast curator that turned to social networking; Flickr was an online roleplaying game and pivoted to photo-sharing; and Shopify once just sold snowboards. Heck, even Johannes Gutenberg pivoted from selling relics to inv … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

Humanity needs an ethical upgrade to keep up with new technologies

Last week, I discussed the making of the atomic bomb with 65 students taking my class at Dartmouth. The goal was to contrast the scientific challenge of building the bomb during the Manhattan Project with the decision to drop two bombs in Japan. The essential tension is that, eve … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 months ago

A beginner’s guide to sociopolitical collapse

A society does not ever die ‘from natural causes,’ but always dies from suicide or murder—and nearly always from the former.” — D. C. Somervell. 1 À propos of nothing, I have found myself wondering recently what it would be like to live through a collapse. Would I see it coming? … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Why we need a trusted new leadership plan for redesigning work

Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in applied psychology, once penned a case study about a pharmaceutical company that had relocated its distribution center. Typically, such a project would only be known through its occasional citation by other papers in the field. Except in this case study, … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Why apathy and fear are the two most useless positions on AI

Ethan Mollick, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI,” explores the impact of AI on our work, creative endeavors, and overall lives. AI is reshaping our understanding of humanity and intelligen … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

8 basic unanswered questions about the known particles

There are many aspects of reality that we once assumed we understood, only for it to later be revealed that our earlier understanding was primitive, incomplete, and facile. We thought that nature was purely classical and deterministic, but the wave nature of light, and later the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Baltoscandia: The geopolitical ghost that may just have a future

You’ve probably never heard of Baltoscandia. It sounds like a made-up country, and that’s because it is a made-up country. But even without a government, a flag, and most other trappings of actual nationhood, Baltoscandia has a history, a raison d’être, and perhaps even a future. … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Startup leadership wisdom: From “hands-on humility” to trusting your gut

Sujal Patel is the co-founder and CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology, a life sciences company on a mission to properly understand proteins. Unpacking the devilishly complex proteome carries the golden promise of a revolution in drug development, and demands a synthesis of vision, lead … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

The Higgs boson’s most captivating puzzle still remains

In some ways, the deepest question one can ask about our physical reality is simply, “What is the Universe made of?” In the early 1800s, we thought we knew the answer: atoms. By the early 1900s, the answer had grown much richer: atoms themselves were composed of atomic nuclei and … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Words do matter—and you might be using them all wrong

While jargon has the advantage of communicating a lot of information in a short amount of time, it has deeply alienating effects on those even slightly outside the field of reference. Director, actor, and master communicator Alan Alda uses examples from film sets and hospital roo … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

How AI helped write a new novel

Each chapter in Mauro Javier Cárdenas’ latest novel American Abductions is a single sentence careening its way through a mashup of dialogue, pop culture references, political allusions, social media, jokes, and wordplay, as well as observations and theories scientific, spiritual, … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Why leaders should be wary of “silver bullets” and “disguised donkeys”

“Good managers [and leaders I suggest] fail when they attempt to use silver-bullet solutions to complex problems.” James A. Highsmith, Adaptive Software Development (2013) Given that a leader’s main challenge is “creating an organization that can thrive and change, or at least be … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

Tidal power: A forgotten renewable resource?

As the tide rises and falls, is it worth generating electricity on a large scale from its movement? It’s a question engineers have studied for one particular part of Great Britain since the 1800s—and the urgency of making carbon-free power to limit climate change could mean decid … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago

T-Minus: How to not die on (the way to) Mars

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy told a crowd gathered at Rice University that the US wanted to put a person on the moon before the end of the decade because it was hard — but a challenge wasn’t all America was looking for with its moon mission. In that same speech, Kennedy als … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 months ago