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History and Society
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This course on strategic empathy, led by instructors like Amaryllis Fox and Liv Boeree, teaches participants to understand opposing viewpoints through "Red Teaming," while addressing cognitive biases and emphasizing the importance of historical context, cultural awareness, and ethical decision-making in complex global issues.
Members
This class explores human cognition and decision-making through insights from experts like Michio Kaku on magical thinking, Madhavan on systems-level thinking, Mlodinow on elastic thinking, Konnikova on deductive reasoning, and Summers on structured decision-making, promoting a scientific mindset for effective problem-solving.
A childhood spent under the spell of sleight-of-hand taught me skepticism, curiosity, and the habit of looking beneath appearances.
Big Think spoke with astronomer David Kipping about technosignatures, "extragalactic SETI," and being a popular science communicator in the YouTube age.
In this excerpt from "Seven Rivers," historian Vanessa Taylor explores how Ancient Egyptian pharaohs harnessed the Nile River to build empires and secure their power.
How to look cool in post-war France in black and white photos.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
2mins
Free speech may be messy, but censorship is deadly. Founder of The Future of Free Speech Jacob Mchangama explains.
The universe is filled with unlikely events, but it is also full of ways to fool ourselves.
We don't learn from history because we can't learn from history.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
It's not just an odd quirk of numbers that makes it true, but a deep mathematical insight that dates all the way back to Pythagoras.
10 years ago, LIGO first began directly detecting gravitational waves. Now better than ever, it's revealing previously unreachable features.
Questions about our origins, biologically, chemically, and cosmically, are the most profound ones we can ask. Here are today's best answers.
Even when leaders know disruption is a smart long-term decision, the pain of transition can produce a titanic shambles. Just ask Kodak.
The fear of unleashing forces beyond control has haunted science for centuries.
The red planet, Mars, may once have been teeming with life, just as Earth is today. Finding "organics" on Mars, however, doesn't mean life.
In revolutionary Russia, a group of forward-thinking philosophers offered an alternative to both futurism and communism.
In “On Liberalism," Cass Sunstein argues that liberalism can only endure if we reclaim its core commitments and revive its spirit of freedom and hope for the future.
It's the origin of our entire observable Universe, but it's still not the very beginning of everything.
Here are three ways to do it better.
A dialogue with Angus Fletcher — author of the bestseller "Primal Intelligence" — exploring the unique engines of human progress.
6mins
Free speech can amplify hatred, but it also protects the fight against it. Founder of The Future of Free Speech Jacob Mchangama explains.
JWST isn't the first telescope to peer into this factory of star-birth some 5500 light-years away, but its views are the most educational.
1hr 37mins
“A lot of the trends in the economy, in family life have just been much harder for working class men.”
About six million years ago, the Mediterranean was sealed off from the Atlantic, and over centuries it ran dry. One megaflood reversed that.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
The African Union argues that the Mercator projection distorts the continent, both in size and global attention.
In "That Book Is Dangerous," author Adam Szetela examines the rise of the “Sensitivity Era” in publishing and how outrage campaigns try to control what books authors can write and readers can read.
A contemplative approach to leading others can help us accept the tension of not always knowing how things will play out.