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History and Society
The annual rite of passage has always been more about the ambivalence of adults than the amusement of children.
With the right prompts, large language models can produce quality writing — and make us question the limits of human creativity.
Philosophy cures no disease and invents nothing new. What's even the point?
The mass that gravitates and the mass that resists motion are, somehow, the same mass. But even Einstein didn't know why this is so.
Dennis “Thresh” Fong talks to us about battling Elon Musk in Quake in the ‘90s, his undefeated record as a pro gamer, and using AI to detoxify gaming.
If philosophers really enjoy one thing, it’s a good debate — but not an argument.
Religion is a product of, and not a source of, our evolutionary moral dispositions.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
In a world of rising cynicism, a celebration of our capacity to create, adapt, and thrive.
"What modern science has taught us is that life is not a property of matter."
Life arose on Earth early on, eventually giving rise to us: intelligent and technologically advanced. "First contact" still remains elusive.
Evidence shows that “centaurs” — human–AI teaming — produce better performance than either people or software can achieve alone.
How “Catastrophe and Social Change” (1920) became the first systematic analysis of human behavior in a disaster.
The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, going back to the hot Big Bang. But was that truly the beginning, and is that truly its age?
Is it ever possible for God to violate the laws of nature?
Many contrarians dispute that cosmic inflation occurred. The evidence says otherwise.
You could call this rectangle covering parts of Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula the “Oven Window.”
A simple semantic device — invented by a forgotten senator — can help us break “the curse of knowledge.”
Absence makes the heart (and public opinion) grow fonder.
He peppers his sentences with words like “neat” and “cool,” he’s not great at working the room after dinner — oh, and he's a peerless visionary.
The original principle of relativity, proposed by Galileo way back in the early 1600s, remains true in its unchanged form even today.
Most stars in the Universe are located in big, massive, Milky Way-like galaxies. But most galaxies aren't like ours at all.
These missions will put us one step closer to the ultimate goal: crewed trips to Mars.
Welcome to the Big Think debut of The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Slowing growth and limiting development isn’t living in harmony with nature—it is surrendering in a battle.
In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event.
How has tennis changed in recent decades? The wear and tear on Wimbledon’s Centre Court may tell the tale.
For centuries, Newton's inverse square law of gravity worked beautifully, but no one knew why. Here's how Einstein finally explained it.
Quarks and leptons are the smallest known subatomic particles. Does the Standard Model allow for an even smaller layer of matter to exist?