Our algorithmic age encourages us to over-index on probabilities — but we should instead exercise our “storythinking brain” and focus on possibilities.

When objects are gravitationally bound, they cannot escape from one another's influence. How does that work within the expanding Universe?

Stoicism has been flattened into slogans about toughness, detachment, and emotional silence, a version that’s easy to sell, but mostly wrong.  Massimo Pigliucci returns Stoicism to its original purpose: a […]

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Travel half the distance to your destination, and there's always another half to go. So how do you eventually arrive? That's Zeno's Paradox.

Joel Miller, the author of “The Idea Machine,” joins us to explore why books are history’s most successful information technology.

Psychologist Chris Moore reveals why guilt and anxiety lead us to the compassion necessary to earn forgiveness.

Time blocking is a remarkable technique for ensuring your daily actions are guided forward by your overarching goals and intentions. Here’s how to supercharge it.

"It's much better to try to understand how the world works and then act accordingly. Rather than trying to impose on the world the way we want to think or the way we preferred things to be."

In general relativity, matter and energy curve spacetime, which we experience as gravity. Why can't there be an "antigravity" force?

The very word "quantum" makes people's imaginations run wild. But chances are you've fallen for at least one of these myths.

There will always be "wolf-criers" whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.

Revisiting the year’s noteworthy nonfiction.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe is simply that it, and everything in it, exists. But what's the reason why?

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Santa's done really well this year.

We think of physical reality as what objectively exists, independent of any observer. But relativity and quantum physics say otherwise.

"The big question then is why are most people resilient and why are some people not resilient?"

Neuroscience isn’t dissolving philosophy’s hardest problems — it’s forcing us to rethink where they live.

British entrepreneur Simon Squibb made his fortune and retired — then amassed legions of followers by giving away sharp business advice for free.

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Who polices our identities?

“The problem with cognitive scripts is when we use them to make more important decisions in our lives, we let our choices be driven by those stories that we have internalized that tell us how we're supposed to behave in a certain situation.”

Big Think and the John Templeton Foundation gathered scientists, artists, and storytellers in Los Angeles to explore the power of awe.

David S. Goyer explains how paying attention to mystery, and not brushing it aside, became the foundation for the way he builds stories, characters, and worlds.

In post-apocalyptic fiction, imagined futures turn today’s political and cultural tensions into geography.

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

There are two sides to the AI debate, and both are perpetuating the idea that AI is “inevitable, all-powerful, and deserves to be controlled by a tiny group of people,” says the Empire of AI author.

“The problem is in our information. Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.”

As we crank up our search for more powerful AI, maybe we should slow down and reimagine the shape and language of intelligence itself.