It’s no secret that there is a seemingly endless string of problems to address in the world. You don’t have to look hard to find people suffering from all sorts of maladies: from illness to injustice, from war to famine, from poverty to pollution. There are some major problems facing humanity in the 21st century, and they’re all going to require an enormous investment of our collective resources if we want to solve them. From climate change to global pandemics to the energy and water crises and more, none of these problems are going to solve themselves. If they’re to be solved at all, it’s going to come down to humanity’s collective actions.
But where does that leave the scientific research that doesn’t directly relate to these crises? As beautiful and enlightening as the recent James Webb Space Telescope pictures are, astronomy and astrophysics aren’t going to keep the seas from rising. They’re not going to end war, prevent starvation, or solve our problems that require global cooperation. This week’s Ask Ethan question comes all the way from Ethiopia, as Betsegaw ... Continue Reading »
When I was growing up, mental health was rarely talked about. Most people knew someone who had gone to therapy and generally accepted it as a necessary step in getting the help they needed. But what happened on the chaise lounge stayed on the chaise lounge. People didn’t discuss their diagnoses, and if therapy came up, it was usually in reference to the latest episode of The Sopranos.
This began to change in the aughts. The U.S. Congress passed laws to make mental health more accessible and affordable. Celebrities opened up about their struggles with depression and anxiety, and the internet offered unprecedented access to mental health information.
All positive changes, but then things continued to accelerate. Today, online mental health advice is as contradictory as it is universal. Psychology apps abound in online stores, often marketed with grand but unfounded efficacy claims. Social media “experts” shrink life-sized advice into bite-sized clips, and it lately seems like everyone struggles with depression or anxiety or trauma or OCD or some other condition.
It all has me wondering if we have overcorrected. Has the assumption ... Continue Reading »
The verb deter was coined in the English language in the 16th century from the Latin deterreo (to frighten) and first applied systematically in 18th- and 19th-century criminological texts. During the 1850s, the English criminologist T.B.L. Baker invented the noun form deterrence to capture an idea about the effects of actual and potential punishment on criminal thought and behavior. Early criminologists believed that criminals who possessed what the utilitarian philosopher (and early deterrence theorist) Jeremy Bentham called “rational agency” were susceptible to the fear of punishment. Modern criminologists argued that punishments such as prison sentences should not be seen as they had been in an earlier age: as acts of moral retribution or as efforts to reform the criminal. Punishments should be seen as “deterrents”: rational tools to prevent crime by warning would-be criminals about what to expect for committing similar infractions. As one criminological textbook explained in 1912, the “theory of deterrence” prescribed punishment “not because wrong has been done but in order that wrong may not be done.”
Supporters of criminological deterrence theory endorsed two key ideas that had ... Continue Reading »
Ever since I first read Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, I’ve descended into a rabbit hole in search of what “intelligence” really means (and who has it). Perhaps that’s why I love the name of this newsletter so much. [It’s a worm, after all. A humble, indispensable critter buried beneath the soil.]
Benyus’s central argument is that the “smartest” solutions to human problems already exist in nature. We just need to know where, and how, to look for them. (For instance: wind turbines inspired by humpback whales.)
So perhaps it’s no surprise that I was riveted by a recent piece on monarch butterflies. The piece explains how monarchs actually navigate: with two independent compasses built into their biology. On clear days, they orient themselves using a solar compass. But when clouds roll in or weather becomes unpredictable, they switch to a backup magnetic compass that reads ultraviolet light to sense the angle of Earth’s magnetic field.
In other words, they’ve evolved slack into the system, a subject I explored in greater detail earlier this year. For butterflies, just like humans or ... Continue Reading »
It’s the spring of 1951. As the Korean War escalates and the world engages in scandalized debate over Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s recent conviction for espionage, students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania are gathering in small groups to take part in what they believe to be a vision test. They’re shown three lines of obviously different lengths and asked which one matches a target line. Unaware that they’re participating in a psychology experiment overseen by the social psychologist Solomon Asch, the subjects don’t realize that everyone else in their group has been instructed to give the wrong answer.
The task is simple — one line clearly matches the target while the other two clearly don’t. Yet when everyone in the room says otherwise, the students begin to doubt what they see. Such is the power of conformity, which Asch had designed the test to measure, that 75% of participants go along with an obviously false consensus at least once. They override their own judgment in the face of certainty from the group.
This was a complex dynamic in 1951; today, it is ... Continue Reading »
Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, our freedoms, and our moments for granted, or whether we express appreciation and gratitude for the good things that exist. The biggest unifier that all human beings have in common, that we all exist on the same world and in the same Universe, never gets the due it deserves. Here and now, it’s possible for us to exist, and to exist as long as our natural lifespans will allow us.
This wasn’t guaranteed from first principles, but simply happens to be. At a huge number of different points in our Universe’s history, the laws of nature came together in such a way to enable our existence, and to allow us to look back today, 13.8 billion years later, with thankfulness in our hearts. Here are ten phenomena that made it all possible, and ten reasons to give thanks.
This timeline of the Universe shows how, from a Planck-scale region of space that possessed an inflationary state, the properties of the hot Big Bang were set up beforehand. Once the ... Continue Reading »
What if the genome you were born with wasn’t fixed? Eric Kelsic, CEO of Dyno Therapeutics, explains how gene therapy is moving from promise to reality, delivering treatments directly to cells and potentially curing diseases for a lifetime.
This video How your body could outlive the genome you were born with is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
We are at a tipping point. In the next 25 years, technologies like AI, clean energy, and bioengineering are poised to reshape society on a scale few can imagine.
Peter Leyden draws on decades of observing technological revolutions and historical patterns to show how old systems collapse, new ones rise, and humanity faces both extraordinary risk and unprecedented opportunity.
This video Why the next 25 years will force humanity to reinvent itself is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Clara opens her door on Friday night. She throws the keys on the table, takes off her jacket, and plops down on the sofa. Scroll, scroll, scroll. She messages Tom to ask how his meeting went. Scroll, scroll, scroll. She goes to the toilet, puts her food in the microwave, and waits.
The food will take three minutes, so Clara goes back to get her phone. There’s not a chance in hell she’ll just stand there. Three minutes staring into space? She’s not a psychopath. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Ping.
Back to the sofa, TV on, Tom replies. She settles in. She won’t be doing much else until Monday morning, when work pulls her away.
Of course, Clara is a foil — an exaggerated archetype representing the modern human. Her life is filled with necessity. She has to work, she has to eat, she has to go to the toilet. The majority of her day is already decided. But what does she do with the hours she has remaining? What does she do with her evenings, weekends, and “free time”?
According to a 2024 UK ... Continue Reading »
Parenting is often framed as a battle between discipline and chaos, but Dr. Becky Kennedy argues that the real story lives beneath the behavior we see.
Kennedy traces how early relationships teach children which parts of themselves are welcome, which emotions feel dangerous, and how those lessons script adult identity.
This video How early attachment scars can impact us forever is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
It’s no secret that there is a seemingly endless string of problems to address in the world. You don’t have to look hard to find people suffering from all sorts of maladies: from illness to injustice, from war to famine, from poverty to pollution. There are some major problems facing humanity in the 21st century, and they’re all going to require an enormous investment of our collective resources if we want to solve them. From climate change to global pandemics to the energy and water crises and more, none of these problems are going to solve themselves. If they’re to be solved at all, it’s going to come down to humanity’s collective actions.
But where does that leave the scientific research that doesn’t directly relate to these crises? As beautiful and enlightening as the recent James Webb Space Telescope pictures are, astronomy and astrophysics aren’t going to keep the seas from rising. They’re not going to end war, prevent starvation, or solve our problems that require global cooperation. This week’s Ask Ethan question comes all the way from Ethiopia, as Betsegaw ... 
When I was growing up, mental health was rarely talked about. Most people knew someone who had gone to therapy and generally accepted it as a necessary step in getting the help they needed. But what happened on the chaise lounge stayed on the chaise lounge. People didn’t discuss their diagnoses, and if therapy came up, it was usually in reference to the latest episode of The Sopranos.
This began to change in the aughts. The U.S. Congress passed laws to make mental health more accessible and affordable. Celebrities opened up about their struggles with depression and anxiety, and the internet offered unprecedented access to mental health information.
All positive changes, but then things continued to accelerate. Today, online mental health advice is as contradictory as it is universal. Psychology apps abound in online stores, often marketed with grand but unfounded efficacy claims. Social media “experts” shrink life-sized advice into bite-sized clips, and it lately seems like everyone struggles with depression or anxiety or trauma or OCD or some other condition.
It all has me wondering if we have overcorrected. Has the assumption ... 
The verb deter was coined in the English language in the 16th century from the Latin deterreo (to frighten) and first applied systematically in 18th- and 19th-century criminological texts. During the 1850s, the English criminologist T.B.L. Baker invented the noun form deterrence to capture an idea about the effects of actual and potential punishment on criminal thought and behavior. Early criminologists believed that criminals who possessed what the utilitarian philosopher (and early deterrence theorist) Jeremy Bentham called “rational agency” were susceptible to the fear of punishment. Modern criminologists argued that punishments such as prison sentences should not be seen as they had been in an earlier age: as acts of moral retribution or as efforts to reform the criminal. Punishments should be seen as “deterrents”: rational tools to prevent crime by warning would-be criminals about what to expect for committing similar infractions. As one criminological textbook explained in 1912, the “theory of deterrence” prescribed punishment “not because wrong has been done but in order that wrong may not be done.”
Supporters of criminological deterrence theory endorsed two key ideas that had ... 
Ever since I first read Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, I’ve descended into a rabbit hole in search of what “intelligence” really means (and who has it). Perhaps that’s why I love the name of this newsletter so much. [It’s a worm, after all. A humble, indispensable critter buried beneath the soil.]
Benyus’s central argument is that the “smartest” solutions to human problems already exist in nature. We just need to know where, and how, to look for them. (For instance: wind turbines inspired by humpback whales.)
So perhaps it’s no surprise that I was riveted by a recent piece on monarch butterflies. The piece explains how monarchs actually navigate: with two independent compasses built into their biology. On clear days, they orient themselves using a solar compass. But when clouds roll in or weather becomes unpredictable, they switch to a backup magnetic compass that reads ultraviolet light to sense the angle of Earth’s magnetic field.
In other words, they’ve evolved slack into the system, a subject I explored in greater detail earlier this year. For butterflies, just like humans or ... 
It’s the spring of 1951. As the Korean War escalates and the world engages in scandalized debate over Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s recent conviction for espionage, students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania are gathering in small groups to take part in what they believe to be a vision test. They’re shown three lines of obviously different lengths and asked which one matches a target line. Unaware that they’re participating in a psychology experiment overseen by the social psychologist Solomon Asch, the subjects don’t realize that everyone else in their group has been instructed to give the wrong answer.
The task is simple — one line clearly matches the target while the other two clearly don’t. Yet when everyone in the room says otherwise, the students begin to doubt what they see. Such is the power of conformity, which Asch had designed the test to measure, that 75% of participants go along with an obviously false consensus at least once. They override their own judgment in the face of certainty from the group.
This was a complex dynamic in 1951; today, it is ... 
Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, our freedoms, and our moments for granted, or whether we express appreciation and gratitude for the good things that exist. The biggest unifier that all human beings have in common, that we all exist on the same world and in the same Universe, never gets the due it deserves. Here and now, it’s possible for us to exist, and to exist as long as our natural lifespans will allow us.
This wasn’t guaranteed from first principles, but simply happens to be. At a huge number of different points in our Universe’s history, the laws of nature came together in such a way to enable our existence, and to allow us to look back today, 13.8 billion years later, with thankfulness in our hearts. Here are ten phenomena that made it all possible, and ten reasons to give thanks.
This timeline of the Universe shows how, from a Planck-scale region of space that possessed an inflationary state, the properties of the hot Big Bang were set up beforehand. Once the ... 
Clara opens her door on Friday night. She throws the keys on the table, takes off her jacket, and plops down on the sofa. Scroll, scroll, scroll. She messages Tom to ask how his meeting went. Scroll, scroll, scroll. She goes to the toilet, puts her food in the microwave, and waits.
The food will take three minutes, so Clara goes back to get her phone. There’s not a chance in hell she’ll just stand there. Three minutes staring into space? She’s not a psychopath. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Ping.
Back to the sofa, TV on, Tom replies. She settles in. She won’t be doing much else until Monday morning, when work pulls her away.
Of course, Clara is a foil — an exaggerated archetype representing the modern human. Her life is filled with necessity. She has to work, she has to eat, she has to go to the toilet. The majority of her day is already decided. But what does she do with the hours she has remaining? What does she do with her evenings, weekends, and “free time”?
According to a 2024 UK ...