It’s often said that history is written by the winners. But when you look back on the ancient world, it’s more accurate to say that history is written by historians. Although China has a strong claim, many tend to cite ancient Greece as the birthplace of history as a discipline. In Herodotus and Thucydides, we see the origins of the historical method — a vaguely reputable attempt to document events, and not a somewhat-historical imaginarium of magical beasts, bored gods, and local heroes. And how did the Greeks use their histories? Well, to slander their enemies. In Greek “history,” we see the Persian Empire as a place of dissolute, depraved, decadent demons who sought only the death and enslavement of all civilized peoples.
This vilification of the Persian Empire continued through two millennia of Eurocentric education – a “whig” historical account which went from Greece to Rome to Knights to Britain and then to America. Another issue, once historians realized the “rest of the world” might offer at least something, is that the study of Persia suffered for want of ... Continue Reading »
“What can be very frustrating is that regulation is often irrational,” Musk told an audience at Stanford in 2003. “It doesn’t make any sense.” He arrived at the following solution: He would be the one to decide what made sense. And he would not be shy about exercising this authority, even if it meant challenging the law. “If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules,” he said. SpaceX would fight the rules constantly, whether those set by NASA, the Pentagon, or the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).
These moves weren’t just about getting the government out of the way but, more precisely, taking on its powers for himself. The same logic of privatization that enabled Blackwater to operate freely in Iraq was vesting him with powers previously unimaginable for private entities. SpaceX would enjoy the advantages of being a government contractor with little in the way of government supervision. Significantly, Musk secured this position with the support of key actors within the state: He applied pressure from the outside while sympathetic officials did ... Continue Reading »
Your brain didn’t evolve in isolation. It evolved to run the economy of your body, and every heartbeat, breath, and moment of thirst or anxiety is evidence of that system at work.
Neuroscientist and author Aditi Nerurkar, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, and neurologist-philosopher Antonio Damasio break down the science of the mind-body connection: why it exists, how it works, and why understanding it can change the way you experience the world.
We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series.
This video The often-ignored system controlling your mood, memory, and focus is featured on Big Think.
... Continue Reading »
Our Universe, to the best of our knowledge, doesn’t make sense in an extremely fundamental way. On the one hand, we have quantum physics, which does an exquisite job of describing the fundamental particles and the electromagnetic and nuclear forces and interactions that take place between them. On the other hand, we have general relativity, which — with equal success — describes the way that matter and energy move through space and time, as well as how space and time themselves evolve in the presence of matter and energy. These two separate ways of viewing the Universe, successful though they may be, simply don’t make sense when you put them together: they’re fundamentally incompatible.
When it comes to gravity, we have to treat the Universe classically: all forms of matter-and-energy have well-defined positions and motions through space and time, without any hint of uncertainty. But quantum mechanically, position and momentum can’t be simultaneously defined for any quantum of matter or energy; that’s one clear illustration of an inherent contradiction between these two frameworks for viewing the Universe.
For over 100 years now, ... Continue Reading »
Sometimes, great writing makes me angry.
It’s nothing to do with the ideas inside, of course. Poets and bestselling authors are good at their game. What bothers me is when those ideas are expressed with such perfect beauty that I cannot hope to match them.
There might be a degree of professional pride to this. When I gawp at an old poet like T.S. Eliot or a modern writer like Samantha Harvey, I’m just jealous. Yes, they might be better trained than I am. Yes, they likely took more time on their writing than I did on this article. But, in the main, I’m left bitterly squinting at how someone can be so damn good.
There’s more to it, though. It’s often said that the joy of great literature lies in poets and writers expressing feelings and thoughts in ways we couldn’t imagine. They name emotions we didn’t know we felt. They dig up what was deeply buried away. But this joy is a coin with two sides.
I would like to invent a word: Psychoklepsis. Psychoklepsis — literally “soul-theft” — is when someone ... Continue Reading »
As humanity basks in the aftermath of the unprecedented success of Artemis II, which took humans back to the Moon for the first time in 54 years and brought them farther from Earth than ever before, many of us can’t help but think about grander goals. As a species, we don’t just dream of returning to the Moon, but of heading to places we’ve never been: other planets, other star systems, or even other galaxies. However, there are big problems we have to solve if we ever want to send humans outside of the Solar System: the problems of distance, time, speed, and fuel efficiency.
Interstellar distances are huge, even compared to the vast interplanetary distances we encounter in the Solar System. With current rocket technology, it would take hundreds of human lifetimes to reach even the nearest star, and that’s because we’re limited by speed, which is in turn limited by the efficiency of our fuel sources. Chemical-based rockets leverage quite efficient fuel sources, like liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, but transform less than a millionth of the fuel’s rest ... Continue Reading »
A week before Christmas, nearly 50,000 people living along Colorado’s Front Range lost power for multiple days.
The outage was deliberate. Xcel Energy, the region’s utility, had implemented a “public safety power shutoff” out of fear that high winds would down power lines and spark fires. The danger wasn’t hypothetical. Conditions were warm and dry, with wind gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour. In 2021, a similar windstorm had led to the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history: the Marshall Fire, which destroyed 1,084 homes in the region.
Given the risk, the December 2025 outage may have been justified, but a grid that must be shut down for multiple days because of high winds — disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people in the process — points to a deeper problem: America’s power grid is at a breaking point.
To avoid a future plagued by more frequent blackouts, researchers are shifting some of the responsibility for keeping the lights on from utilities to the grid itself with “self-healing” technologies that can detect disruptions, isolate problems, and reroute energy — automatically.
Power grids ... Continue Reading »
Planning commission meetings in Joliet, Illinois, aren’t typically raucous affairs. The one on March 5, however, was buzzing and standing-room-only.
Hundreds of residents crammed into City Hall, filling multiple overflow rooms. Most were waiting for a chance to voice their opinion on a proposal to site a $20 billion AI data center — the largest in the state — on 795 acres of farmland on Joliet’s east side.
“These are mega-rich people who are not here to do charitable things,” said lifelong resident Isabel Gloria. “They don’t love Joliet. I’m here because I love Joliet, and I don’t want to see my utilities go up.”
While many who stepped up to the microphone spoke in favor of the proposed data center, touting the economic and tax benefits it would provide, proponents were clearly in the minority. Expressing concerns about rising electricity rates, water shortages, and uncaring tech oligarchs, most attendees were resolutely opposed.
The commission advanced the plan regardless.
Across the U.S., nebulous worries over AI taking jobs and raising electricity rates have crystallized into a clear goal: stop data centers from being built.
What happened ... Continue Reading »
When I signed a book deal in the middle of my PhD, I knew that I’d have to be very disciplined when it came to rest, so I did what most people would consider the “right” thing: I took regular breaks and went to bed early.
On paper, I was doing everything you’re supposed to do to protect your energy. And yet, I kept feeling tired. It didn’t make sense, so I started looking into it, and what I found is that most of us are working with the wrong model of energy management.
We tend to think of personal energy like a battery: We use it up, and then recharge by doing nothing. But biologically, energy behaves less like a battery and more like a machine: It doesn’t automatically repair itself just because you stop using it.
It might sound counterintuitive, but doing less can actually make you feel more tired.
The mistake is assuming that feeling tired means you just need to do less. Sometimes that helps. But often, the issue isn’t the level of demand — it’s whether your body and ... Continue Reading »
It’s often said that history is written by the winners. But when you look back on the ancient world, it’s more accurate to say that history is written by historians. Although China has a strong claim, many tend to cite ancient Greece as the birthplace of history as a discipline. In Herodotus and Thucydides, we see the origins of the historical method — a vaguely reputable attempt to document events, and not a somewhat-historical imaginarium of magical beasts, bored gods, and local heroes. And how did the Greeks use their histories? Well, to slander their enemies. In Greek “history,” we see the Persian Empire as a place of dissolute, depraved, decadent demons who sought only the death and enslavement of all civilized peoples.
This vilification of the Persian Empire continued through two millennia of Eurocentric education – a “whig” historical account which went from Greece to Rome to Knights to Britain and then to America. Another issue, once historians realized the “rest of the world” might offer at least something, is that the study of Persia suffered for want of ... 
“What can be very frustrating is that regulation is often irrational,” Musk told an audience at Stanford in 2003. “It doesn’t make any sense.” He arrived at the following solution: He would be the one to decide what made sense. And he would not be shy about exercising this authority, even if it meant challenging the law. “If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules,” he said. SpaceX would fight the rules constantly, whether those set by NASA, the Pentagon, or the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).
These moves weren’t just about getting the government out of the way but, more precisely, taking on its powers for himself. The same logic of privatization that enabled Blackwater to operate freely in Iraq was vesting him with powers previously unimaginable for private entities. SpaceX would enjoy the advantages of being a government contractor with little in the way of government supervision. Significantly, Musk secured this position with the support of key actors within the state: He applied pressure from the outside while sympathetic officials did ... 
Our Universe, to the best of our knowledge, doesn’t make sense in an extremely fundamental way. On the one hand, we have quantum physics, which does an exquisite job of describing the fundamental particles and the electromagnetic and nuclear forces and interactions that take place between them. On the other hand, we have general relativity, which — with equal success — describes the way that matter and energy move through space and time, as well as how space and time themselves evolve in the presence of matter and energy. These two separate ways of viewing the Universe, successful though they may be, simply don’t make sense when you put them together: they’re fundamentally incompatible.
When it comes to gravity, we have to treat the Universe classically: all forms of matter-and-energy have well-defined positions and motions through space and time, without any hint of uncertainty. But quantum mechanically, position and momentum can’t be simultaneously defined for any quantum of matter or energy; that’s one clear illustration of an inherent contradiction between these two frameworks for viewing the Universe.
For over 100 years now, ... 
Sometimes, great writing makes me angry.
It’s nothing to do with the ideas inside, of course. Poets and bestselling authors are good at their game. What bothers me is when those ideas are expressed with such perfect beauty that I cannot hope to match them.
There might be a degree of professional pride to this. When I gawp at an old poet like T.S. Eliot or a modern writer like Samantha Harvey, I’m just jealous. Yes, they might be better trained than I am. Yes, they likely took more time on their writing than I did on this article. But, in the main, I’m left bitterly squinting at how someone can be so damn good.
There’s more to it, though. It’s often said that the joy of great literature lies in poets and writers expressing feelings and thoughts in ways we couldn’t imagine. They name emotions we didn’t know we felt. They dig up what was deeply buried away. But this joy is a coin with two sides.
I would like to invent a word: Psychoklepsis. Psychoklepsis — literally “soul-theft” — is when someone ... 
In this monthly issue, we examine how our understanding of energy — and how we source and use it — is evolving.
As humanity basks in the aftermath of the unprecedented success of Artemis II, which took humans back to the Moon for the first time in 54 years and brought them farther from Earth than ever before, many of us can’t help but think about grander goals. As a species, we don’t just dream of returning to the Moon, but of heading to places we’ve never been: other planets, other star systems, or even other galaxies. However, there are big problems we have to solve if we ever want to send humans outside of the Solar System: the problems of distance, time, speed, and fuel efficiency.
Interstellar distances are huge, even compared to the vast interplanetary distances we encounter in the Solar System. With current rocket technology, it would take hundreds of human lifetimes to reach even the nearest star, and that’s because we’re limited by speed, which is in turn limited by the efficiency of our fuel sources. Chemical-based rockets leverage quite efficient fuel sources, like liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, but transform less than a millionth of the fuel’s rest ... 
A week before Christmas, nearly 50,000 people living along Colorado’s Front Range lost power for multiple days.
The outage was deliberate. Xcel Energy, the region’s utility, had implemented a “public safety power shutoff” out of fear that high winds would down power lines and spark fires. The danger wasn’t hypothetical. Conditions were warm and dry, with wind gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour. In 2021, a similar windstorm had led to the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history: the Marshall Fire, which destroyed 1,084 homes in the region.
Given the risk, the December 2025 outage may have been justified, but a grid that must be shut down for multiple days because of high winds — disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people in the process — points to a deeper problem: America’s power grid is at a breaking point.
To avoid a future plagued by more frequent blackouts, researchers are shifting some of the responsibility for keeping the lights on from utilities to the grid itself with “self-healing” technologies that can detect disruptions, isolate problems, and reroute energy — automatically.
Power grids ... 
Planning commission meetings in Joliet, Illinois, aren’t typically raucous affairs. The one on March 5, however, was buzzing and standing-room-only.
Hundreds of residents crammed into City Hall, filling multiple overflow rooms. Most were waiting for a chance to voice their opinion on a proposal to site a $20 billion AI data center — the largest in the state — on 795 acres of farmland on Joliet’s east side.
“These are mega-rich people who are not here to do charitable things,” said lifelong resident Isabel Gloria. “They don’t love Joliet. I’m here because I love Joliet, and I don’t want to see my utilities go up.”
While many who stepped up to the microphone spoke in favor of the proposed data center, touting the economic and tax benefits it would provide, proponents were clearly in the minority. Expressing concerns about rising electricity rates, water shortages, and uncaring tech oligarchs, most attendees were resolutely opposed.
The commission advanced the plan regardless.
Across the U.S., nebulous worries over AI taking jobs and raising electricity rates have crystallized into a clear goal: stop data centers from being built.
What happened ... 
When I signed a book deal in the middle of my PhD, I knew that I’d have to be very disciplined when it came to rest, so I did what most people would consider the “right” thing: I took regular breaks and went to bed early.
On paper, I was doing everything you’re supposed to do to protect your energy. And yet, I kept feeling tired. It didn’t make sense, so I started looking into it, and what I found is that most of us are working with the wrong model of energy management.
We tend to think of personal energy like a battery: We use it up, and then recharge by doing nothing. But biologically, energy behaves less like a battery and more like a machine: It doesn’t automatically repair itself just because you stop using it.
It might sound counterintuitive, but doing less can actually make you feel more tired.
The mistake is assuming that feeling tired means you just need to do less. Sometimes that helps. But often, the issue isn’t the level of demand — it’s whether your body and ...