Philosophy is a rewarding discipline to study. Actually reading philosophy? That can sometimes be a slog through scholastic drudgery. Some of Immanuel Kant’s works could be prescribed as a cure for insomnia, and Georg Hegel’s writing is so arcane that Bertrand Russell argued he deliberately obscured his meaning to hide the absurdity of his ideas.
If you want to dive into some philosophy but aren’t in the mood for its heavier tomes, you can find many excellent fiction stories that explore philosophical ideas in accessible and enjoyable ways. Here, we’ll explore five such stories, investigating ideas from alienation to metaphysics. (Also, some spoilers.)
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)
As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
Ursula K. Le Guin was an American novelist who wrote primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. She is well known for the Earthsea series and the Hainish Cycle of novels. Her stories ... Continue Reading »
The SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, is a weeklong celebration of culture, education, music, film, and tech. I (Mike) have been a regular attendee and speaker since Buddy Media’s early days. It’s always enlightening and memorable, but never more so than in March 2011.
Gary Vaynerchuk was hosting one of his infamous “jam sessions.” Instead of hitting one of the bars on Austin’s Sixth Street or attending the always-raucous Foursquare party, Gary convened a handful of friends in his hotel suite to talk about the future of the internet business. In addition to Gary and me, the group included Travis Kalanick (the founder of Uber, who was in town to launch his car service in Austin), Aaron Batalion (a wicked-smart engineer who started Groupon competitor Living Social), and Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s cofounder).
Twitter’s explosive launch at SXSW in 2007 turned SXSW into ground zero for early social app innovation. By 2011 the frenzy was in full force. So, it wasn’t surprising that Gary quickly steered the conversation to the big social platforms.
All eyes turned to Kevin, a tall, boyish-looking Stanford grad sitting ... Continue Reading »
Back when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) first opened its eyes on the Universe, there were a number of observations that delighted astronomers. Star-forming regions came into view crisper than ever, revealing gas, dust, knots, and the sites of new stars, protostars, and planets at a deeper level than ever before. Planetary features within our own Solar System appeared sharper than any remote observatory had ever revealed. Features around recently deceased stars showed up in ways we had never seen before, allowing us to view accelerated electrons and heated dust in unprecedented fashions. And galaxies, both near and far, were seen as never before, including from supermassive black hole activity.
But in the ultra-distant Universe, a great surprise awaited. Almost as soon as we began observing galaxies found at the greatest cosmic distances, we discovered that there were more of them than we had anticipated. Not only were there more of them, but specifically the ones that stood out were the:
brightest,
highest-mass,
and most evolved,
which defied our predictions. In fact, the abundance of the brightest, most luminous galaxies was more than 100 ... Continue Reading »
Developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, two professors of strategy at INSEAD [business school], the central idea of blue ocean strategy is that instead of competing directly with competitors in an existing market, organizations should focus on finding new markets. There are several reasons for this approach, but the most compelling is clear: the opportunity to create a monopoly and reap the returns before competitors enter the new market you have created. Examples include the rise of disruptive businesses and innovators such as Apple, Airbnb and Amazon. Kim and Mauborgne identified their approach to strategy based on a study of 150 strategic business moves spanning more than 100 years across 30 sectors. Their insights were first published in 2004 in a Harvard Business Review article, and then in 2005 in their book Blue Ocean Strategy.
About the idea
Blue Ocean Strategy outlines two attitudes to competition: red oceans and blue oceans. The current marketplace for all products and services are made up of red oceans (bloody battlegrounds) where boundaries are clearly defined, and organizations operate within them. Here, organizations compete to ... Continue Reading »
According to philosopher Meghan Sullivan, effective altruism may overlook the moral importance of seeing others as individuals. She explains how love should guide how we care for both present and future humans.
This video A philosopher’s guide to caring deeply is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Observing the night sky consistently produces wondrous feelings of awe.
This image, taken in April of 2025, shows the completed and operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory with its dome open during its First Look observation activities. Overhead, the Beehive Cluster (Messier 41) shines bright, while below, the glow of nearby small cities shines in this mountainous landscape.
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)
Overhead, the Moon, planets, and thousands of stars await.
It only happens once every 11 years, but occasionally, all five naked-eye planets are visible at once. Mercury is always the toughest to spot due to its proximity to the Sun, but sometimes Mars appears even smaller in angular diameter than Mercury. Venus is always the brightest planet, followed by Jupiter, and then usually followed by Mars and then either Mercury or Saturn, although any of those latter three is capable of outshining the others. Under favorable conditions, the much fainter but still technically naked-eye planet Uranus is sometimes visible as well. Here, the Moon is the bright point near Jupiter.
Credit: Martin Dolan
The Milky Way’s plane, plus several deep-sky objects, ... Continue Reading »
Aging is a privilege — one not guaranteed to everyone. Old age and good health often appear to be mutually exclusive paradigms. In Greek mythology, Tithonus was granted immortality by Zeus, but not eternal youth. As he ages, Tithonus laments his progressively frail body and eventually craves his own death. What Tithonus shows us, aside from being careful what we wish for, is the disparity between lifespan and healthspan. That is, not just the number of years we live, but how many of those we are healthy for. The key is optimizing for both, and the power is in our hands more than we realize.
Mainstream medical advice, quite correctly, pulls our focus onto diet, exercise, and sleep as the central pillars of optimal health. However, as interest in the field of longevity grows, we’re learning more about other ways to enhance our health behaviors, some of which are surprisingly easy to incorporate into daily life.
Ultra-processed foods
Good health often lies in what we ingest daily. We all know fruit and vegetables — especially those free from pesticides — are nutritionally favorable, ... Continue Reading »
Dame Agatha Christie stacked up quite the body count during her long and esteemed career. The “Duchess of Death” wrote 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections, and 20 plays. Across those tales, her many victims were shot, bludgeoned, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled, run over, drowned, axed, and pushed off all manner of precipitous edges — from stairs to cliff sides — to let gravity sort out the messier details.
Christie has probably envisioned more creative ways to murder someone than Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan, and Freddy Krueger combined, and readers have enjoyed solving her puzzle-box stories for a century — making her one of, if not the bestselling author of all time.
I’m one such reader. I’ve adored Christie’s stories since I picked up a well-worn Pocket Books edition of Murder on the Orient Express in a used bookstore my freshman year. The book is considerably older than I am yet retains a treasured perch on my bookshelf — that subtle fragrance of vanilla aged books acquire growing stronger with each reread. Value for money, it is easily the best $2 I’ve ... Continue Reading »
What if the smartest person in the room isn’t the CEO—but the one who understands the books? Accounting expert Kelly Richmond Pope illuminates how accounting shapes the way we see power, trust, and truth, and how it’s often used to hide some of the biggest corporate lies in plain sight.
Most people think accountants just crunch numbers, but as Pope reveals, they decode intent.
This video Legal fraud: How the books get cooked is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Out there in the Universe, there are both discoveries just waiting to be made and cosmic puzzles just waiting to be solved. We have an incredibly robust picture of our cosmos, at present. We know the hot Big Bang marked the beginning of our Universe as we know it some 13.8 billion years ago, set up by a preceding period of cosmic inflation that seeded the Universe with fluctuations that would eventually grow into stars, galaxies, and the cosmic web. We know that, today, our Universe is still expanding and cooling, and isn’t just full of normal matter and radiation, but large amounts of dark matter and — for the last ~6 billion years — dark energy has been causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
But even with the advances brought by cutting edge observatories like Hubble, ALMA, and JWST, much remains unknown. We still haven’t found the first stars. We don’t know why there’s more matter than antimatter in the Universe. We don’t have a resolution to the Hubble tension, or why different methods of measuring the expansion ... Continue Reading »
Philosophy is a rewarding discipline to study. Actually reading philosophy? That can sometimes be a slog through scholastic drudgery. Some of Immanuel Kant’s works could be prescribed as a cure for insomnia, and Georg Hegel’s writing is so arcane that Bertrand Russell argued he deliberately obscured his meaning to hide the absurdity of his ideas.
If you want to dive into some philosophy but aren’t in the mood for its heavier tomes, you can find many excellent fiction stories that explore philosophical ideas in accessible and enjoyable ways. Here, we’ll explore five such stories, investigating ideas from alienation to metaphysics. (Also, some spoilers.)
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)
As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
Ursula K. Le Guin was an American novelist who wrote primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. She is well known for the Earthsea series and the Hainish Cycle of novels. Her stories ... 
The SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, is a weeklong celebration of culture, education, music, film, and tech. I (Mike) have been a regular attendee and speaker since Buddy Media’s early days. It’s always enlightening and memorable, but never more so than in March 2011.
Gary Vaynerchuk was hosting one of his infamous “jam sessions.” Instead of hitting one of the bars on Austin’s Sixth Street or attending the always-raucous Foursquare party, Gary convened a handful of friends in his hotel suite to talk about the future of the internet business. In addition to Gary and me, the group included Travis Kalanick (the founder of Uber, who was in town to launch his car service in Austin), Aaron Batalion (a wicked-smart engineer who started Groupon competitor Living Social), and Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s cofounder).
Twitter’s explosive launch at SXSW in 2007 turned SXSW into ground zero for early social app innovation. By 2011 the frenzy was in full force. So, it wasn’t surprising that Gary quickly steered the conversation to the big social platforms.
All eyes turned to Kevin, a tall, boyish-looking Stanford grad sitting ... 
Back when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) first opened its eyes on the Universe, there were a number of observations that delighted astronomers. Star-forming regions came into view crisper than ever, revealing gas, dust, knots, and the sites of new stars, protostars, and planets at a deeper level than ever before. Planetary features within our own Solar System appeared sharper than any remote observatory had ever revealed. Features around recently deceased stars showed up in ways we had never seen before, allowing us to view accelerated electrons and heated dust in unprecedented fashions. And galaxies, both near and far, were seen as never before, including from supermassive black hole activity.
But in the ultra-distant Universe, a great surprise awaited. Almost as soon as we began observing galaxies found at the greatest cosmic distances, we discovered that there were more of them than we had anticipated. Not only were there more of them, but specifically the ones that stood out were the:
brightest,
highest-mass,
and most evolved,
which defied our predictions. In fact, the abundance of the brightest, most luminous galaxies was more than 100 ... 
Developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, two professors of strategy at INSEAD [business school], the central idea of blue ocean strategy is that instead of competing directly with competitors in an existing market, organizations should focus on finding new markets. There are several reasons for this approach, but the most compelling is clear: the opportunity to create a monopoly and reap the returns before competitors enter the new market you have created. Examples include the rise of disruptive businesses and innovators such as Apple, Airbnb and Amazon. Kim and Mauborgne identified their approach to strategy based on a study of 150 strategic business moves spanning more than 100 years across 30 sectors. Their insights were first published in 2004 in a Harvard Business Review article, and then in 2005 in their book Blue Ocean Strategy.
About the idea
Blue Ocean Strategy outlines two attitudes to competition: red oceans and blue oceans. The current marketplace for all products and services are made up of red oceans (bloody battlegrounds) where boundaries are clearly defined, and organizations operate within them. Here, organizations compete to ... 
Observing the night sky consistently produces wondrous feelings of awe.
This image, taken in April of 2025, shows the completed and operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory with its dome open during its First Look observation activities. Overhead, the Beehive Cluster (Messier 41) shines bright, while below, the glow of nearby small cities shines in this mountainous landscape.
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)
Overhead, the Moon, planets, and thousands of stars await.
It only happens once every 11 years, but occasionally, all five naked-eye planets are visible at once. Mercury is always the toughest to spot due to its proximity to the Sun, but sometimes Mars appears even smaller in angular diameter than Mercury. Venus is always the brightest planet, followed by Jupiter, and then usually followed by Mars and then either Mercury or Saturn, although any of those latter three is capable of outshining the others. Under favorable conditions, the much fainter but still technically naked-eye planet Uranus is sometimes visible as well. Here, the Moon is the bright point near Jupiter.
Credit: Martin Dolan
The Milky Way’s plane, plus several deep-sky objects, ... 
Aging is a privilege — one not guaranteed to everyone. Old age and good health often appear to be mutually exclusive paradigms. In Greek mythology, Tithonus was granted immortality by Zeus, but not eternal youth. As he ages, Tithonus laments his progressively frail body and eventually craves his own death. What Tithonus shows us, aside from being careful what we wish for, is the disparity between lifespan and healthspan. That is, not just the number of years we live, but how many of those we are healthy for. The key is optimizing for both, and the power is in our hands more than we realize.
Mainstream medical advice, quite correctly, pulls our focus onto diet, exercise, and sleep as the central pillars of optimal health. However, as interest in the field of longevity grows, we’re learning more about other ways to enhance our health behaviors, some of which are surprisingly easy to incorporate into daily life.
Ultra-processed foods
Good health often lies in what we ingest daily. We all know fruit and vegetables — especially those free from pesticides — are nutritionally favorable, ... 
Dame Agatha Christie stacked up quite the body count during her long and esteemed career. The “Duchess of Death” wrote 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections, and 20 plays. Across those tales, her many victims were shot, bludgeoned, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled, run over, drowned, axed, and pushed off all manner of precipitous edges — from stairs to cliff sides — to let gravity sort out the messier details.
Christie has probably envisioned more creative ways to murder someone than Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan, and Freddy Krueger combined, and readers have enjoyed solving her puzzle-box stories for a century — making her one of, if not the bestselling author of all time.
I’m one such reader. I’ve adored Christie’s stories since I picked up a well-worn Pocket Books edition of Murder on the Orient Express in a used bookstore my freshman year. The book is considerably older than I am yet retains a treasured perch on my bookshelf — that subtle fragrance of vanilla aged books acquire growing stronger with each reread. Value for money, it is easily the best $2 I’ve ... 
Out there in the Universe, there are both discoveries just waiting to be made and cosmic puzzles just waiting to be solved. We have an incredibly robust picture of our cosmos, at present. We know the hot Big Bang marked the beginning of our Universe as we know it some 13.8 billion years ago, set up by a preceding period of cosmic inflation that seeded the Universe with fluctuations that would eventually grow into stars, galaxies, and the cosmic web. We know that, today, our Universe is still expanding and cooling, and isn’t just full of normal matter and radiation, but large amounts of dark matter and — for the last ~6 billion years — dark energy has been causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
But even with the advances brought by cutting edge observatories like Hubble, ALMA, and JWST, much remains unknown. We still haven’t found the first stars. We don’t know why there’s more matter than antimatter in the Universe. We don’t have a resolution to the Hubble tension, or why different methods of measuring the expansion ...