The Big Think Interview Your reptilian brain, explained Don’t let your reptile brain tell you what to do. ▸ 7 min — with Robert M Sapolsky
Life Is winter as miserable for animals as it is for us? If dogs are out in coats and boots, how are the squirrels feeling?
The Future SpaceX’s Starship is ready for its first trip into space The massive craft could carry 100 humans to Mars and revolutionize space exploration.
13.8 Will aliens look like us? The answer involves ergodicity and the predictability of evolution In movies and TV shows, aliens look like pointy-eared humans. Is this realistic? If evolution is predictable, then it very well might be.
Personal Growth How to be happy: Aristotle’s 11 guidelines for a good life People often ask “What should I do?” when faced with an ethical problem. Aristotle urges us to ask “What kind of person should I be?”
13.8 Tribalism and an urgency to act: what Ukraine and climate change have in common The paradox of tribalism is that humans need a sense of belonging to be healthy and happy, but too much tribalism is deadly. We are one tribe.
Health Organs from genetically engineered pigs may help shorten the transplant wait list “I was part of the surgical team that conducted the first pig-to-human heart transplant in a living patient.”
Business How to build something that lasts Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Strange Maps In the Baltics, 85 millimeters separate East from West A new railway will switch the Baltic region’s train gauge from Soviet to standard European — a megaproject with political, economic, and military dimensions.
Starts With A Bang Ask Ethan: Does space require dark energy in order to exist? It’s possible to remove all forms of matter, radiation, and curvature from space. When you do, dark energy still remains. Is this mandatory?
Starts With A Bang What was it like when humans first arose on planet Earth? Despite billions of years of life on Earth, humans first arose only ~300,000 years ago. It took all that time to make our arrival possible.
The Present The highest earning men aren’t especially intelligent. What explains their success? A study out of Sweden shows that the highest earning men are slightly less intelligent than those just below them on the economic ladder.
Neuropsych Why are some people more curious than others? When we satisfy our curiosity, the brain has a particular way of rewarding us.
Strange Maps This fungus is so humongous that it can be mapped A member of a species that kills trees, this mushroom is not the first to be called the Humongous Fungus — and perhaps not the last.
13.8 “More is different”: why reductionism fails at higher levels of complexity We cannot deduce laws about a higher level of complexity by starting with a lower level of complexity. Here, reductionism meets a brick wall.
Hard Science Searching for Planet 9 Pluto failed to meet the definition of a planet, but some astronomers think there might be a legitimate Planet 9 out there.
13.8 Could a hidden variable explain the weirdness of quantum physics? Experiments tell us quantum entanglement defies space and time.
Starts With A Bang Ask Ethan: Why are inertial and gravitational mass equivalent? 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.
Life Is life on Earth in harmony with the planet — or is it ultimately suicidal? According to Peter Ward’s “Medea hypothesis,” photosynthesizing organisms regularly doom most life on Earth by over-consuming carbon dioxide.
13.8 Quantum jumps: How Niels Bohr’s idea changed the world Like Dua Lipa, he had to create new rules.
The Future Making computer chips act more like brain cells Flexible organic circuits might someday hook right into your head.
Business Company culture can be hard to define: Here’s a framework The multifaceted nature of company culture is what makes it so challenging — this guide will help you make sense of the complexity.
Neuropsych How mind wandering helps prepare you for the future “In our studies, people who are more intelligent don’t mind wander so often when the task is hard but can do it more when tasks are easy.”
Starts With A Bang Flagship NASA space telescope faces a penny-pinching death NASA’s only flagship X-ray telescope ever, Chandra, still works and has no planned successor. So why does the President want to kill it?
Business “Anupalabdhi”: How seeing things that aren’t there can make you a fortune Rooted in Vedic philosophy, “anupalabdhi” — or “non-apprehension” — can help you exploit gaps in the market.
Hard Science Physicists push limits of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle New studies stretch the boundaries of physics, achieving quantum entanglement in larger systems.
Neuropsych Scientists find neurons that process language on different timescales In the brain’s language-processing centers, some cells respond to one word, while others respond to strings of words together.
Starts With A Bang Remember why we look up Looking up at the night sky gives us a glimpse of the Universe beyond our terrestrial concerns. Here’s what’s out there.
Thinking Apocalypse philosophy: What science fiction teaches us about existence There’s nothing like the end of the world to make you a philosopher.
Health What will the $100 genome mean for our society? To put things in perspective, the cost of sequencing a single genome in 2012 was around $10,000.