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

By tracking brain activity as primates move freely in the wild, neuroethology could reshape what we think we know about our own minds.

“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.

To win over any audience you need to master “cut-through” — former TV and film actor Dominic Colenso wants to give you the secret sauce.

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.

Rituals serve psychological functions that go far beyond mere habit or tradition.

There’s bad failure — the kind we ignore or hide — and good failure, which becomes data for future progress. Three experts discuss how to tell the difference.

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

Tech legend Bob Taylor — a pioneer of the computing revolution — figured out the genius of framing two types of disagreement.

Researcher and Google CTO Blaise Agüera y Arcas joins us to discuss his new book, "What Is Intelligence?"

Pleasure is never bad — but its source can be.

Our brains weren’t built for the amount of info we deal with now. That’s why scientists have made the case for a “second brain” — a place to dump ideas so you can actually see how they connect later.

Ninety million years after our lineages split, humans are beginning to listen to whales in a new way. Marine biologist David Gruber shares the work that has become his life’s pursuit: learning how to hear the planet’s largest mammals.

Conversations about an imminent "AI bubble" tend to miss the big picture.

In this excerpt from "Strange Stability," Benjamin Wilson explores how the concept of "deterrence" went from explaining criminal behavior to becoming a nuclear strategy.

What a 1950s experiment reveals about conformity in the age of the internet.

“Why would adding shame and blame help me improve my behavior?”

“I've started to think about three puzzles we need to solve for as we bring these technologies into our organizations.”

Kuang discusses the rituals, routines, and words of advice that have helped her write six best-selling novels in one decade.

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

The technology might be much closer than you'd think.

One of the many reasons I love my job is that, on any given week, I get to talk with a dozen or so smart, thoughtful L&D leaders to hear […]

Reflecting on the final moments she spent with her mother, and the weeks afterwards spent cataloging her life in objects and memories, Poet Laureate of the Ordinary Kelly Corrigan shares how important it is to attune, to behold, and to notice — even if it’s difficult or uncomfortable:

From science to philosophy, three perspectives explore why humans can’t stop asking “why.” Our search for purpose, they suggest, is less about finding answers and more about learning how to move forward.

When a word comes to mean everything, it means nothing.

In a world of fast answers, leadership shaped by suffering is radical — and transformative.

Digital tools are pulling us away from fixed texts and back toward fluid, interactive communication.

"Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end."