Philosophy

Philosophy

Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.

A woman displays stoicism as she grimaces, unfazed by a pancake landing on her head while holding a frying pan in a kitchen setting.
Ryan Holiday on why wisdom depends on failure, experimentation, and the courage to admit when we’re wrong.
A cylindrical space habitat with green landscapes and rivers, viewed from inside; two moons and a bright sun-like object are visible through large windowed sections.
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.
Abstract image showing a partial view of a clock face with distorted numbers and swirling, colorful lines on a black background.
3mins
The brain is an “illusion factory.” Here’s what that means for our perception of time.
Unlikely Collaborators
A petri dish with a red agar medium shows various colonies of bacteria growing, with dense streaks on the right and scattered colonies on the left.
13mins
“Chance invents and natural selection propagates that chance invention.”
Scott Britton, in business attire, sits cross-legged on a desk meditating, while blurred figures move in the background.
Former tech founder Scott Britton wants to shatter the binary myth that separates driving ambition from inner development.
A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.
12mins
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
Book cover of "Do Aliens Speak Physics?" by Daniel Whiteson and Andy Warner, featuring a blue background, yellow and white text, and an illustration of a robot and people interacting.
Do aliens speak the same physics that we do, with similar laws, observables, and underlying mathematics. Maybe not, argues Daniel Whiteson.
A man in a suit stands facing a large human eye, positioned at the center of the pupil as if about to step inside.
1hr 12mins
“Consciousness is fundamental. It's a fundamental property of the world that we inhabit, a fundamental property of the universe.”
A timeline diagram showing portraits of various scientists, documents, and equations connected by arrows, illustrating the historical development of quantum mechanics.
16mins
“The messy reality of it is that all of these very smart people, including Isaac Newton, were talking to other people.”
Silhouettes of people walk toward a large stack of books on a barren, monochrome landscape with a pale background.
The great books aren’t just classics — they’re cultural Schelling points that give our minds a place to meet up in the world of ideas.
A grayscale portrait of a smiling man is overlaid on classical artwork with pink and black graphic elements, evoking a sense of desire. The text at the top reads "THE NIGHT CRAWLER.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Two women at a window; one leans on the sill smiling, perhaps sharing jokes, while the other stands behind, partially concealed, holding a white cloth to her face.
Is your humor affiliative or adversarial?
A stylized image of a red brain half with a curved red arrow pointing downward, set against a blue background with circular patterns.
Metacognition — the ability to think about your thinking — can help you learn faster and make better decisions.
A black and white soccer ball floats on the surface of the ocean under a partly cloudy sky.
10mins
“When you start to accept that you have profound influence on the world, but very limited control, you start to see the world differently.”
A painting of a man with a beard.
Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff, PhD on mysticism and the future of faith.
John Templeton Foundation
Close-up of a burnt matchstick with smoke swirling around its charred tip against a dark background.
2mins
“In most instances, ‘good enough’ is good enough.” A time management expert, a cognitive scientist, and a psychologist share their takes on productivity, perfectionism, and the harm of hustle culture.
Unlikely Collaborators
two particles different wavelength speed of light
Times dilate and lengths contract near the speed of light. Bizarre and confusing? Sure. But under relativity, it can't be any other way.
Book cover of "The Shortest History of AI" by Toby Walsh, featuring blue and white text on a dark background with a small glowing circle near the center—an apt nod to early AI like Logic Theorist.
In this excerpt from "The Shortest History of AI," Toby Walsh explores the history of the Logic Theorist, the first AI to prove mathematical theorems.
A close up of a hand.
13mins
“Over the last 10 or 15 years, scientists have really started to understand the fundamental underlying biology of the aging process. And they broke this down into 12 hallmarks of aging.”
A split image showing a detailed drawing of a bearded man on the left and a black-and-white portrait of a young Steve Jobs with long hair on the right.
How did Jobs revolutionize tech, not once but continually? Aspiring innovators — and today's Apple — should look to The Bard and seek out singularity.