#Bigthink

Since 2018, around 102,600 millionaires have left California. In the same period, 61,400 Americans with at least seven figures to their name have packed up and left New York state. Where have they gone?…

To live a fulfilling life, we need to have a grasp on our personal values, what lights us up as individuals, and how to connect to ourselves and our communities. Exploring my individual creative expression is my personal favorite way to do all of that.…

We tend to think of animals as survival machines, their every action designed to help them avoid threats, fulfill needs, and find mates. But what are we to make of a crow that repeatedly places a discarded plastic lid at the top of a snowy roof and then…

I was in St Albans, England, walking through the sunny park leading up to the cathedral, when I saw a small boy rolling down the hill in the grass. I felt something unexpected: jealousy. I wish that were me.…

Fictional though they are, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn exemplify a lost truth about American kids up until the 1880s: Childhood was wild.…

Children, like all mammals, are born completely dependent on adults for survival. The primary task of childhood is to grow increasingly independent of this care, and so they are also born with instinctive drives to practice independence to the degree that…

Since the days of ancient Greece, thinkers have grappled with the mystery of why humans and other animals play. Survival is hard, so why waste energy?…

I remember sitting in class as a kid, struggling to pay attention while my teacher explained fractions. But at home, I could play Age of Empires for five hours straight — managing civilizations, balancing economies, and fighting wars on multiple fronts.…

In this monthly issue, we take a closer look at how games, imagination, and creative experimentation shape identity and culture.

What happens when you lose all of your customers at once? In 1978, that’s exactly what happened to Garbellotto S.p.A., one of Italy’s oldest and most celebrated barrel-makers.…

Here in our Universe, one great mystery is how, if matter and antimatter can only be created or destroyed in equal-and-opposite amounts, our Universe came to be dominated by normal (regular) matter, with barely a trace of antimatter present.…

Today, we have the Standard Model of particles with four fundamental forces governing them. But things weren't always the way they are now.

NASA has just sent astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since 1972 with Artemis II. So why would we cut NASA and NSF science now?

The oldest bones in Britain share almost no DNA with anyone alive today. Here’s what that tells us about human history, genetics, and ethnic “homelands."

Modern life has confused comfort and stimulation for genuine fulfillment. Could the Ancient Greek distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia help pull us out of this trap?

If you were asked to think about a physical phenomenon that’s responsible for any sort of force in the Universe, what answer would you give? Most people, when asked, respond with one of two answers.…

Perception feels stable. Your sense of self feels solid. Yet neuroscientist Heather Berlin, psychologist Ethan Kross and neuroscientist Nicole Vignola explain that both are created by the brain.…

“I think it could be claimed,” Morris wrote in a late unpublished fragment, “that during the second half of the twentieth century I wrote about more places than anyone else, and I was in a position to witness, and to reflect in my writing, many of the…

Most people are trying to solve the wrong problem, optimizing for happiness when happiness isn’t actually a goal, it’s a byproduct. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, argues that the entire self-help industry has been selling…

Here in our Universe, there were many profound steps that needed to occur in order for creatures like humans to be able to arise. We needed to forge heavy elements in previous generations of stars: elements that the Universe wasn’t born with, but that are…