If you haven't tried these yet, start here
Three classes we keep recommending — and why.
Hey Big Thinkers,
Once a week, I find myself locked in small talk with someone who asks, “What do you do?” I say I’m an editor at Big Think. These days, most people recognize our name — usually because they’ve seen our YouTube videos, the ones with the expert sitting in front of our signature seamless white backdrop.
The thing is, beyond the videos, we've built something a lot of people don't know about yet: full classes from some of the world's most compelling thinkers. Hours of structured, in-depth learning — the kind of thing you actually sit down with, rather than stumble across in a feed. So when that small-talker's next question is, "Oh interesting — is there anything you'd recommend?" — these are the three classes I'd point them to first.
Managing the voice in your head
With Ethan Kross
7 Lessons • 48 Minutes
One of the most famous questions about consciousness came from philosopher Thomas Nagel: “What is it like to be a bat?” I have no idea. But I do know they don’t experience a near-constant inner monologue, as humans do. Our inner voice is sometimes helpful, but too often it’s just junk “chatter,” as the author and psychologist Ethan Kross calls it. “Chatter consumes our attention [and] can also create friction in your relationships because you’re talking about your problems over and over again and not being a great listener to others.” Everyone is intimately familiar with their inner voice, yet many people cruise through life not realizing theirs is rambling and shouting like a morning zoo radio host.
In his Big Think class, Kross gives you the tools to recognise when your inner voice has turned on you — and the research-backed techniques to take back control.
AI and the future of civilization
With Yuval Noah Harari
6 lessons • 26 Minutes
In 2016, six years before the release of GPT-3.5, AlphaGo defeated the world champion of the game of Go. What was surprising wasn’t the victory but the manner in which the AI won: It used a wildly bizarre strategy that shocked experts of the ancient and complex game. “Within a very brief time, it discovered entire new continents on the planet Go,” says historian Yuval Noah Harari. “And this is likely to happen in more and more fields: in finance, in art, in politics, in religion.” In this Big Think class, Harari makes the case that today’s AI is not “artificial intelligence,” but rather “alien intelligence” — and that thinking about it this way can help us cope with AI anxiety.
True ingredients of successful leadership
With Atul Gawande
7 Lessons • 28 Minutes
Can experts still benefit from coaches? That’s one question American surgeon Atul Gawande answers in this Big Think class. Gawande had performed a particular operation thousands of times before he decided to invite his former professor to observe him doing it. The procedure went smoothly, Gawande thought. So he was surprised afterward when the professor pointed out many tiny (but non-fatal!) errors that Gawande didn’t catch. This class covers all the not-quite-obvious ways you can take your A-level skills to an A+ level.
If any of these classes caught your eye, the best way to dig in is with a Big Think membership — it gets you access to all of them, plus everything else we're building, like the newest print issue of Big Think, coming in June. As always, I love hearing what you want us to cover next, so drop me a line anytime.
Sincerely,
Stephen
Stephen Johnson is the executive editor at Big Think.
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