Yuval Noah Harari Explains How to Protect Your Mind in the Age of AI

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You could say that we live in the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, although it feels truer about no aspect of our lives than it does of adver­tis­ing. “If you want to sell some­thing to peo­ple today, you call it AI,” says Yuval Noah Harari in the new Big Think video above, even if the…

The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD)

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Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervil­lain, offers his dis­tin­guished guest a bot­tle of wine, his finest, an ancient vin­tage from one of the most ven­er­a­ble vine­yards. We might fol­low the motif back…

Discover the World’s Oldest Surviving Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, from Ancient Rome

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West­ern schol­ar­ship has had “a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry.” This does not mean, how­ev­er, that cook­ing has been ignored by his­to­ri­ans. Many a schol­ar has tak­en Euro­pean…

Why Knights Fought Snails in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

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The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a lit­tle slime will do a man no harm… whilst if you dance with drag­ons, you must expect to burn.

- George R. R. Mar­tin, The Mys­tery Knight

As any Game of Thrones fan knows, being a knight has its down­sides. It…

Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972)

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Joan Baez was already her­ald­ed as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zim­mer­man aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the bur­geon­ing folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his tele­vi­sion set long before he met her. He was…