Why subscribe?

Subscribe for history of big picture ideas, absurd things that people used to sincerely believer, & beautiful scientific illustrations from the forgotten past.

What is this?

Hi, I’m Thomas Moynihan. I am interested in the history of ideas, or, how worldviews transform over time. I’m using this blog to publish interesting & peculiar gems from my travels in the archives: whether it’s digging up beautiful old science illustrations or posting about forgotten theories I’ve stumbled upon that seem ridiculously strange today.

Who am I?

Historian interested in how worldviews transform over time. | Author of X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction (MIT Press, 2020) and Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History (MIT Press, 2019). | Research affiliate at Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and at the Berggruen Institute's Antikythera thinktank. | My ideas & work have been featured on shows and publications including CBC Radio, BBC Radio 4, ABC Radio, 80,000 Hours, The Atlantic, Futures Podcast, New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, Noema Magazine, The Independent, MIT Press Reader, Big Think, Vice, and Tank Magazine.

I write about how our sense of who we are has changed, often drastically, as we have learnt more about our placement within the universe, or how cumulating insight about the external cosmos has, again and again, transformed our sense of the biggest priorities, perils, and potentials facing us as a species.

Find me elsewhere at www.thomasmoynihan.xyz and @nemocentric.