Words Are the Most Powerful Drug | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Humans stand alone in the animal kingdom. Our power over nature is unparalleled. What separates us? What is it that makes us human? The answer lies in our mastery of communication: the power to express complex thoughts and ideas; to organize and think collectively. These are the engines of our success, driving our ascent from hunter-gatherers to a global civilization.

Communication is everywhere. Our technology has propelled us to a new age of interconnectedness. Waves of data pass through us at the speed of light. Music, language, art, the written word—through these tools, the boundless human imagination has been given a voice. They give us self-expression and collective knowledge.

But they have a dark side. These tools are so powerful that they distort our very perception of reality. They can subvert and corrupt, and even manipulate entire populations. Communication is what makes us, us. How did it emerge? How did it transform us into a creature that could dream, into a creature that could imagine, where millions could eventually learn to cooperate, to overcome, to transcend?

This is the story of how our world came to be; how communication defined our species and created the modern age. How it connected humanity and sent our voice on a course for the stars. This is Origins.

Unadopted amendments to the Bill of Rights | US government and civics | Khan Academy

What Makes You a Degenerate? | Stoic Philosophy

View All

Force, mass and acceleration | Movement and forces | Middle school physics | Khan Academy

So, I have three different asteroids over here, and they have different masses. We’ll talk a lot more about what mass means, but one way to think about it is how much stuff there is there. There are other ways to think about it. Let’s say that this first…

8 Hiking Essentials You Shouldn’t Leave Home Without | National Geographic

Action! Fellow adventurers, thrill seekers, and aficionados of the great outdoors, lend me your ears. I’m Starlight Williams, digital editor at National Geographic, amateur peak seeker along the northeast coast, and budding glamper. From trusty hiking pol…

Genetic drift, bottleneck effect and founder effect | Biology | Khan Academy

We’ve already made several videos over evolution. Just to remind ourselves what evolution is talking about: it’s the change in heritable traits of a population over generations. A lot of times, you’ll hear people say “evolution” and “natural selection” re…

Factorization with substitution | Polynomial factorization | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy

We’re told that we want to factor the following expression that they have right here, and they say that we can factor the expression as ( u + v ) squared, where ( u ) and ( v ) are either constant integers or single variable expressions. What are ( u ) an…

Models of voting behavior | Political participation | US government and civics | Khan Academy

What we’re going to do in this video is start to think about voting behavior. In particular, we’re going to start classifying motivations for why someone votes for a particular candidate. I’m going to introduce some terms that will impress your political …

3d curl formula, part 2

So I’m explaining the formula for three-dimensional curl, and where we left off, we have this determinant of a 3x3 matrix, which looks absurd because none of the individual components are actual numbers. But nevertheless, I’m about to show how, when you k…

Words Are the Most Powerful Drug | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles