Thomas Moynihan is a historian of ideas. He holds a DPhil from Oriel College, Oxford, and is currently a Research Affiliate at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, as well as being an Affiliate Researcher for the Antikythera think-tank.

He is the author of Ants, Aliens, & A.I.: Nonhuman Intelligence and Human Extinction (MIT Press, under contract), The History of Contingency & Future-Oriented Thought (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025), X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction (MIT Press, 2020), and Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History (MIT Press, 2019).

Thomas writes about how worldviews transform over time, in often radical ways, as more is learnt about the universe and our placement within it. His writing aims to explore how building insights about the external world have — again and again — transformed our sense of who we are, where we are headed, and what we ought to be doing. Previously, his work has focused on the history of ideas surrounding human extinction, the history of our awareness of nonhuman intelligences, alongside the development of acceptance that everything — from the growth of ideas to the evolution of life on Earth — could have gone radically otherwise.

Aside from being interviewed on platforms including NPR, BBC Radio 4, CBC, and Australia’s ABC Radio, Thomas has appeared in documentaries and featured on podcasts such as The Atlantic’s Re:think. Regularly keynoting and presenting at institutions ranging from MIT Media Lab to the Santa Fe Institute, Thomas’s writing — on topics such as insect intelligence and geoengineering — has appeared in publications like BBC Future, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, and The Independent.