Thomas Moynihan is a historian of ideas. He is author of 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 holds a DPhil from Oriel College, Oxford University, and is currently an Affiliate Researcher at Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, alongside being a Research Affiliate at the Berggruen Institute's Antikythera thinktank.

He studies how worldviews transform over time, in often radical ways, as more is learnt about the cosmos and our placement within it. Or, put differently, how cumulating insights about the external universe have, again and again, transformed our sense of the biggest priorities, potentials, and perils facing our species.

Aside from regularly keynoting at institutions ranging from Stanford University to Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary, Thomas has been featured on shows including BBC Radio 4, CBC Radio, and The Atlantic, and his writing has appeared in publications like BBC Future, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Big Think, Aeon, Noema Magazine, The Independent, MIT Press Reader, and Tank Magazine.

More at www.thomasmoynihan.xyz, & @nemocentric.