Mark Lovett

Are we heading towards World War III? – Heni Ozi Cukier at TEDxLisboa 2025

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World War I — The Great War — The War to End All Wars. With a death toll that exceeded 20 million, many believed it was, and others at least hoped it was, but such was not the case. More than 3 times as many perished during World War II. Afterwards, fewer believed or even hoped it would be the last. The atomic bomb changed everything we thought we knew about war.

The Cold War kept the world on its toes until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, supposedly bringing that era to and end. And for a while there was a resurgence of hope that humanity had finally turned a corner. Mutual Assured Destruction was supposed to keep us crazy humans in check.

But in his talk at TEDxLisboa in March 2025, professor Heni Ozi Cukier asked the audience to consider the question again: Are we heading towards World War III? On the one hand, answering such a question would consume many hours, if not days, so the challenge from a storytelling perspective was how to do that in less than 18 minutes from the stage.

Beyond the fact that this is one of the most important questions that any of us can ask, Heni’s talk is an excellent example of how to take a very complex topic and present it in a way that general audiences — composed of people who are not experts in geopolitics — can understand.

In short, technological progress brings incredible benefits, but they also breed insecurity, resentment, and uncertainty. Historically, such anxieties have made societies more unstable and vulnerable to extreme ideologies that fuel militarism and war.

Heni does this in two ways. First, he takes us back in time to examine what was happening when previous world wars erupted. In this way we can frame what’s going on in the world today against how events transpired in the past. But even this method involves too many variables, too much complexity, so he highlights four dimensions for the audience to track from past to present:

  • social
  • economic
  • political
  • military

Within the first minute, the audience is clear on the topic at hand, the three time periods in question, and the four dimensions that will be reviewed at each stage. In a sense, he’s given them signposts to follow as the narrative unfolds, ensuring they won’t get lost along the way.

If we have the aggressors’ alliance growing stronger and the opposing alliance becoming divided and weak, the incentives for the aggressors to strike, they’re really big.

Follow along with the transcript as you listed to Heni’s talk. Notice how each element is presented in order. How each is explained enough to understand, without over-explaining. And the conclusion does not give us an answer to the question initially posed, but summarizes the current state of world affairs in a way that invites us to do our own research, and come to our own conclusion.

Transcript

History has taught us many lessons, and we should pay attention to its signs because we might be heading towards World War III.

One way to understand today’s events is to look for clues from the past. But cherry-picking historical events to forecast the future is a risky exercise that oftentimes only reinforces our biases. So, I want to do something different. Instead of comparing historical examples with what is happening now, I will examine four major dimensions of life: the social, economic, political, and military dimensions. And I will analyze key trends within each one of those dimensions in three critical moments in history: before World War I, before World War II, and today.

So, let’s begin with the social dimension. And there are many factors that shape societies, but I want to focus on how technological innovations have produced social anxieties and destabilized societies throughout history. Before World War I, the Second Industrial Revolution was transforming life with electricity, cars, phones, mass production, and more. While many celebrated these advances, they also disrupted societies.

For instance, machines replaced workers, and new farming techniques uprooted populations from the countryside. This led to insecurity and resentment. At the same time, traditional authorities such as churches and monarchies, they were questioned at that time. And new mass movements, they emerged, such as labor unions and nationalist leagues. People were afraid that progress was shaking the very foundation of societies.

Moving a little bit ahead, in the interwar years before World War II, technology continued to affect life. The word “robot” was even coined in 1921, and it symbolizes fears of possibly machines substituting human jobs. At the same time, or a little bit later, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes warned us in 1930 of a new disease, namely technological unemployment.

During this period, we had communications revolutions that completely changed public discourse. So, these media became powerful tools for propaganda, polarizing politics, and amplifying social fears. Traditionalists at that time, they were worried that modern culture was simply eroding tradition, family, and religion.

Today, we are going through a technological revolution driven by AI, digital media, and social platforms. The internet, smartphones, and social media have transformed the way we work, communicate, and even think. Psychologists, they debate how digital life is affecting children’s development, while concerns over privacy and surveillance and AI-driven job loss continue to grow. Technologies are spreading ideas across the globe, but also they are amplifying frustrations, fears, and divisions faster than ever before.

In short, technological progress brings incredible benefits, but they also breed insecurity, resentment, and uncertainty. Historically, such anxieties have made societies more unstable and vulnerable to extreme ideologies that fuel militarism and war.

Now, let’s talk about the economics. And I want to present two perspectives on the economics. The first one is related to a common idea that economic prosperity prevents wars. And the argument goes like this. It makes no sense for a nation to go to war and destroy its own wealth. So they don’t want to go to war.

Before World War I, in 1914, Britain dominated global trade and finance. Germany was thriving industrially and expanding its exports. Both countries, they knew that there were no financial benefits that justify the enormous economic costs of going to war. However, World War I taught us a very important lesson.

Economics may explain what can be done, but politics decides what will be done. Fear, ambition, miscalculation, all overrode by even the strongest economic success, showing us that simply war and peace are not decided by economic arguments alone. We have to take into consideration political, ideological, and strategic reasons.

Okay. So, what is going on with the second perspective? And the common perspective says the following. People assume that nations, they want to be wealthy and powerful. It’s not that they don’t want that, they do, but they want something else. It’s better for them if they are wealthier or more powerful than their rivals. Right? So what it matters is the relative power. I want to be more powerful, I don’t want to be just powerful, I want to be more powerful than my enemy or my rival.

Let’s look at what happened at World War II. And in that moment, Germany and Japan, they did not see trade as mutually beneficial. Why? They were gaining less than their rivals: Britain, France, and the US, which made them vulnerable. What was their response? Searching for self-sufficiency and eventually war.

So what is going on today? There are two main ideas that we see all over. The US-China economic interdependence will prevent war. Really? I just told you what happened in World War I. Right? So, economics alone do not determine geopolitical outcomes. We have to consider political, strategic, ideological, and many other factors.

When we think of what is going on after or what happened after the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at that moment, states realized that it’s too risky to be really dependent on your rival. So, as nations reassess today their economic dependencies, they are all moving towards one thing, or actually two: self-sufficiency and economic nationalism, just like before World War II.

History reminds us that wars are not only caused by economic situations, but we have to take into consideration political factors and relative power.

All right. So, let’s go to the political dimension. Here, I want to talk about polarization. And polarization not only divides societies, but ultimately it might destroy the political order. Polarization comes in many forms: divided media, political battles, legislative deadlocks, contested elections, and its worst form, political violence. And that’s when armed groups emerge because they don’t trust institutions to resolve the disputes of society.

What we have in World War I, before that actually, in the Balkans, there’s a deep polarization, and many nationalist movements clashing against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that led to the Serbian group, the secret Serbian group Black Hand, to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which wasn’t an isolated event. It was the result of years of political violence in a fractured society that triggered World War I.

Now, what do we have before World War II? The same situation. Germany. The Weimar Republic was struggling with escalating polarization, and violence became common. Assassinations of key political figures, such as the Finance Minister in 1921 and the Foreign Minister in 1922, they demonstrated this. Soon, at that time, all political factions from the right, the center, and the left, they had their own militias. And obviously, this brought instability, and we know the rise of authoritarianism and World War II.

What do we have today? Very interesting and scary in some ways. January 6, 2021, the attack on the US Capitol. Some Trump supporters contested the result of the election. That is a clear example where polarization became violent. More recently, several assassination attempts against President Trump. Polarization and violence in the United States is coming from all sides, but this is not only the US.

Let’s look at Germany. There’s a deep surge or a big surge in political violence in Germany. Over the last five years, more than 10,000 attacks on politicians, while the far-right supporters of AfD have committed a lot of attacks against other politicians. The politicians from AfD themselves, they are frequent targets for this political violence. As you can see, the signs are really big. And when we analyze what history shows us, we realize that once armed groups emerge, compromise becomes impossible and conflict inevitable. If polarization nowadays has reached this level, society or the political order is on the brink of collapse.

Now, let’s go to the final dimension, the military dimension. And here I want to focus on alliances because they are key to understanding how conflicts become worldwide disasters. Wars, or world wars, they don’t start as global wars. They begin as regional wars. And then a regional problem becomes this big problem because of the alliances. Let’s take a look at World War I before that. We had a dispute between Austria and Serbia, and because of the alliance, it escalated to become a European war. And once Britain joined, it became a global war.

The same thing happened in World War II. We had three regional conflicts, separated conflicts, initiated by three different countries. Germany won a hegemony in Europe, Italy sought an empire in the Mediterranean and Africa, and Japan wanted to control China and Asia-Pacific. World War II only became a world war when the United States entered the war after the Pearl Harbor attack.

So, how is this related to today? We already have two regional wars: Russia in Ukraine and Iran with its proxy’s wars in the Middle East. And the third one is taking shape as China aims to take Taiwan. Maybe in that third theater, we’re going to see more countries joining. And then, as in World War II, we’re going to have three regional conflicts that become a global war.

There’s another important aspect of alliances, which is the level of integration, how united they really are. This is interesting. When we look at the Axis powers of the 1930s—Germany, Italy, and Japan—they were not allied. Really, actually, they were on opposite sides. When we look at the crisis in Austria in 1934 and in Ethiopia in 1935, Italy was on one side and Germany was on the other. When we look at who was helping China against Japan until late 1938, that was Germany.

And then, comparing this to today, we have a new axis being formed: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran today. They are all united, like who sends ammunitions, weapons, and even soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine? North Korea. Who gives food and energy to North Korea? China. Who buys Iran’s sanctioned oil? China. Who buys Russia’s gas? China. And China supplies Russia with electronic equipment to keep its war.

As you can see, the axis of today, which I call the axis of dictatorships, they are really united, much more than the axis of the thirties. And on the other hand, we look at the opposing alliance, which is what? NATO and the democracies, they are falling apart, and they’re breaking, and they are divided.

History tells us that alliances are very important. If we have the aggressors’ alliance growing stronger and the opposing alliance becoming divided and weak, the incentives for the aggressors to strike, they’re really big. I’m not here talking about any inevitable destiny, but I’m looking for historical patterns that help us connect the dots. And with that, we might not repeat the mistakes of the past.

And to end, I want to remind you of the famous aphorism: “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Thank you.

Some final thoughts…

You may have come to your own conclusion regarding Professor HOC’s talk, but as I see it, it’s not a prophecy of doom but a call to action. By understanding the historical patterns that have led to past conflicts, we can be more vigilant in how we address the challenges of our time. It is a reminder that peace is not a given, but something that must be actively pursued and protected. For each of us, this means staying informed, engaging in civil discourse, and holding world leaders accountable for their actions on the global stage.

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Mark Lovett

Stop Telling Single People to Get Married – Peter McGraw at TEDxBoulder

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We would like to think that all the decisions we make are of our own choosing. They are, to some extent, of course, but oftentimes social norms have a way of creeping into the equation. We do something because everyone else is doing it, or our friends and family expect us to. Sometimes it’s related to our culture, or our religion.

Marriage has a way of falling into this trap. In his recent talk from TEDxBoulder, Stop Telling Single People to Get Married, Peter McGraw walks us through the changing social norm of getting hitched, and offers us a new way to look at the concept of significant other.

The solo movement, where being single isn’t just tolerated, it’s celebrated. Not less than, not better, just a different path filled with opportunities to live remarkably.

His talk includes a number of beautifully humorous moments (it’s a lesson unto itself) but beyond the laughter, Peter provides us with a brief history lesson on how the cultural norms of marriage have changed over time. And as with most social paradigms, it’s complex.

The story of the rise of singles is the story of the rise of women.

Impactful talks are always about shifting our perspective, so Peter offers some suggestions as to how we can view the solo life on equal footing with marriage.

  • Expand the concept of “significant other” to include family, friends, and chosen family, recognizing the importance of diverse social connections.
  • Advocate for “family of one” policies, like those in Sweden, that provide a social safety net (healthcare, education, caregiving support) to all citizens individually, regardless of marital status.
  • Elevate single living to be on par with married living, recognizing it as a different, equally valid path to a remarkable life.

As you listen to Peter’s talk and read through the transcript, notice how he’s taken us on a journey that is both personal and, at the same time, universal.

Watch as he turns the spotlight from himself to the world at large, then over to the audience. We always want to know what’s next, where the story is heading. And we learn something along the way.

Transcript

My not so subtle request: Stop telling single people to get married.

20 years ago, I threw myself a bachelor party as a new professor at CU Boulder. Backs were slapped, stories were shared, glasses clinked. But there was a hitch: I wasn’t getting hitched.

My rationale, without a wedding in sight, why do married folks get to have all the fun?

Unbeknownst to me, that night I joined a movement. The solo movement, where being single isn’t just tolerated, it’s celebrated. Not less than, not better, just a different path filled with opportunities to live remarkably.

In 1960, 90% of adults in the United States would go on to get married. Today, 50% of adults in the US are unmarried. 25% of millennials are projected to never marry. And don’t get me started on what’s happening with Gen Z.

Yet, we still live in a world built for two. Married people have access to over 1,000 legal advantages unavailable to singles: tax breaks, social security benefits.

Singles invest heavily in marital milestones. This made sense when everyone got married. But for us lifelong singles, we have to buy our own crockpots.

And then there’s Aunt Sally, who keeps asking, “So, is there anyone special?” How many of us have an Aunt Sally?

Lately, a chorus of media voices have traded Aunt Sally’s question for a prescription: Get Married. You don’t believe me? There’s a book called Get Married. And it came out, of course, on Valentine’s Day.

The “Get Married” advocates like to point to data that show that married people report higher life satisfaction than single people. Their conclusion: Get married and get happy. Your bonus: you get to save civilization.

Now, you might be wondering, and the answer is no, I’m not anti-marriage. I’ve even had a couple near misses.

But I am against over-prescribing marriage based on correlational data that the “Get Married” crowd is a little too wedded to. Any serious scientist who looks at these data comes to the same conclusion: that is, the people who get married are already slightly happier to begin with.

But there is a happiness effect in the data. There’s a wedding day bump. But it fades fast. For 30K a pop, the average US wedding, at that cost, you can take 15 vacations. Without your in-laws.

But here’s the real puzzle. And it’s one that the “Get Married” crowd can’t answer. And that is this: If getting married makes you happy, why is it that the happiest places on Earth feature the most people going solo? This is especially the case in Scandinavia.

I say, rather than treating the rise of singles as a bug, let’s treat it as a feature. A feature of progress, especially for women.

The arranged marriage was invented 4,400 years ago in order to form business alliances during harsh agrarian times. Women were treated more like property than partners, with a husband receiving ownership from the father at the altar. Thankfully, today, marriage is more about love, and it’s increasingly optional.

The story of the rise of singles is the story of the rise of women. And it really got rolling with the invention of the spinning wheel. The spinsters who used it could earn their own money and escape being owned by a husband or a father.

With the invention of birth control and greater access to education and economic opportunities, “I do” is becoming, “Do I?”

The spinsters of yesterday and the cat ladies of today are not old maids. They’re trailblazers, pioneers of independence.

Urbanization, apartments, and the home appliances that were invented for housewives are spurring a huge increase in people living alone, especially in cities like Stockholm.

Intrigued by these happy Scandinavians, I swapped out my Stetson for an Indiana Jones style fedora and headed to Sweden, a global leader in gender equality. And I found lots of one-bedroom apartments filled with singles, some by choice, some by chance, but living rich, interconnected, remarkable lives.

So let’s dispense with the calls to get married. They’re either already preaching to the choir or shouting into the wind. There are the “someday” singles. They’re looking for their person, sometimes waiting hopelessly. The “just may” singles are open to possibilities, the hopeful romantics. But of single adults in the United States, half have other priorities.

They’re not looking for love or lust, whether for now or forever. And they’re channeling their time and their energy and their intention into education, building businesses, creating art. For many singles, they live meaningful lives. Singles give more time. They’re more likely to care for elderly parents and disabled friends, more so than their non-single counterparts.

So what should we tell single people rather than get married? Let’s start by expanding the concept of significant other. It originally included family and deep friendships, including family of choice. Indeed, science shows that social connections broadly predict life satisfaction.

I’ve never put a ring on a finger, but I have significant others. They are my brothers and sisters in the solo community around the world. There’s my brother from another mother, Darwin, who’s taught me more about unconditional love than any lover has. And here tonight is my soul sister, Julie, who was at my bachelor party 20 years ago. I love you, Julie.

Next, let’s advocate for policies that support a family of one. Sweden’s social safety net is given to all citizens individually: universal healthcare, free or low-cost education, affordable childcare, and eldercare. No spouse required. Amen.

And lastly, let’s elevate single living to be on par with married living. Not better, not worse, just a different path filled with opportunities to live remarkably.

I always thought that there was something wrong with me for not wanting to get married. The prospect of it felt like I would be wearing an ill-fitting suit, or worse, a straitjacket.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of problems. There’s a lot of things wrong with me. But putting a ring on it is not going to solve my problems.

And as I was nursing a broken heart after one of my near misses, it hit me: I’m not half waiting for a whole. I’m wholehearted. I’m complete, I’m healthy, I’m financially stable, I do meaningful work, I have a wide and deep connected group of friends. I feel wholehearted, and I hope you do too.

In the end, there is no one remarkable life. There are remarkable lives. And no amount of pearl clutching or calls to get married are going to drag us back to the good old days, which, to be honest, weren’t that good to begin with.

Someday, single living and married living will stand side by side, equal. In the meantime, the solo movement has a big tent. Never married? Divorced? Separated? Widowed? Welcome. We celebrate you and our married allies.

The future is about options, not prescriptions. So let’s toast to a world that honors both the choice to settle down or go solo.

Cheers.

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Billions of Personal Stories as Told on the Golden Gate Bridge

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It was 88 years ago, on May 27, 1937 that the Golden Gate Bridge opened, finally making a direct connection (not using a circuitous route) between San Francisco and Marin County, California that did not involve a ferry. Only pedestrian traffic crossed the bridge that day, with vehicles permitted to make the journey the following day.

It’s just one out of the millions of bridges that exist throughout the world, and in one respect its function is basically the same as virtually all the others — getting people from one side to the other — but the unique combination of its location and architecture have made it iconic. A visual recognized the world over.

Golden Gate Bridge Watercolor - ChatGPT based on a photo from Mark Lovett
While bridges evoke the idea of transportation, I think of bridges as storytellers, or to be more precise, story conduits. So how many stories has the Golden Gate Bridge facilitated? That’s hard to say, precisely, but based on numbers I dug up, the total seems to be well over 2 billion. More likely than not beyond 3 billion.

Stories of people coming and going to work. Families on vacation. Those making trips of all sorts; south towards Mexico, and north towards Canada. Both saints and sinners, as well as everything in between. While they’re just physical objects, bridges facilitate a fundamental desire to reach beyond ourselves.

For example, when the ancient Romans built the Pons Sublicius across the Tiber River around 642 BC, they weren’t just connecting 2 banks of earth — they were helping create the destiny of their civilization. Every Roman legion that marched across their bridges carried the seeds of an empire that would shape Western culture for millennia — for better or worse.

In more recent times, but still predating the Golden Gate Bridge, consider how different New York City would be today if the Brooklyn Bridge had never been built. When it opened in 1883, it didn’t just span the East River; it transformed New York from a collection of separate boroughs into the unified city we know today.

Consider the Tower Bridge in London. Completed in 1894, it connected not just the north and south banks of the River Thames, but also the old world with the new industrial age. Imagine the conversations that took place as horse-drawn carriages shared those roadways with new motor cars — generations literally passing each other on a bridge between eras.

When we understand bridges as more than infrastructure, but as the connective tissue of human experience, we begin to appreciate how they’ve shaped not just where we can go, but who we become in the crossing.

Back to you…

Maybe your story involves crossing a physical bridge, as you moved from one place to another, or it may be more metaphorical in nature as you progressed in your career or in a relationship. Think about the starting and ending points, with a chasm in-between, and what changed when you crossed over.

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Mark Lovett

The Day America Reached for the Moon: Understanding President John F. Kennedy’s Bold Promise

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Yesterday’s article talked about Samuel Morse and the birth of the telegraph, and how an inventor’s vision, driven by grief, jump started the era of electronic communication. But that’s not to say that such technological achievements can only be initiated by someone with technical skill. Politicians with a vision of the future far different than the present can serve as inspiration for shifts in the timeline of humanity.

One such story began with a young man standing before Congress, promising to accomplish something that had never been done in human history. On May 25th 1961, President John F. Kennedy did exactly that, declaring America would land a man on the moon before the decade’s end. But this wasn’t just about exploring space. To understand why Kennedy made this audacious promise, we must first step back into a world gripped by fear, competition, and the urgent need for national purpose.

The Shadow of Sputnik

Four years before Kennedy’s bold declaration, the world had changed overnight. On October 4, 1957, a metallic sphere no larger than a beach ball began orbiting Earth, beeping its simple signal across radio waves around the globe. Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union, represented far more than a technological achievement — it was a thunderclap that shattered American confidence.

Exploded view of the Sputnik 1 satellite

Picture the American families of 1957, stepping outside their homes to peer up at the night sky, knowing that somewhere among those familiar stars was a man-made object placed there by their Cold War adversary. The implications were terrifying. If the Soviets could launch a satellite, they could certainly launch a nuclear warhead. The same rocket technology that lifted Sputnik could deliver destruction to American cities.

The psychological impact was perhaps even more profound than the military implications. America had long considered itself the world’s technological leader, the nation that had won World War II through industrial might and innovation. Suddenly, we were playing catch-up to a communist rival we had underestimated.

A String of Soviet Triumphs

The humiliation deepened with each Soviet space achievement. In November 1957, they launched Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Laika — proving that living creatures could survive in space. America’s first satellite attempt, Vanguard TV3, exploded on the launch pad in December 1957, earning the mocking nickname “Kaputnik” in the press.

Then came the ultimate blow: on April 12, 1961, just weeks before Kennedy’s moon speech, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth. The smiling young pilot returned to a hero’s welcome, his achievement broadcast around the world. Once again, America was second.

Consider the personal stories embedded in this moment. Gagarin, a farmer’s son who had worked in a steel foundry, now represented the triumph of Soviet ideology. Meanwhile, American parents worried about their children’s futures in a world where their nation seemed to be losing the most important race of the modern era.

The Cold War Context

To truly understand Kennedy’s moon commitment, we must appreciate the global stakes of the Cold War in 1961. This wasn’t merely a competition between two superpowers — it was a battle for the hearts and minds of the entire world. Newly independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were choosing between American capitalism and Soviet communism. Every achievement, every failure, was scrutinized as evidence of which system was superior.

Space exploration had become the ultimate proving ground. Unlike military might, which remained largely hidden and theoretical, space achievements were visible to all. When a Soviet rocket successfully launched, people around the world could see it, hear about it, and draw their own conclusions about Soviet capabilities.

Kennedy’s Personal Stakes

For Kennedy personally, the space race represented both tremendous risk and opportunity. At 43, he was the youngest elected president in American history, criticized by some as inexperienced and untested. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion had damaged his credibility. He needed a victory — something bold and inspiring that would restore confidence in American leadership.

Yet Kennedy was also a pragmatist who understood the enormous challenges involved. Before making his moon commitment, he consulted extensively with NASA officials, scientists, and engineers. He wanted to be certain that while the goal was ambitious, it was achievable. As he privately told NASA administrator James Webb, “I’m not that interested in space. But we’ve got to beat the Soviets.”

Beyond the Moon: The Deeper Goals

Kennedy’s moon commitment served multiple purposes beyond the stated goal of lunar exploration. First, it provided a concrete, measurable objective that would focus American scientific and technological efforts. Rather than competing with the Soviets on multiple fronts, America would concentrate its resources on one spectacular achievement.

Second, the moon program would drive innovation across countless industries. The technologies developed for space exploration would find applications in civilian life, from computers to materials science to telecommunications. Kennedy understood that the space program would accelerate American technological development in ways that would benefit the entire economy.

Third, the moon goal would inspire a generation of young Americans to pursue careers in science, mathematics, and engineering. The president recognized that America’s long-term competitiveness depended on nurturing scientific talent, and the space program would serve as a powerful recruitment tool.

The Ripple Effects Through History

Looking back across the decades, we can see how profoundly Kennedy’s decision shaped not just American history, but human civilization itself. The Apollo program employed over 400,000 people at its peak, driving innovations that gave us everything from cordless tools to freeze-dried food, from improved computers to advanced materials used in everything from aviation to medicine.

Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders

But perhaps most importantly, Kennedy’s moon commitment changed how we see ourselves as a species. When Apollo 8 astronauts photographed Earth rising over the lunar horizon in 1968, that image — our blue, fragile planet suspended in the cosmic dark — helped launch the environmental movement. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969, he spoke for all humanity: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Consider how different our world might be had Kennedy not made that commitment. Without the technological drive of the space program, would we have developed personal computers as quickly? Would satellite communications have advanced as rapidly? Would our understanding of Earth’s climate and environment be as sophisticated?

The young president who stood before Congress that May day in 1961 was doing more than committing America to reach the moon. He was choosing hope over fear, ambition over resignation, and in doing so, he set in motion a chain of events that would transform not just America, but our entire understanding of what it means to be human in an infinite universe.

The moon, as Kennedy understood, was never really the destination. It was the journey that mattered — and the proof that when we dare to dream beyond our limitations, we can achieve the impossible.

Back to you…

Maybe your story is not as dramatic. Not one that changed the course of history. But think about those moments when you made a bold decision that change the course of your life. Then consider how that decision rippled out to affect the lives of others. And the point of telling your story now, is that the lessons you learned, the wisdom you gained in the process, can continue to benefit others.

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What Hath God Wrought: The Telegraph’s Birth and the Transformation of Human Connection

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Picture this: It’s May 24th, 1844, and in a small room in the Supreme Court chamber of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., a man sits nervously before a peculiar contraption of wires and metal. Samuel Finley Breese Morse, artist turned inventor, is about to send a message that will forever change how human beings connect across vast distances. With careful deliberation, he taps out a biblical phrase in his newly invented code: “What hath God wrought.”

Forty miles away in Baltimore, Maryland, his assistant Alfred Vail receives those dots and dashes, translates them back into words, and immediately sends the same message back to Washington. In that moment — lasting mere minutes — the world became fundamentally smaller, and the pace of human civilization began to quicken in ways that Samuel Morse himself could never have imagined.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse from National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection

Samuel Finley Breese Morse from National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection

The Man Behind the Message

Samuel Morse was not born to be a communications revolutionary. Raised in a strict Calvinist household in Charlestown, Massachusetts, he initially pursued his passion as a painter, creating portraits of prominent Americans and grand historical scenes. His artistic training at Yale College and later in London shaped his meticulous eye for detail — a skill that would prove invaluable in his later scientific endeavors.

But tragedy has a way of redirecting our paths. In 1825, while Morse was painting a portrait in Washington, he received a letter telling him his wife was gravely ill. By the time he rushed home to New Haven, she had already died and been buried. The slow pace of communication in that era meant that the most important moments of our lives could slip away while we remained blissfully unaware. This personal anguish planted a seed in Morse’s mind: surely there had to be a faster way for people to share urgent news across great distances.

The inspiration struck him during a ship voyage back from Europe in 1832. Conversations about electromagnetism with fellow passengers sparked his imagination.

What if electricity could carry messages instantaneously across wires?
What if human thoughts could travel at the speed of lightning itself?

The Day That Changed Everything

That May morning in 1844 represented the culmination of over a decade of experimentation, frustration, and persistence. Morse had endured years of financial hardship, skeptical investors, and technical setbacks. Politicians questioned whether the government should fund such a seemingly frivolous invention. Even on the day of the demonstration, many observers remained doubtful.

Morse chose his inaugural message carefully. “What hath God wrought” came from Numbers 23:23 in the King James Bible, suggested by Annie Ellsworth, daughter of the Patent Commissioner. The phrase carries profound meaning — it speaks to divine wonder at human achievement, a recognition that we sometimes create things beyond our own understanding of their consequences.

The technical specifications were remarkably simple by today’s standards. Morse’s telegraph used an electromagnet to move a stylus that marked dots and dashes on a moving strip of paper. The famous Morse Code — combinations of short and long electrical pulses representing letters of the alphabet — allowed complex human language to be reduced to binary electrical signals. The Washington-Baltimore line stretched across wooden poles, carrying a single copper wire with the earth itself serving as the return circuit.

When that first official message crackled across the 40 miles of wire, it traveled at roughly 186,000 miles per second — the speed of light through the copper conductor. Compare this to the fastest previous method of long-distance communication: a horse and rider, covering perhaps 30 miles in a day over rough terrain.

The Fabric of Society Rewoven

The telegraph didn’t just speed up communication — it fundamentally altered the rhythm of human existence. Within a decade, telegraph lines were spreading across America like a spider’s web, connecting distant cities and remote towns to a shared nervous system of information.

Consider how this changed the simple act of conducting business. Before the telegraph, a merchant in New York who wanted to know grain prices in Chicago had to wait weeks for a letter. Decisions were made with old information, and fortunes were built on who could move physical information fastest. The telegraph democratized market information, creating the foundation for modern commodity exchanges and stock markets. Suddenly, prices could be coordinated across vast distances, creating truly national markets for the first time in human history.

The transformation went far deeper than commerce. Families separated by migration could maintain relationships in ways previously impossible. A mother in Boston could know within hours if her son in California was safe after an earthquake. Young people could court across state lines through romantic telegrams. The very notion of “long-distance relationships” was born.

Watercolor painting of railroad tracks and telegraph poles running through the desert

Perhaps most profoundly, the telegraph began to standardize time itself. Before instant communication, every town kept its own time based on the sun’s position. But railroad schedules coordinated by telegraph required synchronized clocks across entire regions. The concept of time zones — which we now take for granted — emerged directly from the telegraph’s need to coordinate activities across vast distances.

The Ripples Through Time

Standing here in 2025, we can trace direct lines from Morse’s first message to the device in your pocket. The telegraph established the first principles of electronic communication: encoding human language into electrical signals, transmitting those signals across distances, and decoding them back into meaning. Every text message, every email, every video call follows the fundamental pattern Samuel Morse established that May morning.

The telegraph also birthed the first global communication networks. By the 1860s, underwater cables connected America to Europe. News of Lincoln’s assassination reached London in days, not weeks. The world’s first “information superhighway” was built from copper wire and wooden poles, but it established the template for our modern internet.

More subtly, the telegraph began humanity’s complicated relationship with instant communication. The same technology that could save lives by quickly summoning doctors could also spread panic through false rumors. The same wires that connected distant lovers also enabled new forms of fraud and deception. We see these tensions playing out today in our debates about social media, digital privacy, and information verification.

Imagining the Alternative

What if Samuel Morse had remained focused solely on painting? What if Annie Ellsworth had suggested a different biblical verse, or no verse at all? What if congressional funding had been denied by just one vote?

Without the telegraph, the American Civil War might have unfolded differently. Lincoln’s ability to coordinate Union forces across vast distances proved crucial to victory. The transcontinental railroad, built with telegraph coordination, might have taken decades longer to complete. The settling of the American West would have proceeded more slowly and chaotically.

Globally, the British Empire‘s ability to govern distant colonies depended heavily on telegraph cables. Without instant communication to London, colonial independence movements might have succeeded earlier, or imperial control might have required even more brutal local enforcement.

Perhaps most intriguingly, our entire relationship with time and distance might have evolved differently. Would we have developed different social structures, different concepts of privacy, different expectations about response times and availability?

The Timeless Lesson

Samuel Morse’s legacy reminds us that individual human curiosity, persistence, and ingenuity can reshape the world in ways we never anticipate. He set out to solve a personal problem — the slow pace of communication that had cost him his final moments with his dying wife. Instead, he created the foundation for the connected world we inhabit today.

The next time your phone buzzes with a message from someone thousands of miles away, remember that May morning in 1844. Remember Samuel Morse tapping out “What hath God wrought” and marveling at the power of human innovation to compress time and space. In our age of instant global communication, we are all still living in the world that telegraph built, dot by dash by dot.

Back to you…

Think about how communication technology has affected your life. Your romances, your career path, your view of the world. Imagine a life that didn’t have instant access to loved ones. Maybe there’s a thread of your personal story that involves a digital connection. Connections made, connections broken, or miscommunication.

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