Some events you attend. Others you experience. Our recent Big Think gathering—A Night of Awe and Wonder—was decidedly the latter.

The room buzzed with possibility even before the first speaker took the stage. Professors and researchers from top universities mingled with executives from leading tech, media, and philanthropic sectors. Filmmakers, directors, screenwriters, and producers behind projects as diverse as Star Trek to Chef’s Table wove into conversations with innovators and cultural leaders—creating precisely the kind of cross-pollination we’d hoped for, and more.

But what made the evening truly special wasn't just who showed up. It was how they showed up. The energy was palpable: open, curious, genuinely warm. People weren't just excited to be there—they were ready to be transformed.

Dacher Keltner opened the evening by grounding us in what we came for: awe itself. Not as mystical abstraction, but as universal emotion backed by rigorous science. He framed why awe matters—how it rewires our brains for resilience, dissolves ego boundaries, and makes us more generous, creative, and fully alive.

Janna Levin then carried us beyond Earth into the cosmos, where black holes bend reality and the universe reveals its poetic mysteries. Her talk reminded us that wonder is not merely earthbound—it is woven into the very fabric of existence.

Victor Vescovo brought us back to our own planet, but to its most extreme edges. Through stories of scaling the world's highest mountains, diving to its deepest ocean trenches, and venturing into space, he showed how pushing into Earth's extremes sparks transcendence and reveals what we're truly capable of.

David Gruber offered something entirely new: a first look at Project CETI’s groundbreaking efforts to decode whale communication, complete with unreleased recordings. Watching the room lean forward in unison as these ancient, intelligent voices filled the space was in itself a moment of awe.

Musician Robot Koch — whose music was described by the BBC as "artificial intelligence discovering religion" — then enveloped us in a performance that felt nearly extraterrestrial. These soundscapes did more than accompany the evening’s themes—they embodied them.