How does your entire life change when you decide, one morning, to hit the snooze button? How did one vacation to a Japanese city prevent it from a national attack?

Political scientist Brian Klass explains what is commonly known as “the butterfly effect,” the idea that tiny changes divert the trajectory of our entire lives.

These “ripples” show us that while nothing happens “for a reason,” every single thing we do matters. One random choice has the power to alter the course of history. These invisible “flukes” influence our lives, societies, and the world as we know it.

0:00 The vacation

1:33 The noise

1:57 Everything doesn’t happen for a reason

2:20 Contingency vs. Convergence

3:00 The Snooze Button effect

4:35 The interconnectedness of life

6:20 Cosmic purpose vs. Accident

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About Brian Klaas:

Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is also the author five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writes the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded roughly three million times.