‘Who am I?’ It’s a question every one of us has asked at some point in our lives. It’s also a question we can mull over with reference to very different fields and timescales. You might be an Australian, a musician, a gregarious extrovert, or someone with a strong belief in the afterlife. But how did you come to be this way? Sure, your genes and your environment have shaped you. But how did they come to be? Big history explains how humans got here, how long it took, how we’ve changed over time, and how we’re evolving faster than ever thanks to the nifty innovation of human tools and technologies. At the very least this should be background knowledge for modern scholars in every field. But big history can also help us to see macrohistorical patterns that are not easily discernible at smaller scales of inquiry. The grand narrative of cosmic evolution can help us to focus on often invisible historical actors like gravity, pathogens and climate change, and exposes us to evolutionary patterns that give us greater insight into the future of society and humanity, including prospects like the rise of intelligent machines and posthuman life.