Contemplating the role of Big History in the social sphere is a crucial and ongoing task for big historians and one that must, at this early stage in the evolution of this academic culture, make reference to subjective opinions and anecdotal experiences. I hope this paper, and the others that appear in this collection, helps to start a conversation in the Big History community about our ongoing research, teaching and social outreach objectives. While Big History is unlikely to be a panacea for the world's ills, this paper is an argument for why we should think big when it comes to what we can achieve as teachers and researchers of this modern, scientific origin story. We should not underestimate the potential for a cultural shift in modern knowledge priorities to have major impacts down the line, perhaps even extending to our species' odds of ongoing survival. Knowledge Priorities and Scientific Literacy Our knowledge priorities in the Western world are currently skewed far too heavily towards things that don't matter much in terms of ongoing human and planetary survival, like sport, celebrity gossip, TV shows, and the theatre of partisan politics. Meanwhile, far more important issues, like existential risks, policy and funding priorities, and the promotion of scientific literacy, are massively underweighted. Most existential risks are not strongly politically prioritised and we still overwhelmingly favour short-term thinking and problem solving in the political arena (Bostrom 2002 & 2013, Todd 2017).

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