In 1886, shortly after his dismissal as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in a cloud of scandal, Thomas Eakins changed the title of his 1880 painting Crucifixion […]
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As neuroimaging labs use scanners to reveal more and more details about how the brain works, their findings are increasingly affecting the legal system.
Growing up, I always found the few Black faces in superhero comic books fascinating, like rare birds. Luke Cage, aka, Power Man, bristled with attitude like Shaft on steroids. Black […]
One of the most wonderful things about the emerging global superbrain is that information is overflowing on a scale beyond what we can wrap our heads around.
We all think we know what it means to be conscious, but it is hard to pin this down in a precise, scientific way—as USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in our video. Every weekday in September, Big Think will offer a new insight into the human brain in our new “Going Mental” blog.
Nobel-Prize winning physicist William Phillips admits that “laser cooling” is a somewhat confusing concept. How can light energy, generally thought of as a source of heat, be used to cool […]
One of the most overlooked aspects of the life of Frida Kahlo is that the artist who exemplified Mexican national identity had a father born in Germany. Thanks to exhibitions […]
When Jill Tarter was growing up, she remembers walking along the beach with her father, gazing up at the night sky. Well before she would become a leader in the […]
Catherine Asaro, the bestselling science-fiction author, uses concepts from physics and math to inform the fantastical stories of her characters. In a recent interview with Big Think, Asaro describes how […]
Today we take a computer’s speed for granted, but it wasn’t so long ago when it was normal to sit and wait for several minutes every time we booted up […]
Today marks the second installment of Big Think’s newest series, “Moments of Genius,” which is sponsored by Intel and focuses on key discoveries by math and science leaders. In our […]
Ever since Lafayette, some connection between America and France, however tenuous, has existed. One of the strongest bonds between the two countries is the American love of French art. When […]
What does the Tea Party Movement in the U.S. have in common with the right-wing backlash against immigrants in Europe? Bard College professor Ian Buruma says they are both part […]
“It’s obvious to anybody that the mind does much more than solve problems,” Yale computer scientist David Gelernter says in his Big Think interview. “But in a more fundamental way, […]
Today marks the first installment of Big Think’s newest series, “Moments of Genius,” sponsored by Intel. We sat down with math and science thought leaders—from the inventor of the very […]
Living in a Shipping Container doesn’t sound like any fun at all until you see these renovated containers.
In the wake of Ted Kennedy’s passing, leaders from all walks of life and on both sides of the partisan divide have paid their respects to him. Many of Big […]
Big Think co-founder Peter Hopkins sat down with bestselling author and urban theorist Richard Florida the other week to talk about the new psyche of the American workforce. Florida sees […]
I’ve been thinking of different ways scientists and engineers could have prepared the world population for the extreme weather problems. By not financing weaponry but instead innovative solutions to natural disasters we could have been way ahead of the game by now.
Tim Geithner probably did more to define himself today during the Sunday political talk show This Week than he has since he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by the […]
It’s hard to avoid the barrage of end-of-decade retrospectives this last week of 2009, a decade marked by an interesting combination of the sublime and the ridiculous. But in a […]
Miller-McCune is reporting today on a Personality and Social Psychologystudy indicating that a connection to nature not only has stress-reducing and healing qualities, but that it also makes us kinder […]
Big Thinker and Harper’s Magazine editor Bill Wasik appeared today in a New York Times op-ed musing upon the waning lure of New York City to young creatives. The replacement? […]
Quick Quiz: Who is the only artist to be named “man of the century”? Picasso? Did Demoiselles d’Avignon and Guernica preach love and peace to define the twentieth century? I […]
Judd Apatow: comic visionary, insightfully raunchy, slacker hero… conservative crusader? Ross Douthat smartly makes the case that Apatow is leading the charge in making socially conservative lifestyles seem cool to […]
Today, Tara-Parker Pope of the New York Times “Well” blog reports on a flurry of studies suggesting that, contrary to popular opinion, running may in fact be good for your […]
Because we aspire to put ideas above ideology here at Big Think, I want to make sure you’ve heard of Andrew Bacevich, a scholar and retired army officer who would […]
Next week, Big Think will host two groundbreaking panels on pandemic and genomic science. A handful of the world’s foremost experts–including Esther Dyson, Francis Collins, Michael Woroby and Boonsri Dickinson–will […]
No, I’m not promoting a fight between two futuristic boxers. I’m talking about the publishing industry and how Sunday afternoons of the future will be spent. Will Gutenberg’s printing press […]