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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.

Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.

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Evolutionary Living

Treating our bodies in a manner consistent with how they evolved

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Extreme Biology

Why Aren't We All Happy Polygamists?

Shutterstock_31658374
11 days ago

Modern culture is intrinsically polygamist.  The culture of sexual choice is precisely nothing but polygamy, polygamy without marriage, if you will.  We live in a culture of multiple sexual and romantic and marital partners. According to the biologist's view, if we are indeed inherently ...

Extreme Biology

How Darwin Can Save Your Marriage

Darwin_sex2
9 months ago

What's the Big Idea? Sex isn't such a big deal, says Christopher Ryan, author  Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality , which he coauthored with Cacilda Jethá. So why do we let sex get in the way of all the other important things? The point of marriage, after all, is to grow ...

Extreme Biology

Taking the Christianity out of Sex

Adam_eve
about 1 year ago

Men have stronger sexual desires than do women…Women are the more monogamous gender…Homosexuality is an unnatural sexual behavior. Sexual beliefs, like these, are so widespread that we have collectively come to view them as being embedded in our biology. Cross-cultural data collected from pre ...

Extreme Biology

The End of War

War
over 1 year ago

What's the Big Idea? On September 11, 2001, John Horgan saw the smoke where the Twin Towers had once been visible in the New York skyline, and he wondered what he would tell his kids, aged 6 and 8. In 2012, Horgan has a powerful message: his children will live to see a world without war ...

Extreme Biology

How to Regrow a Limb

Axlotl
over 1 year ago

What's the Big Idea? The loss of a human limb is a tragedy. We know that once they’re gone, mammalian arms and legs can't ever be restored. But if you cut off a salamander's leg - or tail - it will reappear in just a few weeks. The enigma of amphibian organ regeneration has puzzled scientists ...

Extreme Biology

Corporate Ethics: Not an Oxymoron

Ceo
over 1 year ago

What's the Big Idea?  Gone are the good old bad old days in which Ethics was the lonely elective in B-school that no one elected to take. We've all heard about the new wave of humanitarian businesses – so numerous in fact that special legal designations have been created to incorporate the idea ...