We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
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.
Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.
Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
The capacity to produce offspring, and the factors that impact this capability such as nutrition, sexual behavior and household economics
A new breed of legislation is sweeping the nation. 20 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, have legislation in place that employ ultrasounds as part of the abortion process. In ten of these states, the ultrasound is required, and in one of them, women must view the image and endure a ...
Scientists of all stripes have for years investigated the proclivities and behaviors of our primate cousins in order to gain insight into human behavior, and a recent study of rhesus macaques has added two more shared traits: the enjoyment of pornography and the worship of celebrities. Here’s ...
Imagine if Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1992 and woke up yesterday. He would probably be amazed at the extent to which our national conversation on reproductive health has regressed in 20 years. Abortion is no longer at the center of the debate. It's contraception! While many health care plans ...
When Fortune magazine's assistant managing editor Leigh Gallagher turned 38 she made the decision to freeze her eggs, an experience she recently wrote about on the women's website The Hairpin. In her recent Big Think interview, Gallagher discusses her decision as well as the bioethics and ...
Here's a short pop quiz on human biology. True or False: A female is born with a finite number of egg cells that are released during her reproductive years. Her body does not make any more cells after she is born. If you took that quiz any time during the last 60 years and answered "true ...