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.
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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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Living 1,000 years or more and feeling like you’re 20
Here are two numbers to consider: 122 and 78.37. 122 is the longest known human lifespan, a record that belongs to the late supercentenarian French woman Jeanne Calment. 78.37 is today's life expectancy for Americans. These numbers demonstrate an enormous advance beyond the nasty, brutish and ...
Is there any reason to avoid death? We all die eventually, but is it a destiny sealed in for a predetermined time, or do we actually have some control over how long we are on this Earth? Most of us like to believe we have some control over our fates. This is evident in all avenues of our ...
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 ...
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 ...
Editor's Note: Over the next 12 days, Big Think will be running excerpts from all the lessons that make up our first online course, Great Big Ideas. During this period, we are offering discounted subscriptions to Big Think readers. You can now subscribe and gift this course for $99. Please sign ...
The notion of immortality arises out of our first awareness of death. It is impossible for us to imagine ourselves ceasing to exist. The concept of an afterlife, Ponce de Léon's fabled Fountain of Youth, enduring fame, and offspring as the torchbearers of the family name - these are all embodiments ...
What's the Big Idea? In the first segment of our interview with Sonia Arrison, the policy analyst and futurist explained how, thanks to biotechnology and the coming longevity revolution, the average person may soon celebrate over 150 birthdays. Many Big Thinkers wondered whether lifespan ...
What's the Big Idea? In most species, the body of an organism loses its innate ability to heal over time (salamanders are a notable exception). While a kid can skin her knee and not even remember it two days later, an adult might feel the effects for weeks. But what do we really know about aging ...
What's the Big Idea? Less than one hundred years ago a routine bacterial infection could be a death sentence. The discovery of penicillin changed all of that. We're now on the verge of a similar revolution in medicine says Doug Melton, a biologist and co-director of Harvard’s Stem ...
What’s the Big Idea? “Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it," said W. Somerset Maugham. Which is, of course, the way most of us would prefer it. For all our willingness to play with fire, the human species has quite a flair for ...