What is Big Think?  

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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.

Big Think Features:

12,000+ Expert Videos

1

Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.

Watch videos

World Renowned Bloggers

2

Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.

Go to blogs

Big Think Edge

3

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.

Find out more
Close

Global Pedestrian Posts

Global Pedestrian

Guinea Teeters: "What Will the World Do?"

450px-flag_of_guinea
over 3 years ago

Because government troops in Guinea massacred civilian protesters at about the same time as I started blogging for Big Think, I've committed myself to using this space to track events in that all-too-easily-forgotten piece of west Africa. A November 5 BBC radio report warns that the trauma of the ...

Global Pedestrian

Hersh: Nuclear Mutiny in Pakistan?

Pakistanflag
over 3 years ago

One word haunts Seymour Hersh's new investigative piece about the potentially shaky security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal: "mutiny." As Hersh writes, "the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani ...

Global Pedestrian

A Foreword to the Future in Afghanistan?

Mountains_and_river_in_helmand_province_of_afghanistan
over 3 years ago

Why Vietnam Matters -- a book recommended recently by George Packer of The New Yorker -- gets interesting before you come across a single word written by the book's author. Richard Holbrooke, the president's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote a foreword for the book which might hold ...

Global Pedestrian

Rape, Shame, Outrage, and Sobbing in Guinea

450px-flag_of_guinea
over 3 years ago

Having blogged twice -- here and here -- about the September massacre by government forces in the west African nation of Guinea, I hope we're all keeping an eye on the story. Before I turn to a close-up view of the suffering, I want to note that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brought ...

Global Pedestrian

Where No Government Governs

Anarchy
over 3 years ago

Drug-war dispatches out of Mexico, Pakistan's seeming inability to control its tribal areas, and Jon Lee Anderson's recent reporting on the largely lawless swaths of Rio de Janeiro lodged a question in my mind: How many people in the world live in places where no government actually governs? The ...