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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Communication, culture, and public affairs
Following the demise of cap and trade legislation, green group leaders acknowledged that despite spending several hundred million dollars to pass the bill, they were unable to create public demand for action in key Midwest Congressional districts and states. "The community that tried to move a ...
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on the March 15, 2012 MSNBC Rachel Maddow program to discuss his book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. On the program, Inhofe cited findings from the April 2011 Climate Shift report comparing 2009 revenue and spending ...
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that in comparison to young Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, today's high school seniors and college freshmen are less interested in government, spend less time thinking about social problems, and are less likely to be involved in ...
--Guest post by Erin Brett, American University student. Although the great majority of climate scientists believe that climate change is a serious threat, only two percent of Americans mentioned the environment when asked to identify the most important issues facing the country today (NSF 2012 ...
--Guest post by Meredith Hollingsworth, American University student. In 2004, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger boldly declared in a white paper the death of environmentalism. They argued that the movement had become ineffective by overemphasizing special interest legislation and technical ...
--Guest post by American University student Becca Stern. People are often scared of topics they do not understand, explain Matthew R. Hartings and Declan Fahy in their article “Communicating Chemistry for Public Engagement,” published at Nature Chemistry. In the article, Deborah Blum, author of ...
--Guest Post by Declan Fahy, AoE Science & Culture correspondent. There is a scene in The Iron Lady when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is asked by her doctor – soon after her husband, Denis, has died – how she is feeling. Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, who won the Best ...
--Guest post by Kathrina Maramba, American University graduate student. Recently, Dr. David Agus appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his new book The End of Illness. “Why do we have such a hard time allowing science to overcome our irrationality?” Stewart asked the doctor ...
The Climate Reality Project has produced an online video short linking effectively for viewers the parallels between the tobacco industry's attempts to lie and downplay the threat of smoking with conservative advocates' efforts to downplay the reality and threat of climate change. The video ...
Environmental groups and climate activists have been harshly critical of Mitt Romney's unfortunate backtracking on climate science and his commitment to policy action. Much of the criticism has argued that Romney has caved to pressure from GOP donors and activists. Yet in a strange twist ...
In January, super PACs out fundraised and spent their aligned GOP candidates. Given that independent TV ads tend to be disportionately more negative than candidate ads, there has been a significant spike in negativity. As the WPost reports, "four years ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising ...
Peter Gleick, a water and climate analyst at the Pacific Institute and member of the National Academies, has admitted in a blog post at the Huffington Post to having obtained and forwarded to journalists the leaked documents from the Heartland Institute. Andrew Revkin has more discussion at Dot ...
Gasoline prices have never been higher this time of the year, reports the Associated Press. At $3.53 a gallon, prices are already up 25 cents since Jan. 1. And experts say they could reach a record $4.25 a gallon by late April. A 25-cent jump in gasoline prices, if sustained over a year, would ...
This week, NOAA's Climate Service and Climate Watch magazine launched a video short course and lecture series featuring a diversity of world class experts explaining the major scientific, social, and ethical challenges related to climate change. I was honored to be able to contribute to the series ...
Today marks the start of the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the world's great scientific meetings. Many of the panels held in Vancouver are designed to educate and inform scientists and science-related professionals as they seek to engage the ...