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.
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Guest posts from thought leaders
This article originally appeared in the Newton blog on RealClearScience. You can read the original here. The courtroom is hushed. A teenage boy has been slain, riddled with bullets during a drive-by shooting, and there, on the witness stand, is his crying mother. She's understandably weeping ...
Have you heard that money buys happiness? That's right, your parents lied to you again. In a recent global survey, researchers demonstrated that wealth is a key variable that can explain the disparity of happiness between countries. And we know that it's really true, because happiness research is ...
American consumers gained considerable knowledge and power when a huge Medicare database was recently distributed to the public in easy-to-understand language. The data revealed what many patients have long suspected – hospitals charge Medicare tremendously different prices for the same procedures ...
You deserve to achieve your dreams. I've learned that the quality of the questions you ask yourself (and the questions I have asked the people I've worked with) is the key determinant in unlocking, inspiring and activating change. Who doesn't want a better life for yourself and your loved ones ...
In this ongoing series, I talk with thought leaders about ideas in my book Nature’s Fortune and trends in the environmental movement. Next in the series is my conversation with Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. Under Helene’s ...
Life didn't come with a guidebook! We write it as we go along, and sometimes we fudge it! The more guidelines and wisdom we have, the better we can navigate through the field of material reality to manifest the life of our dreams. For most, many things don't come easily, and some things seem ...
Your universe crashes. The world you had constructed in your mind falls like a tower collapsing into the dust of fallen dreams. Like thunder in the heart, everything seems like it's capitulated - nothing makes sense in your life any more. A crisis? When an unexpected stressful event happens ...
This post originally appeared on the Newton blog on RealClearScience. Read the original here. Venus has always captured the attention of humanity. Of all the objects that adorn our night sky, it's the brightest, excluding the Moon. Peering through his telescope in the early 17th century ...
Lovable anti-hero George Costanza is having a salad for lunch when he suddenly clutches at his chest and declares, “I think I’m having a heart attack!” His companions, Jerry and Elaine, seem remarkably unconcerned with George’s seemingly life-threatening predicament. As George breathlessly lists ...
A study conducted by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention revealed that in 2011, 6.4 million children within the ages of 4-17 had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives. More often than not, doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin or Adderall, to combat the ...
Since joining The Nature Conservancy, and over the course of writing Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature, I’ve been fortunate to benefit from the perspectives and advice of many leaders of the environmental community. To continue the conversation on the ideas in ...
This article originally appeared in the Newton blog at RealClearScience. You can read the original here. In the opening scenes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , two Starfleet officers find themselves in quite a perilous situation. Captured by a group of renegades bent on revenge against ...
I would like to ask a fundamental question - how much do you truly love yourself? The reason this question is so important, perhaps the most important question you can ask, is without knowing the answer; you will live unconsciously from moment to moment, just going through the motions without ...
Technological advances have reformed the landscape of the fashion industry; it was only a decade ago that luxury brands refused to sell their products online. Yet in the past ten years, the rapid rise of the internet caused a retail revolution, led by visionaries like Natalie Massenet at Net-a ...
Launched via a 35-day crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, Matterform blasted through its initial fundraising goal of $81K in 1 week and has raised over $460K. With 11 hours left to go, the company announced that it has outgrown its production facility and decided to add color scanning to what is ...