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
Pay attention, get focused, be vigilant, stay on task, keep your eye on the ball, listen up, get your head in the game: these are just a few of the many ways we have of calling on that very basic human skill of paying attention. There may be good reason for the variety of ways in which we ask ...
At the 2012 World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos last week, a record 2,600 global leaders discussed a frenetic mix of economic and social issues facing the global community. A number of panels (some of which were overlooked with all the talk of the unfolding Eurocrisis) focused on ...
Editor's Note 2/14: In honor of Valentine's Day, we're reposting this piece from Kayt Sukel, a favorite among Big Thinkers. Enjoy! Editor's Note 1/22: A writer by trade, Kayt Sukel volunteered to masturbate in an MRI scanner for science. The point of the study? Neuroscientist Barry Komisaruk and ...
In the continuing flap over the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to provide birth control under the new health care law, both sides have failed to come to grips with the complexities of religious liberty. In the weeks since the mandate was announced in January ...
It’s a sad but true fact that most data that’s generated or collected—even with considerable effort—never gets any kind of serious analysis. But in a sense that’s not surprising. Because doing data science has always been hard. And even expert data scientists usually have to spend lots of time ...
Editor's Note: A writer by trade, Kayt Sukel volunteered to masturbate in an MRI scanner for science. The point of the study? Neuroscientist Barry Komisaruk and sex therapist Nan Wise wanted to know what exactly goes on in the brain when a woman orgasms. Could the sensory cortex be activated by ...
It’s time to deregulate the organic industry. No… I’m not suggesting we let it become a free-for-all. What we have right now is a free-for-all because the industry relies exclusively on record-keeping instead of field testing. This must change. It only stands to reason that organic farms should ...
President Obama has been chided – and even derided – for his lack of leadership over the past year. Indeed, the man who was elected on fervent hope and sweeping change in the midst of the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, was being compared to hapless Jimmy Carter, rather than ...
Q. We are facing a proposal to require community service for all high school students. I am very concerned about the mixed message this will send to our students about freely giving of themselves in service to others. What are your thoughts on community service as a requirement for graduation ...
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a young teen who uses social networks as the primary way of connecting to peers. It used to be that the vast majority of interactions and friendship forming took place in the real world – at and after school; on the weekends, at parties and the movies ...
A guest post by Craig McDonald, author of El Gavilan. Cancións, narcocorridos and Americana border ballads: folk songs played out along both sides of an increasingly treacherous expanse of La Frontera. Hard but tuneful tales, some of them quite bloody, told to the strum of guitars, the soulful ...
What is purpose? Why – particularly in business – does it matter? In a recent podcast, Stanford Psychologist Lera Boroditsky spoke about the Kuuk Thaayorre language spoken in the Pormpuraaw aboriginal community in Australia. The Kuuk Thaayorre language does not have relative spatial terms (e.g ...
Andrew S. Rosen is chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc. and the author of Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy. Over the last century, our country's traditional, world-class universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley have played an essential role in vaulting the United States ...
Every few years sees the job market changing and the educational market change along with it. As the new hot career comes up, there is always a degree or program to go with it. But did you know that there are essential skills that every student, graduate, and job candidate needs to have to give ...
There’s a lot of negative rhetoric being spouted about China around the world these days. Frustrated European policymakers, for example, complain because Beijing has been unwilling to jump in and bail out the debt-laden EU without some assurances. In Washington, D.C., lawmakers in Congress ...