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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Exposing political corruption and championing feminism
Federal regulators apparently allowed BP and dozens of other oil companies to begin drilling without obtaining mandatory environmental permits, according to the New York Times. By law, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) needs to get the OK of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ...
Octopus and hidden cameras go together like chocolate and peanut butter. You never know what those crazy cephalopods will get up to. Today, Boing Boing dug up some neat old National Geographic hidden camera footage that solved a marine murder mystery: Why were so many spiny dogfish ...
Oil giant BP announced a new plan to staunch the high-pressure oil geyser befouling the Gulf of Mexico, they call it the Top Hat. The Top Hat is a slightly smaller version of 100-ton steel and concrete box BP tried to lower onto the ruined, gushing wellhead. Unfortunately, buoyant methane crystals ...
The American Academy of Pediatrics is under fire for revising its guidelines on female genital mutilation (FGM). U.S. federal law bans all forms of female genital cutting for minors. However, the bioethics division of the AAP wants the law changed to allow doctors to ceremonially nick the clitoris ...
As of last Wednesday, 13 entities had offered assistance with the Gulf oil spill cleanup including Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations. The list offers came from a State ...
Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered By Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born for Love would make a great Mother's Day gift. When it comes to the biopsychosocial roots of empathy, moms play a starring role. Co-written by a science journalist and a child ...
The D.C. think tank archipelago constitutes a kind of shadow government. These organizations house policy shops, lobbying and advocacy campaigns, media production, education and training programs, and much more. They even provide a sort of social safety net for the political operatives, a warm ...
When you cover a beat, you get to know the good guys and the bad guys. If you don't have strong opinions about who's who, you're probably not doing your job. Dave Weigel covers birthers, Birchers, teabaggers, and other movement conservatives for the Washington Post. Nobody knows this beat ...
The FBI has opened a criminal probe of Massey Energy in connection with the explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine that killed 29 miners in West Virginia last month. Federal agents are looking into potential bribery of federal mine safety officials, unnamed sources told NPR. The Upper Big ...
Canadians live not only longer, but healthier lives than their American counterparts, according to a study in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Population Health Metrics. Canadians and Americans share a common border, our standards of living are very similar, and our health care ...
Rachel Maddow discusses the snowballing campaign to boycott the State of Arizona over its radical new racial profiling law. The law, which takes effect this summer, would allow a police officers to pull people over and demand proof that they are in the county legally. In order to legally do such a ...
Don't look now, but "femivores" are back in the news. Femivores, if you recall, are women who embrace ultra-local food production as feminist statement. Usually this involves some kind of light farming or heavy gardening, possibly some chickens. It's only a matter of time before the New York Times ...
This FIFA World Cup ad looks like a psychedelic collaboration between Adbusters and James Nachtwey. Way to bum out the entire species, FIFA. Photo credit: flickr user Dr. Motte, licensed under Creative Commons.
Readers have asked for more original photography at Focal Point. I'm happy to oblige. Here's a fun photo for the weekend, taken during my recent trip to St. John's, Newfoundland. It's a small city where social life revolves around stiff drinks and live music in bars. Think of St. John's as a ...
Conservative Christians used their lobbying muscle to create a gaping loophole in health care reform's individual mandate, reports Sarah Posner in the American Prospect. Members of so-called Health Care Sharing Ministries are now exempt from the requirement to carry health insurance. It's a ...