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.
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.
Exposing political corruption and championing feminism
Last night, House Democrats passed comprehensive health care reform legislation. After decades of fruitless struggle, the U.S. is finally poised to extend insurance to 32 million people and curb the worst abuses of the health insurance industry. President Obama is expected to sign the bill tomorrow ...
On Slate's XX Factor blog, Hanna Rosin argues that "Jihad Jane" (aka Colleen LaRose) is a feminist because she's part of a cohort of female terrorist wannabes who have been pushing al Qaeda for a larger role in murder and mayhem. Rosin writes: "Even the [original Daily Beast] headline [" ...
Print is officially dead. I held out hope longer than most, but I knew it was all over yesterday when this ad appeared at my New York City subway stop: The art shows the back of a skinny kid negotiating a hospital corridor on crutches. The copy reads: "Football? Nope. Broken sidewalks. Broken ...
The other day my Triscuits came with a package of basil seeds glued into the box. According to the instructions, these could be used to start my very own "home farm" (sic): "Let’s all join in and help grow the Home Farming movement together. It can all begin when you plant your free basil and dill ...
Each of us is unique and special. So too are the bacterial communities infesting our grimy palms. As we move through the world, we deposit a potentially incriminating microbial film on everything we touch. Scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder hope that our individual germ prints will ...
Anti-choice zealot Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) overplayed his hand. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced today that the House Democrats will move forward without a deal on abortion coverage. Why are they finally telling Stupak to pound sand after endless rounds of negotiations? First off ...
Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen's hit song, "Born in The USA," conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around to listening to the lyrics. Beck was shocked, shocked to discover that for all these years he'd been rocking out to a song about a ...
Rep. Bart Stupak is being coy. On Monday, the anti-choice Democrat told a town hall meeting that there was "no such thing as compromise" on abortion funding under health care reform. Yet, in the next breath, he said he was "more optimistic than [he] was a week ago" that some kind of deal could be ...
The New York Times' resident ethicist, Randy Cohen, had some confused but caustic advice for a parent who wrote in with the following quandary: My 9-year-old son, who has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.), was prescribed medication and is doing much better in school and ...
Untreated chronic pain is not only an epidemic, it's a crime. According to a groundbreaking new report by Human Rights Watch, the majority of the world's population lacks adequate access to narcotic pain relief. Governments are letting their own people suffer needlessly and flouting international ...
Botched illegal abortions kill thousands of Kenyan women every year, according to a report released today by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based NGO dedicated to advancing reproductive freedom through U.S. and international law. The report is based on interviews with dozens of ...
Jonah Lehrer argues in the New York Times Magazine that depression might be good for us. He's popularizing a theory advanced by two Virginia researchers who claim that depression is an adaptive mechanism that compels us to withdraw from the world and focus intently on our problems. The fact that ...
Hello, Big Think. Welcome to Focal Point, a blog about politics, ideas, photography, media, feminism, and more. I'm a freelance journalist in Brooklyn, New York. I do both print and photojournalism, hence the name of the blog. I didn't set out to become a blogger. I started in 2004 while I was ...