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.
Big ideas in the news from around the web
“The number of death sentences imposed by US courts has fallen because of a growing number of exonerations through DNA testing, according to a report by a prominent anti-death penalty group. The Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington says judges and juries imposed fewer death sentences over ...
“Battalions of salt trucks and snowplows maneuvered through an East Coast snow storm this morning with one mission: Save Christmas! (Or at least the Christmas shopping season.) The prospect of socked-in consumers playing in the snow instead of braving slippery roads to head to the mall helped to ...
“When the U.S. Congress passed the massive stimulus package earlier this year, California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger created a state-level inspector general to insure that the stimulus funds for California would not be used wastefully or improperly. This is a big job for any auditor, because ...
Though climate change science and African nations most affected by global warming support limiting air temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Copenhagen conference ended yesterday with no legally binding commitments from countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “President Obama ...
“After marathon talks, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders appeared near agreement with Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson late Friday night to provide the crucial 60th vote needed for Senate passage of health care legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to unveil a final package of ...
“The Department of Homeland Security last February awarded a contract to a Massachusetts technology firm to determine malintent. The project, named FAST (or Fast Attribute Screening Technologies), uses noninvasive advanced technologies to determine the facial temperature, eye movement, respiration ...
“Iranian forces crossed into Iraq and seized an oil well just over the two countries' disputed border, Iraq's government said, prompting a protest from Baghdad and providing a dramatic display of the sometimes tenuous relations between the wary allies. The incident could trouble Iraq's drive to ...
“Scientists at UC Santa Barbara, in collaboration with scientists at University of Michigan, have developed synthetic particles that closely mimic the characteristics and key functions of natural red blood cells, including softness, flexibility, and the ability to carry oxygen. The primary function ...
“A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. But vodka drinkers aren’t off ...
“If you were following Cosmic Variance yesterday, you saw its live blogging of one of the most anticipated recent announcements in physics: the team from Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) telling the world whether a Minnesota detector spotted evidence of dark matter. The answer? Maybe. CDMS ...
“A number of inmates from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba are set to be transferred to a jail in the US state of Illinois. Barack Obama, the US president, ordered the acquisition of the currently near-empty high security facility in the rural town of Thomson on Tuesday. The prison is ...
“A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project. The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors ...
“Seven U.S. banks were seized by regulators, bringing this year’s total of failed lenders to 140 as financial companies are tested by the recession and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. anticipates more shutdowns. Banks with $14.4 billion in total assets were closed yesterday in six U.S. states ...
Researchers claim a woman’s attractiveness is not in the eye of the beholder but is instead to do with the “golden ratio” or distance between key facial factors such as nose and mouth. “In four separate experiments, the researchers asked university students to make paired comparisons of ...
A fragment of a temple to Isis submerged for centuries but recently hoisted from the Mediterranean sea is believed to date back to the era of Egyptian queen Cleopatra. “Archaeologists on Thursday hoisted a 9-ton temple pylon from the waters of the Mediterranean that was part of the palace complex of ...