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.
Theory & political commentary
In a recent commencement address, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered ten suggestions to Princeton graduates ranging from “life is amazingly unpredictable...don’t be afraid to let the drama play out” to “call your mom and dad once in a while.” In between he offered some insights on the ...
The anonymous author of the Big Think Neurobonkers blog has published a wee reply to my recent posts arguing that NSA leaker Edward Snowden should be prosecuted: To act on one’s conscience and leak information that is believed to be in the public interest is a noble choice. The ...
The Taiwanese version of the Onion (sort of) has put out a new video mocking President Obama's hypocrisy regarding NSA surveillance. The US has long criticized China for being a surveillance state and locking up its own citizens for opposing government policies. But 2013 has revealed a ...
I wrote a short post on Thursday suggesting that whether you’re a fan or a sworn enemy of the surveillance state, you’d be wrong to condemn the pending prosecution of Edward Snowden. Drawing on a passage from Hobbes’s Leviathan, I argued that functional government is impossible “if the considered ...
Yes, the kitten with four eyes, two noses and two mouths is real. She was born on Tuesday and answers to, cue the pun, “Deucy.” What does Deucy have to do with Edward Snowden, aside from their adorable whiskers? A lot. I could explain, but Hobbes does such a better job. Arguing for entrusting ...
As the impressive scope of the NSA surveillance operation known as PRISM comes to light, smart people in the blogosphere are divided about how up in arms we ought to be. Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story in the Guardian, charges that the United States “wants to destroy ...
I’m usually a big fan of Leon Wieseltier’s learned, delightfully acerbic essays, but I’m less excited about his commencement address to the graduates of Brandeis University on May 19. In his rousing defense of the humanities, Wieseltier criticizes the “scientism” encroaching on our lives and on the ...
Everyone is up in arms, quite legitimately, about Wednesday morning’s news: A jury in Bexar County, Texas just acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Craigslist escort—agreeing that because he was attempting to retrieve the $150 he'd paid to Frago, who wouldn't ...
Wealth and income inequality in the United States have been getting a lot of attention of late. A few months ago, a viral YouTube video showed that the top 1 percent of Americans now control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Earlier this year, a study suggested a link between wealth and longevity ...
The people of Oklahoma City suffered their second violent bout of tornados in as many weeks on Friday evening. These storms weren’t nearly as devastating as the EF5 twisters that took dozens of lives on May 20, but a mother and her baby died when their car rolled over on the highway, and three ...
Imagine, for a moment, that you recently discovered you are an opera lover. A friend dragged you to “Aida” last year and you were enraptured. The same friend took you to “Don Giovanni” and you melted as the first ominous notes of the overture filled the hall. You’d like to harness your new-found ...
“I believe the children are our future.” Never has a more brazen tautology graced the opening line of a Top 40 song. But when Whitney Houston popularized these words in her 1986 hit, she gave voice to an orientation that seems to be in retreat today. For Douglas Rushkoff, author of a new ...
I’ve always been fond of Mother’s Day. During my childhood the holiday was all about champagne cake, frisbee and family picnics among cherry blossoms. These days it’s about raucous family brunches centered around the silkiest varieties of smoked fish. Yes, we give our mothers and mothers-in-law and ...
Members of the philosophy department at San Jose State University reacted angrily last week when they were asked to consider incorporating Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel’s online Justice course into their curriculum. In an open letter to Sandel, the San Jose State faculty members ...
I won't propose an answer to this hugely complex question today. Instead, I want to point out some striking similarities between the American perspective on the conflict in Chechnya a decade ago and the run-up to the Obama administration’s pending decision on how to handle the Assad regime’s ...