What is Big Think?  

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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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Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.

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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.

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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.

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Praxis Posts

Theory & political commentary

Praxis

Sex, Booze and the Meaning of Life

Sex
6 months ago

It reads like a headline in The Onion: “Study Finds People Prefer Having Sex to Scrubbing the Toilet.” Throw in an ironic moniker (the author of the happiness study is named Carsten Grimm) and it’s really too good to be true. Except this is for real. It is the latest, and by my lights the most ...

Praxis

How Sadness Skews our Rationality

Sad
6 months ago

Down in the dumps? You’d better watch your wallet, among other things. We all face dozens of choices every day between instant gratification and delayed rewards, perhaps too often opting for the immediate pleasure. But as Harvard University researcher Jennifer Lerner and two colleagues report in ...

Praxis

In Defense of Irony

Hipsters
6 months ago

Over at The Stone, Christy Wampole diagnoses the malaise of the post-millennial age and suggests a few ways “How to Live Without Irony.” It is a sign of Wampole’s misdiagnosis that her recommended cures sound a lot worse than the disease. First, the claim: For many Americans born in the ...

Praxis

Does President Obama Have a Mandate?

Barack_obama_thumb
6 months ago

Now that the long presidential campaign is over and a winner has emerged, the blogosphere is asking the question we hear every four years at this time: does the president-elect have a mandate to govern? At the Economist today, I point out how empty the debate is. But as vacuous as the discussion ...

Praxis

Was Karl Rove Pulling Our Leg?

Rove
6 months ago

The Election Night spectacle on Fox News featuring an apparently unhinged Karl Rove taking on a roomful of data analyzers who had called the election for President Obama has me thinking that the whole thing might have been an elaborate stunt. First with a red sharpie and then with a barrage of ...

Praxis

This Just In: Kant Endorses Obama

Obama%20kant
7 months ago

Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century metaphysician who remains “the central figure in modern philosophy,” has wrangled up a Twitter account from the ether and this morning tweeted an endorsement in today’s election: In a statement released concurrently from the noumenal sphere, Kant offered an ...

Praxis

An Election for the Supreme Court

Supreme%20court
7 months ago

When you enter the voting booth on Tuesday and pull a lever or jab a touchscreen for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, you will be registering a vote not only for president but for the ideological tilt of an institution that will likely have more influence on your life over the coming decades: the ...

Praxis

Why the Marathon Shouldn’t Run

Staten
7 months ago

Update 11/4: A few hours after I published this post, Mayor Bloomberg decided to cancel the marathon for the reason I develop below.  See my analysis of Bloomberg's surprising last-minute reversal here.   After Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the marathon is on this Sunday despite the ...

Praxis

Could Sandy Thwart Next Week’s Election?

Sandy%202
7 months ago

Yesterday I argued that Hurricane Sandy may enhance President Obama’s prospects for re-election. Today, in the aftermath of the worst storm to hit the eastern seaboard of the United States in 100 years, we cannot be sure the election will be held as planned. We can be certain, though, that ...