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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Stories of yearning and earning a living
Imagine if nude women in fashion magazines, action movies, and music videos, suddenly screamed out against political corruption, debilitating income inequality, or oppression by religious leaders. Femen, a group of all-female protesters who use their breasts to garner global media attention, want ...
Last weekend, my best friend from college, an elementary school teacher, visited me in New York. We were having lunch on Friday when she looked up from checking the news on her phone and said, “There was another school shooting.” Her face had turned pale. Her school in Colorado trains multiple ...
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to be at the historic K’s Hamburger in Troy, Ohio. For generations, republican presidential candidates have been stumping at this little hamburger shop in Troy’s picturesque downtown. The line to get into Governor Mitt Romney’s rally there last June was long ...
On a warm spring night in Paris, May 29, 1913, a riot broke out in the Champs Elysee Theatre during the premier of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” As NPR explains, the aristocracy was not ready for the symphony’s “jagged rhythms, crunching discord, and the strange jerking of the dancers on ...
For years, I believed in the legend that Albert Einstein wore the same outfit every day. (That’s genius. Brain cells are better used on bigger questions than “what to wear?”!) While the man loved his gray sweatshirts, this story is false. Yet for many years it inspired my personal fashion sense ...
The Brooklyn Book Festival took place last weekend, and I still can't stop thinking about Mary Higgins Clark. She's a GILF, a grandmother I'd like to "Friend," and leave inside jokes on her Facebook wall. Her career and writing advice are inspiring. Before attending the Brooklyn Book Festival ...
There’s an indelible story in Jim Collins’ Good to Great about Admiral Jim Stockdale, a war hero who survived torture as a POW in Vietnam. From Collins’ book: “I never lost faith in the end of the story,” [Stockdale] said... “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I ...
We, the living, have won the history jackpot. As centuries go, the 20th century ranks as exceptional, a hard to fathom whirlwind. (The apocalyptic way Stalin and Hitler mass-murdered side-by-side.) But as the 20th century came to a close, the 1990s seemed too comfortable, like a pair of beige Keds ...
Along with Romney’s 13% tax bill and Pussy Riot, the other media sensation of recent weeks has been cheaters. After Jonah Lehrer’s sloppy multitasking and Fareed Zakaria’s “journalistic lapse,” now we as a nation face the verdict the rest of the world has been smugly waiting for: Lance Armstrong ...
UPDATE: The three members of Pussy Riot have been found guilty for "hooliganism" on Friday August 17th in one of the closest watched Russian trials since the Stalinist regime and have each been sentenced to two years in prison. The U.S. has called the sentence "disproportionate." Outside the Moscow ...
Sex symbol. Lethal weapon. Superstar. Chuck Norris dominator. Whatever epic descriptions we use to remember Bruce Lee, it’s hard to imagine this legendary martial artist once struggled in his career. As a young man, Lee had envisioned a life for himself in America where he had a family, and ...
Writers can spend days, weeks holed up in a room, churning out words, not knowing if their work is any good—engaging, or just shallow “busy work.” Actors, on the other hand, have the benefit of the mirror, studying recordings of themselves, or the reaction of any sized audience to immediately know ...
In New York City, Susan Miller is an institution, a sage of the media and fashion worlds. As the astrologist for Elle magazine, best-selling author, and founder of AstrologyZone.com (est. in 1995), she’s constantly in demand by A-list celebrities (Cameron Diaz is a client), major news outlets, and ...
The tight squeeze in science funding means the best are forced to be even better. In an economic downturn, it’s like that across industries, but in no other area do the implications have a greater impact than in science—our weapon to combat everything from cancers, diseases to climate change and ...
Due to Friday’s historic Supreme Court ruling, this installment of Purpose, Inc. will delve into an important relationship lesson that models “the perfect ask” as told through Obama, the Bushes, and what may have really saved health care reform. Reporting from the 2008 Republican National ...