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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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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Stories of yearning and earning a living
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 ...
After graduating college with a focus in Soviet History, I wanted to travel Ukraine—the former Soviet country my parents’ families escaped through the hell of the Eastern Front of World War II. But none of my friends wanted to go with me. One tried to convince me to instead go surfing with him in ...
Rosalind Franklin has long been considered the woman left out of Crick, Watson, and Wilkins’ 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. Crick admitted in a letter to using her data without her permission, most notably Franklin’s x-ray image "photograph 51," which strikingly revealed the ...
Kids, want to be an artist when you grow up? We’ve got a check-list for how to tell your parents. Parents, oh no, you accidentally raised an artist? Don’t despair: There’s a check-list for how to cope; find both after the jump. By now, whether you’ve watched the show or not, you may know all ...
It was as though a spontaneous performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream broke out next to us on the sidewalk. My husband and I were on our way home from dinner in the Lower East Side, a neighborhood celebrated for surreal encounters. On that summer’s night, three years ago ...