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.
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Why our fears don’t match the facts
Most Americans know that talking on the cell phone while they’re driving is dangerous. And two thirds of Americans say they do it anyway. So it’s not surprising that people are not too happy that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that all cell phone use by ...
If you were to be diagnosed with cancer, how do you think you would feel? It would depend on the type of cancer of course, but there’s a good chance that no matter the details, the word ‘cancer’ would make the diagnosis much more frightening. Frightening enough, in fact, to do you as ...
If you want to know what goes on in your brain as you “think”, and you can only read one of the flood of recent books on the subject, you can not do better than Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. It is a fascinating, rich, and eminently readable compendium of what Kahneman and others have ...
A couple days ago I posted a piece, The Climate Change Winds May Be Shifting, about how the evidence linking climate change and extreme weather events is getting stronger, and how that is deepening public concern about the issue by turning a threat that was abstract and global and delayed into ...
Last week when the Egyptians voted in an open election for the first time in decades, having won the right to this inspirational exercise of democracy by standing up to and overthrowing their repressive government (sound familiar, America?), the result was met by some in the U.S. with ...
That Herman Cain allegedly had a long term extramarital relationship, and deluded himself into believing he could keep that secret while running for President, raises once again that ever-puzzling question; how can seemingly bright people like Cain, or Tiger Woods, or Bill Clinton, or ...
The latest round of international negotiations about climate change get underway in South Africa this week, and will prompt a lot of press coverage, mostly about the likelihood that, once again, the nations of the world will fail to agree on anything of substance. But developments a couple weeks ...
To most journalists, a good story is defined in large measure by how much attention it will get. A story that makes page one, or leads the newscast, is better than one buried inside the newspaper or that runs after the third commercial. A story that people talk about for days, or ‘goes ...
Most of us are aware that some monstrously large space rock may be headed our way that could cause what scientists dryly call “an Extinction Event”. Translation; WAY bad for life on earth. Most of us also know that such impacts are, reassuringly, extraordinarily infrequent. Fewer of us ...
Will the people sounding dramatic warnings about the latest risk-du-jour ever realize that in some cases the fear they cause may well do more harm than whatever it is they’re trying to protect us from? Real harm, from the dangerous choices we sometimes make when we’re afraid. Real harm, in the way ...
You listen in on a conversation among your conservative friends. “You know what I HATE,” says Rick. “I hate the government telling me what to do. I hate them telling me I have to go buy health insurance or what light bulbs I can buy.” “And I hate government telling businesses what ...
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. George Carlin Fear. We all know what it is. We’re all familiar with its iconography, from the ghosts and gremlins of Halloween to the snakes and spiders and heights and dark enclosed spaces of “Fear Factor”. We all ...
Have you seen “Miss Representation”, the documentary that challenges the sexist, demeaning way the information and entertainment media depict women? See it. It’s important, and spot on…even if it is simplistic. The problem is, the powerful case the film makes that the media cause sexism (in ...
Suppose you have a disease…an incurable fatal disease…and a drug has just been approved that can treat that disease. The drug only works in about half the people who get it, and all it does is lengthen their lives by an average of 4 months. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, rash, and ...
For all their apparent differences, the Occupy Wall Street protestors and the Tea Party are far more alike than either side, or the punditocracy, would like to admit. There is a profound connection the two movements do indeed share, not only with each other but with anyone who has felt ...