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.
News of our latest interviews with experts
As director of the Millennium Village Project in Rwanda and co-Founder of the "prosperity creating’ organization" Rwanda Works, Josh Ruxin has seen first-hand which economic development policies and practices are actually proving successful, and which continue to miss their marks. For example ...
Lenni Benson, a nationally recognized expert on immigration and a professor at NYU Law School, is confused about why, given the ascendancy of free market theories promoting the seamless flow of financial capital, the United States doesn’t facilitate an equally smooth flow of humanity. To an ...
Glenn Beck went off on Van Jones again on his show the other night, raising the question of whether Obama's green jobs adviser was thoroughly vetted by the administration. "I told you, well, for the last couple of months that this guy is an avowed, self-avowed radical revolutionary communist ...
We at Big Think have rarely interviewed someone more sanguine than legendary graphic artist Milton Glaser. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise: ever since a small promotional assignment for the city of New York—the “I Love New York” logo—became the classic image of the world’s cultural capital ...
I met with world famous business guru Jim Collins in his Boulder lab last month for a Big Think interview. The best-selling author of "Good to Great" and most recently "How the Mighty Fall," he's no stranger to questions on the state of business in this down economy. We talked about everything ...
Father Thomas Joseph White entered the priesthood after spending countless hours as a Brown University student engrossed in the thoughts of the great philosophers - from religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas to existentialists like Nietzsche. Ultimately, he found the Thomism of Aquinas to be an ...
Every five years, teachers at Zeke Vanderhoek's school in Washington Heights will be required to take a year-long sabbatical. To do what? He explains: "There’s no requirement. They don’t even have to connect it. In fact, we don’t want them to connect it to what they’re doing in the classroom and ...
For many of the musicians that Big Think has talked to over the past year, becoming a rock star was only the first step of a much more ambitious agenda. The same is true for stars profiled by music site UncensoredInterview.com. Big Think and Uncensored Interview have teamed up to bring you a ...
Justin Fox, business columnist and Curious Capitalist for Time magazine as well as author of the bestseller The Myth of the Rational Market, stopped by Big Think recently to talk about the eroding influence of the rational market theory, the problem of MBA programs, and the next great financial ...
Hooman Majd, journalist and author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ , understands Iran more than almost anyone in the U.S. journalism circuit. A Western-educated descendant of an ayatollah, Majd has written and spoken extensively on Iran for the American press but also served as translator for ...
Noam Chomsky, longtime chronicler of the gap between political bombast and legislative boorishness, recently sat down with Big Think to discuss a variety of issues, from his thoughts on Obama, to linguistics, taxes, protesting, love, and the beauty of the “people whose names you’ll never hear ...
Sometimes peoples' views surprise you. When I heard Tim McCarthy, director of Harvard's Human Rights and Social Movement program, talk about gay marriage in his Big Think interview, I was interested to find his perspective a bit counterintuitive. You'd think- he's a historian who's passionate about ...
In the wake of Ted Kennedy's passing, leaders from all walks of life and on both sides of the partisan divide have paid their respects to him. Many of Big Think's favorite experts have weighed in over the past two days on Kennedy's passion, kindness, and influence, a selection of whom we're ...
It was big news when Alec Ross joined the White House State Department in early April 2009—the former Obama campaign social media star was the first diplomatic expert with a specialty in technology such as Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging. As it turns out, his services were long overdue given ...
Tom Malinowski has been keeping a critical eye on the Obama administration’s human rights policies: that’s his job as Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. However, he remains sensitive to the challenges of steering the unwieldy ship that is the Federal Government towards a more ...