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.
Big ideas in little doses
What's the Big Idea? You are 27 and earning just enough at your minimum wage job to rent a room from your parents - two Boomers who found their bliss, signed a mortgage, and made a killing on their investment. You, on the other hand, owe more than you will ever earn in your lifetime. Work ...
What's the Big Idea? William Ackman isn't known for following the herd. The herd tends to want to follow him, and for good reason. A "Wall Street superstar," Ackman runs billion-dollar funds as CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, one of the most successful hedge funds in the country ...
The linear thinking model of traditional universities may have served our hunter-gatherer ancestors well. (An elk running through the forest at point A will be at point B when a hunter unleashes his spear, etc.) But recent technological discoveries have presented humanity with a new set of ...
A massive earth-based laser has just locked on to the scrapped hulk of an ancient cosmonaut satellite. The laser blasts from a massive cannon and collides with the hulk, politely easing it aside. What's the Big Idea? Space Debris Research has just successfully tested the world’s first space ...
This past week Big Think published a post by Mark Roeder that compared the financial system to epilepsy. After reviewing reader comments, Mr. Roeder has published a corrected version, which can be viewed here. The corrected version has also been re-posted to Facebook here. In addition, Mr. Roeder ...
What's the Big Idea? In a 2007 essay for Vanity Fair, serial provocateur Christopher Hitchens argued that humor is filth, women despise filth, and therefore, women - bless their solemn, reliable hearts - are not all that funny. The article did exactly as it was intended to do: it went viral ...
What's the Big Idea? For Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, it’s all about power. Game-theory-wielding, uncannily accurate predictor of pivotal outcomes (like whether or not Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon), and co-author of The Dictator’s Handbook , de Mesquita is an utterer of (often) unpleasant ...
What's the Big Idea? Ferran Adrià, avant-garde chef of the famed restaurant and gastronomic think tank El Bulli (which closed in August 2011 to make way for the even more exciting El Bulli Foundation), does not eat beetroot and yogurt ice-cream lollipops every day. But he does eat well. And he ...
In a previous post, Big Think speculated about what Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's death would mean -- for the Arab Spring, for the price of oil, for President Barack Obama, etc. These were questions worth asking, after all, since Qaddafi's death has seemed imminent for many months now. Today, we ...
What's the Big Idea? For some of us, it was Spock. For others, a humiliating performance as a pilgrim in the kindergarten musical. For me, it was William Blake’s relentless (and beautiful) attacks on Reason. But everyone at some point encounters – and many of us swallow – the dangerous notion ...
What’s the Big Idea? Pop quiz! Bilingualism is: a. A competitive advantage on college and job applications. b. Best acquired before the age of six. c. One area in which Americans are kind of lame. d. Full of surprising ancillary neurocognitive benefits if acquired early. Bilingual ...
What’s the Big Idea? For almost 2000 years, Western Art has groped about in the darkness, laboring under the Ptolemaic misconception that Earth (and humankind) is at the center of all things. Until now. On October 20th, 2011, artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats will unleash a Copernican ...
Photo Credit: Jennifer Dessinger Adam Gopnik calls Jonathon Keats "a poet of ideas, whose work always rests on a solid basis of scientific research and resolves in a startling, semi-serious image." While much of contemporary art is meaningless outside of a closed circle of creators and ...
Punk rock is not dead. In fact, Henry Rollins sees it everywhere around him. "The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father’s face, he is pushing back. He is sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that." Rollins is best known as the frontman for the hardcore ...
What's the Big Idea? “In our pockets today sits more knowledge than any one individual could have ever hoped to have in their lifetimes 15 years ago,” says Rich Lesser, chairman of North and South America for Boston Consulting Group. “There is a knowledge revolution [going] on.” Yes, we know ...