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.
Yemen, the Middle East, and the World Beyond
Earlier today Bruce Riedel, writing for the Daily Beast, posted the first review of The Last Refuge. His review opens like this: Obama will have to face the growing menace of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the failing state in Yemen that it thrives on. The response must be ...
On Tuesday, October 2 the lights in Sanaa went out.* The power cut in the Yemeni capital wasn’t particularly surprising. Yemen has been suffering rolling blackouts for years; a problem that only grew worse during the 2011 uprisings that forced the country’s long-serving president, Ali Abdullah ...
Earlier today an apparent US drone strike targeted and killed 'Adnan al-Qadhi in the area of Sanhan, just south of Sanaa. I say apparent drone strike, because while there is no confirmation from the US - as is usual in events like this - the attack took place at night and Yemen has often said ...
There are a lot of nightmare scenarios when it comes to the Middle East. Some of these are already visible on the horizon as the New York Times outlines in this article about national security challenges President Obama will likely face in his second term. The NYT article mentions two potential ...
I will do my level best not to turn this site into a constant stream of book promos and the like in my transparent attempt to sell copies - I'll try. But for those who are interested in book news there are three events coming up in New York, Washington DC, and Denver between November 12 ...
Today Foreign Policy published the first excerpt from The Last Refuge. The piece is largely drawn from Chapter 13 of the book, entitled Policy Shift: Here is the opening as published in Foreign Policy: In the final presidential debate, more than 11 years after the Bush administration ...
Today Abigail Fielding-Smith published what I think is a fantastic piece of journalism on southern Yemen and Aden. I encourage all of you to read her fine piece. Indeed, as Yemen becomes more fractured and fragmented I think this is exactly the type of journalism that we need to see more of: in ...
For those of you who live in New York, I would like to invite you all to come out to the Overseas Press Club in Manhattan on Monday, November 12 for the book launch of The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda and America's War in Arabia. It should be a fun, laid-back evening and I hope to see many of ...
Hurricane Sandy hit Waq al-waq hard - although, mercifully, not nearly as hard as many who are still suffering - knocking out power and forcing us to become one of those people of the dark, scurrying about town trying to find a place to plug in a trio of mac products with laughably short battery ...
This week the Washington Post published a three-part series it entitled "Permanent War." The first piece, by Greg Miller, talks about the disposition matrix and sets the stage for the next two: a profile of John Brennan by Karen DeYoung and a look at one of the US drone base in Djibouti by Craig ...
Fall is a busy time, school starts and big books you've been waiting to read for months finally get published. For myself, and by extension Waq al-waq this fall has been even busier than usual. As many of you know, my first book - The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia ...
Feelings are difficult to quantify and contextualize. By nature they are fleeting and nearly impossible to judge according to any accurate barometer and yet they are still there dancing around the margins of our mind, and whether we admit it or not they often shape the way we think. Over the ...
As some of you may know, I recently took a short trip to Yemen to see for myself how things on the ground had changed since Salih was forced to step down as president. I had several productive interviews and meetings and I'm currently writing up some of what I found. Many of my impressions and ...
Despite appearances I have not forgotten about Waq al-waq, and while I'll spare you the usual and tired excuses for my lack of posts I will direct you to the National, which today ran an op-ed I wrote on the US Embassy attack last week in Sanaa. Here is the first paragraph: Forty years ago ...
Ed: Brian O'Neill, the co-founder of Waq al-waq, returns home with this piece on today's attack on the US Embassy in Sanaa. (Before we start, I’d like to thank Greg for inviting me to guest post. Writing on Waq al-Waq is like returning home, if home had somehow moved to a newer, nicer ...