What is Big Think?  

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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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Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.

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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.

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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.

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Blog Posts

Neurobonkers

The mystery of the missing experiments

Mystery-of-the-missing-experiments
1 day ago

Can experimental findings look too good to be true? Last week I wrote a blog post about some experiments showing a counterintuitive finding regarding how the need to urinate affects decision making. It’s since been brought to my attention that these experiments (along with dozens of others) have ...

In Their Own Words

Why Banking Needs Quantum Physics

Quantum.atm.double
1 day ago

The universe is quantum. Physicists have known that for decades. Yet the economy remains as Newtonian today as when Sir Isaac Newton was the Master of the Royal Mint at the beginning of the 18th century. The time has come for a new and improved quantum economics: An economic system that is ...

Picture This

When Modernism First Moved

05102013_diaghilev--crop
1 day ago

Modernism first moved on May 29, 1913. That’s century-old hyperbole, of course, but if any date achieves day of infamy status for modern art in the 20th century, it’s the day that Russian composer Igor Stravinsky teamed up with Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes ...

21st Century Spirituality

Further Thoughts on the Afterlife

Bt-reincarnation
1 day ago

While in Joshua Tree this weekend for another event, my friend and I swung by Shaktifest, the sister festival of the more popular Bhaktifest, which takes place every September. Both fetes are entirely devoted to the music of kirtan (mantra chanting) and bhakti (devotional) yoga. By midday Sunday ...

IdeaFeed

Therapy's About To Get Virtual

Shutterstock_122003842
2 days ago

What's the Latest Development? "Ellie" is the name scientists at USC have given to a combination of hardware and software that together presents patients with a highly realistic virtual therapist. While her rendered image appears on the screen, three devices track and record the patient's words ...

In Their Own Words

A Brief History of Outsider Science

Insider
2 days ago

If you look at the history of science you can ask have there been people who were outsiders in the past who are now accepted today.  That raises an issue about what it means to be an insider or an outsider.   Until relatively recently - and it only dates back to the really the middle of the 19th ...

IdeaFeed

In This "Great Reset," What Jobs Will Remain?

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2 days ago

What's the Latest Development? With automation invading business sectors in ways that were once restricted to science fiction novels, experts are speculating on what the employment picture could look like for mere humans. For example, while driverless transportation in general would be safer and ...