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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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The new rules for living longer and healthier
What's the Latest Development? Currently being tested at MIT's Media Lab is a system called Inside-Out that, true to its name, allows a person to visualize the emotional ups and down of a typical day. There are three main parts to the system: a biosensor embedded into a wristband, a smartphone ...
What's the Latest Development? Among many other culinary distinctions, Italy is known for its high-quality cured meats, which carry the unique signatures of the areas where they're created. However, many of them have been banned in the US for decades, often turning meat-loving tourists into ...
What's the Latest Development? A paper appearing in the online version of Cell this week describes the successful reprogramming of human skin cells into embryonic stem cells. Scientists from the Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center figured out that ...
What's the Latest Development? Engineers at the University of Washington have developed a synthetic material that, when used to coat a device such as a heart valve or breast implant, prevents the body from rejecting it. The hydrogel is comprised of water and a special polymer that deflects all ...
Modern culture is intrinsically polygamist. The culture of sexual choice is precisely nothing but polygamy, polygamy without marriage, if you will. We live in a culture of multiple sexual and romantic and marital partners. According to the biologist's view, if we are indeed inherently ...
(Caution – this piece is wonkish.) An interesting aspect of the Oregon Health Study, which I wrote about a little while ago, is that it uses the “intent to treat” format of a randomized controlled trial. In this kind of study, the control group and treatment group are still randomized. The ...
The reason that eating and everything that involves is taboo is that it’s something we have in common with animals. I think that human beings don’t like to be reminded that they, too, are just organisms – big sacks of guts that are chewing and swallowing and processing and excreting. I think ...
It sounds preposterous: antibiotics for back pain? What on earth could antibiotics possibly do for back pain? Then again, it sounded preposterous when Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren said, back in 1984, that peptic ulcers were the result of bacterial infection (and could therefore be ...
People are wired for lots of things. We’re wired for novelty. We’re wired for humor. We’re wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We’re wired for fear. Sometimes something scares us or seems like a threat. We want to spread it on so other ...
We might think that what drives behavior is individual will. And in fact, 105 years ago, we thought that the reason people got communicable diseases was because they had some moral failing. And in fact, what we need to emphasize is that there is a combined responsibility. Individuals, if they ...
In her new book Gulp , the acclaimed science writer Mary Roach goes where few have gone before and few have ever desired to go: the human digestive system. Indeed, Roach marvels at the fact that this is her almost exclusive domain. And that's a good thing, because Roach is a gifted writer who is ...
What's the Latest Development? Workers looking for a change of pace at lunchtime might want to take advantage of several new midday dance parties popping up at different places around New York and other major cities. Food takes a distant back seat to music at Lunch Break, a free event sponsored ...
What's the Latest Development? Students at London's Royal College of Art have created two devices, a mask and goggles, that when worn enable users to isolate and amplify sounds and sights respectively. The Eidos mask captures sound through a directional microphone and runs it through software ...
A study conducted by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention revealed that in 2011, 6.4 million children within the ages of 4-17 had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives. More often than not, doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin or Adderall, to combat the ...
Darwin wrote a book called The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. I just did a third edition of that book, published by Oxford Press in the United States in which I inserted over a hundred commentaries by myself and other scientists about what Darwin had to say. Was ...