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.
Managing Editor, Big Think
"There is an electricity transmitted between a performer and a live audience," says Los Angeles performance artist, Dawn Kasper. "The exchange between the performer and the audience is powerful, intimate and specific." That is distinctly different from the act of making a video in the privacy of ...
"None of my videos have any common tie to them," says Brooke Candy, a rapper who has offered her picks of YouTube as part of an original MOCAtv series called "YouTube Curated By." "It's all pretty erratic, like myself," she says. Indeed, Candy's picks are quirky and eccentric and speak to both ...
Psychology can be humbling, and being humbled can be a great gift. It can even be fun, exhilarating. That was the impression I had after reading David McRaney's marvelous book that now holds a commanding presence atop my shelf, You Are Not So Smart. McRaney offers succinct explanations and ...
What does it mean to think like Shakespeare? The poet and playwright was much more than just a clever wordsmith. Shakespeare has long been admired for his deeply sympathetic identification with all things human. The psychological portraits Shakespeare painted, with a masterful touch of ...
The Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch imagined a world with no religion in his iconic painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights," depicted above (click here for high resolution image). The central panel of the triptych shows "how humanity would be without a fall, living in paradise without knowledge of ...