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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

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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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Transcript

Question: How is Top Chef changing the restaurant business?

Adam Platt: I don’t know. Top Chef is-- I do a blogging Q&A on Top Chef. You have to work in a kitchen to know but it’s- one of the trends--and this is again- David Chang is somewhat emblematic of that--is that the kitchen has come to the forefront. The grand artifice of the fancy place with the tuxedos and chandeliers, stuffy Frenchmen, is slowly dissolving, even- in fact even- not even that slowly. It’s basically sort of dissolved and the kitchen slave with his burns and his prejudices and his wild ravings and rants is now the subject of TV shows and books. Bill Buford’s Heat was- is a great book about the workings of the kitchen and it’s what people more and more are interested in and the chefs and the cooks are more and more I think opening restaurants on their own terms or at least they’re trying to do that.

Recorded: 4/22/08