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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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Question: Did you husband know you were writing about him?

Lyall:    Yeah. He’s really cool. He didn’t really mind. He asked me to take out a couple things, and I didn’t really do it. I kind of left them in anyway. But, you know, I sort of make fun of him. I have a whole chapter in the book about British men and how kind of hopeless they are and how emotionally retarded they are. And, you know, the great thing about him is he’s got a great sense of humor, and British men really do. They can really see the joke. They really laugh at themselves. So he doesn’t mind, you know. There’s something in there where I say… and it’s true. I gave him, as a present a couple of years ago, a New Yorker cartoon.  You know, you can order them from the cartoon bank, and I had it blown up. And it’s one of the ones with the guy lying in the shrink’s couch, and he’s a businessman. He’s got his little briefcase, and he’s saying to the shrink “You might say that I’m in denial, but I really feel that my personal life is none of my own damned business.” And that was really how Robert, my husband, feels. He does not want to talk about it. But he thinks it’s funny. So, it’s okay.

 

Sarah Lyall on Writing Abou...

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