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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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Transcript

Question: What are the challenges confronting the United States?

David Patrick Columbia: Well the main challenge confronting the United States today from my point of view is how we’re going to get ourselves out of this state of indebtedness that we’ve put ourselves in over the last few decades – particularly the last decade. It’s just like having grown up in a household where there never was any money, and there was always a great deal of personal debt. It’s an anxiety that actually influences and alters everything, and we now are facing that. We are now a debtor nation whereas only 50 years ago were the richest nation and creditor nation in the world. And now we’re a very, very big debtor nation, and we still have the attitude of being a creditor nation.

It’s like the credit card mentality, which is there’s always money there as long as you’ve got a piece of plastic, but it’s not really true.

Conducted on: October 29, 2007