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Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah stopped by the Big Think offices this past week to talk how the concept of “honor” can be mobilized as a force for change.  […]

I found myself in a movie theater this weekend, cooling my heels along with the rest of my tribe as we watched the movie Takers. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be writing […]

The economic recession of the past few years has had a real effect on the way fiction writers are writing, says novelist Rick Moody. Writers are more “desperate” than they […]

In a fragmented media system, not only do people choose among news outlets and stories based on their ideology and partisanship, but also based on their preference, or lack thereof, […]

At the Washington Post yesterday, staff writer Paul Fahri described several of the emerging areas of research on The Daily Show and similar forms of political parody. The feature emphasizes […]

In a provocative article published last year, Nature columnist David Goldston tackled the topic of science and religion, focusing on the implications for public engagement and emerging policy debates. In […]

Two weeks ago, I spent my spring break at the Exploratorium, as a visiting Osher Fellow. One of the projects I consulted on was the Exploratorium’s “evidence” project, an exciting […]

If you don’t already subscribe to the daily round up and real time “peer review” of science coverage assembled by Charlie Petit at the MIT Knight Science Journalism Tracker, you […]

That’s the question raised by National Post columnist Vanessa Farquharson. While male writers and bloggers focus on a Pandora’s box of looming catastrophe, a storyline that likely leads to a […]

It’s difficult to figure out which was worse, the original “No Pressure” video released by the UK climate campaign 10:10 that depicted kids being blown up for not acting on […]

With Chris Mooney, over at Skeptical Inquirer Online, we have a lengthy article evaluating coverage of the hurricane-global warming debate. We interviewed the major science writers, columnists, and political reporters […]

“Members of the Cuban arts community say more musicians, artists, actors and writers are traveling between the two countries.” The Times reports on a burgeoning arts exchange.

The late strip club owner and bon vivant, Paul Raymond would certainly have approved, as a fair number of old ‘faces’ joined author Paul Willetts for the launch of ‘Members […]

Here we go again…another book telling us why religious belief is illogical. Shocker! But this time it’s from one of my favorite writers, John Allen Paulos. It will be interesting […]

Writers only need to gather stories and tell them. “I’m not trying to deliver any kind of mission, and I don’t think I have a mission—except telling a story,” says […]

Runaway executive bonuses on Wall-Street are here to stay, says John Cassidy at The New Yorker. The financial writer laments Washington’s failure to curtail abusive payouts.

“Fiction has now become a museum-piece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers,” says the polemical Lee Siegel.

Some time ago, we looked at EyeWriter – an innovative eyetracking device that allows paralyzed patients to write with their gaze. Today, we’re turning to another form of sensory input […]

Are we going to cause the Campi Flegrei to erupt and destroy Naples? Depends on what you read.

An companion piece to Indian novelist Pankaj Mishra’s elegant Times Op-Ed on India is Isaac Chotiner’s essay in the Times Book Review on (literary magazine)Granta’s Pakistan Issue. Chotiner references Pakistani […]

In Scott Turow’s Times Book Review cover piece on Adam Ross’s novel, Mr. Peanut, he recalls the time a revered Stanford writing professor cautioned students against writing about marriage, “the […]

Why did modernism skip England? One academic asks why a people so close to the Second World War cling to their outmoded literary traditions while the world around them has progressed.

David Mitchell is the subject of the latest Paris Review Interview. He is charming. When asked, “Are you a storyteller outside of your writing?” he replies, “No. I botch jokes […]

Last night on CNN, Jon Stewart told Larry King that the Rally to Restore Sanity “is in fact not a political rally,” and instead will be an extension of the […]

The New Yorker’s “Notes on Mourning,” excerpts of Roland Barthes’s (are they?) journal entries regarding the loss of his mother, are extraordinary. They are worth reading for anyone interested in […]

“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over [Australia] in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, […]

Mary K. Miller of San Francisco’s The Exporatorium has launched a new blog called The Accidental Scientist. The blog is focused on introducing readers to the ways in which scientists […]

Big Think today features a new set of interviews with NIH director Francis Collins, perhaps best known as the former director of the Human Genome Project and for his books […]

Just to show you how out of touch Inhofe and his staff are in their attack on the media, they even label as alarmist Andrew Revkin of the NY Times. […]

Like magic realism, Isabel Allende’s life has transcended borders.