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People like us are rare. There is so much pressure to conform, but we are willing to be different. We dare to face down any crowd armed with only what […]

Modern communication technology could be harnessed to give the very best teachers to every classroom. Though teleconferencing, we could become a nation of life-long learners. 

Breakthrough ideas don’t happen overnight. Origins of Species was published in 1859, 28 years after Darwin first boarded HMS Beagle;James Joyce spent seventeen years writing Finnegans Wake;and when Edison filed […]

As anyone who knows me is aware, I’m generally a peaceful and diplomatic fellow. I’m not one to pick fights just for the hell of it. But that said, I’m […]

Sherry Turkle is at it again in the NYT.  When we expect more from technology, her story goes, we inevitably expect less from ourselves.  In a high-tech world, we flee […]

As you have probably noticed, BigThink.com has undergone several cosmetic changes today, all intended to enhance your reading and viewing experience. We hope you like it, but we’re not done […]

“We are at the cusp of a revolution in medicine and biotechnology that will radically increase not just our life spans but also, and more importantly, our health spans," says Sonia Arrison, author of 100: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything.

With the Mega Millions jackpot now at the $640 million mark, it’s no wonder that everyday people without any prior interest in playing casino-like games of chance are willing to […]

Philosofro (fi - los - uh -fro): A magnificent hair nebula worn by one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

Augmented reality will be mainstream, digital assistants will guide our every move, everything will be translated on the fly, we'll use digital scrolls. What else will 2025 bring?

In a post I wrote last summer, Amazon Needs To Show Me A $99 Kindle, I took Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to task for pricing his flagship proprietary product too […]

What a wonderful surprise it is for us to find today that Time magazine has rated Big Think number 1 in News & Info in its list of The 50 […]

How would we redesign economies, markets, and organizations to help us live better? Umair Haque gives three lessons for turning the crumbling dream of prosperity into an opportunity.

In a previous post, Teddy Zareva wrote about a biodegradable urn made by the Spanish designer Martin Azua that turns you into a tree when you die. Big Think readers […]

Given the increasingly complacently atheistic tone of many of the BIG THINKERS, I thought I’d introduce some realism about our Constitution’s silence on God.  My position will be, of course, somewhere […]

Read Write Web's top stories about how the social web has helped us answer questions in 2011 includes the discovery of prehistoric earth-art and a photo archive of all species.

After touching down early Thursday morning, the Atlantis shuttle is now officially a museum piece. It will be retired at the Kennedy Space Center Museum in Cape Canaveral, Florida. “Job […]

The U.S. is historically a Christian country. It’s not just that 3 out of 4 Americans identify themselves as Christian. It’s that the colonists who fought in the American revolution […]

There is a prevailing conception that students must learn facts and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can then engage in so-called ‘higher-order’ thinking skills. Educators, parents, policymakers, online commentators, and others […]

The question of my last post:  Why do we deny that it’s our nature to die?  The answer from many of my threaders:  We aren’t merely or even essentially natural […]

The scientific concept that will most impact our world is the idea that will unify two opposite ideas, those of Newton and Einstein, says Big Thinker Ajitkumar Tampi Trivikram.

The fierce moralist and political writer has died of oesophageal cancer and the outpouring of remorse at his loss is as varied as the arguments he made during his life. A fond farewell, Hitch.

Kris Broughton, a classy and eloquent BIG THINKER, is a particularly fervent defender of our president.  Nonetheless, he’s warming up to MITT ROMNEY.  He even believes that his anti-Obama rhetoric […]

There are a lot of cool posts on BIG THINK today. Austin Allen’s on stuff the great literary critic Harold Bloom declared dead is a kind of an ironic appreciation.  The […]

Miles Grimshaw didn’t get in to the most popular course at Yale this Fall. The course, Great Big Ideas, features the best experts, scholars and professionals the world has to […]

Everyone has ideas; it's how you execute them that will get you noticed. Ghost writer Jeff Haden has observed the world's greatest businessmen up close. Here are his tips. 

In a previous post, we asked you who you want to see featured on video at Big Think. The response was overwhelming to say the least. From UAW President Bob […]

As barbarians, says Lawrence Summers, economist and former President of Harvard.

David Brooks has a generous and eloquent column on the decision of “crunchy conservative” Rod Dreher to move back to his hometown of St. Francisville, LA.  Dreher is embracing the […]

The Floating University’s first course, Great Big Ideas: An Entire Undergraduate Education While Standing On One Foot, is being used to teach courses at Harvard, Yale, and Bard this fall […]