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The tallest building in the world, Dubai’s new Khalifa Tower, is “a frightening purposeless monument to the subprime era” writes The Telegraph’s Stephen Bayley.

Considering actual temperatures dropped noticeably below average, the summer of 2009 compensated for the uncharacteristic chill with some incredibly heated debate over health care reform. Resulting in some fascinating (if […]

Liberal cynicism about healthcare parallels the feelings of political indifference that elected George Bush, writes The New Republic.

NEW YORK, NY — Shortly after explaining the art of made-up journalism in a video interview with Big Think, Joseph “Joe” Randazzo, lead editor of The Onion, died on Wednesday […]

Why do people so often fail to live up to their own standards?

So wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. To which Ernest Hemingway replied, “yes. They have more money.” Could they one day end up having more fingers? Toes? Brains? The economist Robert Frank […]

A breakthrough has been made in wireless brain-to-computer connection speech synthesizer technology, which could allow victims of paralysis the ability to speak again.

It was easy when you knew which writers were writing what in your favorite newspapers. Now, if you’re like the rest of us, you’re constantly combing the internet for fresh […]

Of course he does.  And West’s passion for the things he loves is uniquely infectious.  When he tells us what he thinks—about anything, from the history of jazz to Obama’s […]

The sun will set on the Oprah Winfrey Show – one of America’s most popular TV shows – in September 2011 after two decades on the airwaves.

Later this evening, the literary community finds out whether David Small’s “Stitches” will be the first graphic novel ever to win a National Book Award. This morning, Big Think asked […]

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

Frank Bruni’s name is famous in New York culinary circles. But his face was virtually unknown until he resigned in August as the New York Times restaurant critic. After five […]

Is it possible that the world’s most famous diarist wasn’t keeping a diary at all? According to author and literary critic Francine Prose, Anne Frank’s famous account of life in […]

In the face of tragedy, lack of success, or plain bad luck, those promoting happiness can be frankly annoying. Tal Ben Shahar told Big Think that true happiness is only […]

Former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni predicts that the farm table movement is here to stay.

Frank Bruni recently stepped down as the New York Times’ restaurant critic. He explains the science of evaluating, the challenge of avoiding cliché, and the democratization of online food reviews.

The former New York Times restaurant critic and author of Born Round: the Secret History of a Full Time Eater reflects on his childhood and entrée into the business of […]

Food critic Frank Bruni has eaten at nearly every New York hot spot. He dishes about what wows him, his favorite meal of all time, and whether the city’s Italian […]

A conversation with the five-year restaurant critic for the New York Times.

Author Francine Prose uncovers some unexpected things about the young diarist—most notably that her diary wasn’t a diary at all, but a heavily edited and re-written memoir.

Writing about intelligence is like running a ferry service between two different planets. On one, everyone assumes that g, general intelligence, is a real and important trait, in which heredity […]

Subaru Forester 2.5XT Limited While this fresh Forester isn’t perfect, our criticisms may seem insignificant to compact SUV shoppers. The slow-witted four-speed transmission makes the turbocharged engine feel less powerful […]

Researchers are learning about the human brain from a system that is more similar to our gray matter than you may think: ant colonies. Just as neurons navigate through your […]

You Can’t Wipe Out Racism by Pretending You Don’t See Race

With the summer now behind us, countless sports fans are finding a tangible meaning in their lives that hadn’t been there in some time. That’s right. Football starts this week, […]

An article from the New Scientist claims that people’s barriers to thinking more greenly are mostly psychological. People are more likely to adopt green attitudes if (1) they think their […]

Will aliens look like the people next door? I hope not.

A conversation with the contributing editor at Wired Magazine.

University of California at Berkeley has long been a hotbed of research on AI.