Those who hope and/or argue that economic interdependence between the U.S. and China will help to prevent a war between them are often told to recall Norman Angell’s 1910 book, […]
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I’m always fascinated by pop culture products that become cultural catalysts. More specifically, I’m particularly interested in foreign exports that are so interesting, exciting, addictive or just plain weird that […]
The words we pay the least attention to in conversations–connectors like ‘the’, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘and’, etc.–are highly reflective of our sexual desire and our relative place in society.
By logging hyper-specific personal information, about what booths you have visited at a trade show, for example, businesses will increasingly trade you their data for your data.
Despite America’s classless and meritocratic self-image, the divide between elite and supposedly plebeian culture is growing. What is driving the nation’s deepening divide?
Have you ever had a mystical experience?
On Wednesday, President Obama became the first sitting president to support marriage equality for gays and lesbians. The president’s support does nothing to alter the moral case for marriage equality. […]
Every status update, every tweet, every pin is a micro-jolt delivered squarely to the pleasure centers of our brains.
I’ve just finished reading Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, an extraordinary book that I think deserves wider attention. I want to write a full review, but this […]
By consciously practicing optimism, Jason Silva believes, we create circumstances that make external challenges weaker and easier to overcome. It’s mind over matter – thinking your ideal world into being by choosing to believe it already exists.
Brian David Johnson is Intel’s first official futurist, helping the chip maker to imagine tomorrow and then build it. Johnson reads the sci-fi works of Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross.
Coming up with a brand name can be tough, so a team of researchers has developed an artificial intelligence system which creates a name for you by using ideas essential to the product.
One year ago I wrote an article for Big Think with the title walking across campus whilst sitting on your couch in which I introduced my readers to the AnyBot, […]
Is what I experience when I feel love qualitatively different from what a man experiences? Or what a lesbian may experience? If I consider Semir Zeki’s hypothesis that literature and art across the ages show a common substrate for love in the mind, I might suggest that descriptions of sex by male and female authors and artists are sometimes different.
What do you get for being a governor who cuts $860 million from his state’s education budget and forces schools to slash their arts education? A Lifetime Achievement Award for […]
Clothes make the man. And in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, it is the hoodie, which is part of a look that has endeared him to some as the founder […]
Despite all the leaks that have come out over the latest underwear bomb plot there is still a great deal we don’t know. For instance, did information from the undercover […]
“Who is it?” is often as big a question for art historians as “Who done it?” The mysterious model of many a famous painting—perhaps none so mysterious as the Girl […]
I’ll be honest. I’d hoped to hold out a bit longer before falling back on this staple of any Asian culture column, but it was unavoidable in this case. The […]
By improving on machine-learning technology, engineers are working to create man-machine hybrids that can not only recommend great music but usher in a new era of scientific discovery.
Some of the world’s leading engineers and physicists believe we are about to reach the limits of computing power, requiring a fundamental technological shift which we have yet to imagine.
After months of regulatory negotiations with Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles, Google has been given an official driver’s license to test its self-driving vehicles.
As part of the American University project documenting the history of investigative reporting, School of Communication professor Charles Lewis asked Bob Woodward to reflect on the Bush administration’s ability to […]
To say that we tend to demonize oil companies is an understatement. And for good reason, given the role in the past of companies like Exxon Mobil in sowing doubt […]
Phoney-baloney outrage. Black-hat, white-hat exaggeration. Every day, I get emails some activist organization or other, suggesting that the nation hangs by a thread, about to drop into a bottomless pit […]
For the past few days I’ve been thinking out loud about the importance of narrative form to the mind—that way we have of being much more impressed by information in […]
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it is a very popular idea in psychology, philosophy and various social sciences that people experience their lives as a story or collection of […]
At the heart of Big Think’s mission is a firm belief that the Internet is helping to grant the general population a better education. To better serve that mission we […]
There are approximately 105,000 people currently on the waiting list for solid organ transplant in the United States. 18 of those people die every day. These deaths are due entirely to […]
As we find more planets outside our solar system and more terrestrial life that survives brutal conditions, scientists are wondering what a completely new form of life might be like.