All Articles

Ebola is starting to pose a serious risk to public health in America. But the threat is not the disease itself. The real danger is a growing epidemic of fear, an infection that spreads much more readily than the virus, is far harder to treat, and which threatens to cause much more sickness and death. The longer this epidemic of fear persists, the greater the likelihood that fear of Ebola in the United States will harm public health far more than the deadly hemorrhagic virus itself.

“Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow — it’s not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids — human beings built them, because they’re clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.”

Where college application season often means reaching for the stars, it’s also important to maintain perspective about your financial limitations.

Thank you notes are great for following up with a prospective employer, reconnecting with an old friend, expressing gratitude for spectacular service, or just letting someone know you care.

Whenever I work with a company or talk to people in the business world, I’m always asked for a model or a set of scientific formulas that can “solve” behavior […]

How many times have you heard a colleague preach about the importance of achieving a healthy work-life balance? For a lot of self-helpers, achieving an equilibrium between the personal and […]

Now that another Texas healthcare worker has contracted Ebola, and was allowed to fly commercial airlines before the diagnosis was made, health officials risk losing the public’s trust. 

What the “independent tests” really teach us, if we’re willing to look carefully. Image credit: cold fusion hoax by Juan-Louis Naudin, 2003. “There’s a mark born every minute, and one […]

New research suggests that drinking coffee has more to do with your genes than previously thought.

Can we pack the entire human race into Missouri, the “Show Me” state? We might as well try, because when it comes to making important decisions, we humans have a […]

Tools have changed our genes for millions of years. Paleo-people wouldn’t have been possible without them: artificial aids preceded and enabled their bigger brains. And the slings and arrows of […]

By meditating on having compassion for someone in your life, a new study suggests that you can become a more sympathetic person in as little as two weeks. 

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

How many times have you heard a politician or school board official vow to improve education by increasing students’ access to technology? Perhaps you’re familiar with the now-dormant plan to […]

The more hours you put in at the office, the more likely you are to become obese, according to a new paper from the US Census Bureau.

The way our political parties approach freedom risks producing individuals who are slovenly free and in pursuit of their most base passions.

Researchers working on a new project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University have begun tracking, in real time, cases of false news and the stories debunking them […]

It may be that by increasing the already substantial blood-flow to your brain, exercise can help build your IQ and work to keep you safe from neurological conditions that result from old age.

It may surprise you to learn that the entrepreneur behind dating sites like OKCupid and Match.com got his start by creating SparkNotes.com and Edonkey, a video-sharing site.

When cultural commentators remark on the dangers of technology, they are not all Luddites by trade.

150, 50, 15, 5. Those are the magic numbers in the sociology of friendship, according to University of Oxford professor Robin Dunbar.

On a recent flight over the Netherlands, I found the landscape stare back at me

Theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and all around cool guy Michio Kaku returns to Big Think to discuss the science of dreaming, as well as everything Freud got right about our subconscious.

Let me start by saying that I love this month’s Atlantic cover story, “The New Science of Old Age.”  I’m not raising it up just to knock it down. The piece, […]

A peek at Manhattan before the skyscrapers (though not before the relentless hustle-bustle).

“The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.”

A new piece in Car and Driver details the awful corporate situation that birthed one of recent memory’s most spectacular automobile industry failures.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

Businesses that stand out on Facebook are in a better position to grow and succeed. John Rampton, in a piece over at Forbes, explains how to optimize your business page for Facebook search.

Perhaps the most spectacular example of rebirth in our galaxy, this cavernous nebula is giving rise to the next generation of stars! Image credit: ESO, via http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0925a/. “For in the […]