This morning astronaut Leroy Chiao spent some time with us at Big Think to chat about his four tours in outer space and his role as director at Excalibur Almaz, […]
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If you want to speculate about an alternate-universe world without intelligent primates (and who doesn’t?), then your thoughts must turn to the octopus. Because the octopus has a large and […]
Even while wars have unfolded in all kinds of ways since it ended, World War II remains the war to end all wars. It’s scope so large that seemingly everyone […]
The US government has agreed to forgo billions in tax payments from Citigroup as part of a deal to help the company repay the massive taxpayer bailout which helped it weather the crisis.
A new study suggests that 15 per cent of teenagers have received explicitly sexually text messages, dubbed “sext messages”- while 4 per cent have sent sexts.
The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner made its maiden flight yesterday impressing onlookers with the grace of its lightweight carbon-fiber composite wings despite the rainy weather.
The sense of touch is more pertinent for women because their hands are smaller, a new study by the McMaster University in Ontario, Canada suggests.
It was only a matter of time before internet users used their “collective energy” to make a collaborative work of literature, writes The Independent.
The Obama administration is supporting the “loosening” of international copyright laws to enable cross-border distributions of special format reading materials for the blind.
The former prime minister of Russia, Yegor Gaidar, who three years ago accused the authorities of trying to poison him, has been found dead of a “blood clot” aged 53.
Police in Pakistan are investigating a possible link between the killing of a leading Al-Qaeda militant last week and a bomb attack yesterday in Punjab which killed more than 20 people.
Hundreds of protesters angered by the lack of progress on a climate deal amid political wrangling are marching on the UN climate summit today in Copenhagen.
As part of the third week of Big Think’s series “What Went Wrong?,” the Former CEO of BB&T John Allison discusses the role of governmental policies in creating the housing […]
After the administration released estimates that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out failing financial institutions would cost $200 billion less than originally thought, President Obama suggested using […]
The Huffington Post will sell parts of its comments section as advertising space in order to increase add revenue. Advertisers will “create a dialogue” with readers. “Forget fair and unfair, […]
What do popular T-Shirt slogans tell us about our current notions of happiness? According to Big Think’s new guest, Steven Hayes, they signal that mass, commercial culture has cheapened our […]
A boom in the demand for illegal motorbikes in Gaza is fuelling a dangerous – and sometimes deadly – smuggling trade orchestrated via complex tunnels all the way from Egypt.
The Independent talks to George Bush about the “surreal afterlife” of being an ex-American president, dog poop and being mistaken for himself.
Displeased Indonesians have been venting via Facebook outraged that a statue of a young Obama, “who is not an Indonesian national hero”, has been installed in a Jakarta park.
Some of the terrorism suspects being held at the U.S naval base Guantanimo Bay in Cuba will be transferred to Illinois state prison, a government official has said.
The soot emitted when fossil fuels are burned, known as “black carbon”, could have a bigger impact on climate in some parts of the world than greenhouse gases, new research reveals.
Australians are outraged at government plans to censor the internet after trials found that filtering a blacklist of banned sites didn’t slow the web down.
Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” button has mystified users by leading to an unexplained countdown clock – with no obvious purpose…
An ice-making kit which urges drinkers to recreate the sinking of Titanic using ice cube replicas of the ship and surrounding icebergs has been branded “sick” by consumers.
Thousands have been evacuated from the areas surrounding the Mayon volcano in the Philippines after it began oozing lava and shooting plumes of ash.
Iran may have tested a key component of atomic bombs as recently as 2007 according to diplomats – a claim that undermines Iran’s insistence its nuclear development is civilian.
There’s always a lot of chaos and confusion surrounding a physical assault made on a political figure, but yesterday’s attack on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has the potential to […]
Textbooks–and perhaps, uniquely, economics textbooks–are not known for their literary brilliance. Why should they be? Does math need metaphor? In college when we think about numbers we think about things […]
Rarely has so much buzz surrounded a Big Think guest. It was our pleasure today to have historian of technology Dr. Rachel Maines in to discuss her bestselling 1999 volume, […]
After President Obama’s recent speeches—one at West Point proposing sending more troops to Afghanistan and one accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo—commentators have been quick to articulate the “Obama […]