Leading neuroscientist Vilayanur S Ramachandran shares intriguing case studies revealing the powerful, adaptive potential of the human brain.
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A study has found that blindfolded dolphins can pick up on the actions of other dolphins, even imitating their actions.
There is nothing better than being in a classroom with really, really brilliant students, and opening up new worlds to them in the way that a profession opened up new worlds to me.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. The process of looking back at that time must also include looking back at previous attempts […]
A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a correlation between friendship and possession of a particular version of a single gene.
Last year, Chauncey DeVega asked a great question: how would we see Sarah Palin if she were black? As much as we might like to pretend otherwise, blacks in America are […]
I’ve got a new USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for a wintry January Thursday. Some highlights (with post report updates) include: Russia: The Kamchatkan volcano, Kizimen, has […]
BIG THINK has done has the big service of presenting many, many excellent and expert views on what happiness is and how to be happy. Surely, we increasingly think, this […]
It’s pretty obvious the time the GOP spent this week debating a healthcare repeal bill that has absolutely no chance of becoming law instead of deliberating over more practical matters […]
The decline in birth rates in 2009 isn’t a story about young women learning about life with a baby from a reality show. It is a story about young women who know all too well what life with a baby is like.
There is more than a literal truth to the saying that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression,” suggests emerging international research.
In some cases, such as the Giffords shooting and Tunisian revolution, Twitter has proven a real-time news network. But what happens when the medium spreads disinformation?
Researchers have found that people whose last names come later in the alphabet are more impulsive shoppers than those earlier in the alphabet.
Whether there is a God or not, the universe per se cannot have a purpose in any anthropomorphic sense for which that term is usually employed, says Michael Shermer.
You can be sure that the next set you buy will almost certainly have an option to connect to the internet. The challenge manufacturers face is persuading you that it’s worth the effort.
As environmentally friendly labels have proliferated, the meaning of those claims has become increasingly vague. Now some large companies are trying to better define such terms.
In the new medium of digital communication, there is an opportunity to preserve identity—something that has heretofore been available only to kings, pharaohs, and emperors.
The U.S. may be in decline, but the fact that the U.S. asks that question so often is one of the reasons it has not declined. Americans have a strong impulse for course corrections.
As assistant in charge of the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, Alan Lomax proved that the poorest places held some of the richest cultural treasures.
Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext.
I just had a chance to view the upcoming Nintendo 3DS portable gaming console operating with autostereoscopic technology, which is 3D without the glasses. This is truly the beginning of a […]
How badly could things have gone during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington? How much room was there for actual negotiation?
Many apologies for the delay in postings, other work has gotten in the way, but I promise to be better in the future. It has been an incredibly busy few […]
One company is taking the familiar childhood concept of a bake sale and turning it into a social enterprise for the grown-up world.
It can’t have been good news for Piers Morgan that in the week CNN chose to debut his new show ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’, another Brit, comedian Ricky Gervais tanked horribly […]
Will Saletan accuses Apple CEO Steve Jobs of “gaming the system” to get a liver transplant: Jobs lives in Northern California, but he got his liver in Tennessee. Why? Different […]
Over on Jon Frimann’s Iceland Volcano and Earthquake Blog, there has been a lot of talk about the activity under Vatnajökull (see map below), the largest glacier on Iceland and […]
Great art can sometimes be like a magnet—attracting hordes of admirers. The Gauguin: Maker of Myth exhibition that recently closed at the Tate Modern in London, England, drew more than […]
The fact that many sun sign horoscopes are based on badly outdated information is troubling to many people, but what may be even more disturbing is astrology’s close similarity to racism.
Lately, mainstream scientists have been inching toward similar conclusions about the positive therapeutic potential of hallucinogenic drugs, says Annie Murphy.